1. "HENCE ductile CLAYS in wide expansion spread, Soft as the Cygnet's down, their snow-white bed; With yielding flakes successive forms reveal, 280 And change obedient to the whirling wheel. --First CHINA'S sons, with early art elate, Form'd the gay tea-pot, and the pictured plate; Saw with illumin'd brow and dazzled eyes In the red stove vitrescent colours rise; 285 Speck'd her tall beakers with enamel'd stars, Her monster-josses, and gigantic jars; Smear'd her huge dragons with metallic hues, With golden purples, and cobaltic blues; Bade on wide hills her porcelain castles glare, 290 And glazed Pagodas tremble in the air. [_Hence ductile clays_ l. 277. See additional notes, No. XX.] [_Saw with illumin'd brow_. l. 283. No colour is distinguishable in the red-hot kiln but the red itself, till the workman introduces a small piece of dry wood, which by producing a white flame renders all the other colours visible in a moment.] [_With golden purples_. l. 288. See additional notes, No. XXI.] "ETRURIA! next beneath thy magic hands Glides the quick wheel, the plaistic clay expands, Nerved with fine touch, thy fingers (as it turns) Mark the nice bounds of vases, ewers, and urns; 295 Round each fair form in lines immortal trace Uncopied Beauty, and ideal Grace. [_Etruria! next_. l. 291. Etruria may perhaps vie with China itself in the antiquity of its arts. The times of its greatest splendour were prior to the foundations of Rome, and the reign of one of its best princes, Janus, was the oldest epoch the Romans knew. The earliest historians speak of the Etruscans as being then of high antiquity, most probably a colony from Phoenicia, to which a Pelasgian colony acceded, and was united soon after Deucalion's flood. The peculiar character of their earthern vases consists in the admirable beauty, simplicity, and diversity of forms, which continue the best models of taste to the artists of the present times; and in a species of non-vitreous encaustic painting, which was reckoned, even in the time of Pliny, among the lost arts of antiquity, but which has lately been recovered by the ingenuity and industry of Mr. Wedgwood. It is supposed that the principal manufactories were about Nola, at the foot of Vesuvius; for it is in that neighbourhood that the greatest quantities of antique vases have been found; and it is said that the general taste of the inhabitants is apparently influenced by them; insomuch that strangers coming to Naples, are commonly struck with the diversity and elegance even of the most ordinary vases for common uses. See D'Hancarville's preliminary discourses to the magnificent collection of Etruscan vases, published by Sir William Hamilton.]