The above artist,--the Tyrian Phidias,--whose genius seems to have been universal, had been named in compliment after the reigning monarch of his country,--viz., Hiram,--and the Tyrian love of the Arts may be gathered from the fact that the "King's namesake was the artist-ambassador from Hiram to the King of Israel. This special Envoy might, also, have been selected in compliment to Solomon, for the artist's widowed mother was an Israelite, of the Tribe of Dan [the 1st Book of Kings states of the tribe of Naphtali], his father was a Tyrian, and also, doubtless renowned for works of art,--as it was the Tyrian, as well as the Egyptian custom, for the son to be of the same profession or trade as the father; thence the numerous pilots and mariners of Tyrus. The same custom prevails at this day in the ancient institutions of China, upon the principle that as a king's son shall be king, so shall every son be as the father. For what the ambassadorial artist accomplished the reader is referred to the Books of Kings and Chronicles,--a higher compliment was never paid to the Arts than by the appointment of an Architect and Sculptor to be a monarch's ambassador to a foreign King, and his representative at the building of the chief Temple of a powerful potentate; and as if to give peculiar character to the Tyrian Envoy's reception at Jerusalem, SOLOMON deputed a delegation to proceed to Tyrus, for the purpose of escorting him to Israel, that the chief artist of The Temple should have those honours conferred upon him, which were alike demanded by the solemnity of the occasion, the amity of the King of Tyrus, and the intellectual character of the artist-envoy. "And Solomon _sent and fetched_ Hiram [the artist] out of Tyre. [1 Kings vii. 13.] Hiram the King not only, through his artists, built The Temple of Jerusalem for SOLOMON, but also his "house [cedar palace] of the forest of Lebanon," and a palace for his Egyptian wife, the daughter of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. For these services Hiram received the promised gift of SOLOMON,--viz., 20,000 bushels of flour ("beaten wheat"), 20,000 bushels of wheat, and of wine and oil 150,000 gallons each,--for an "Epha" or "bath of wine," is a fraction more than seven-and-a-half gallons. In addition to the above, which may be received as for the Temple only, there was also, a Treaty of peace and amity drawn up between the two neighbouring kings,--to the effect that Hiram should receive an _annual_ payment,--that might have been for the two Palaces erected after The Temple. "And Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat for food to his household, and twenty measures ("baths") of pure oil: thus gave Solomon to Hiram _year by year_. And there was _peace_ between Hiram and Solomon:--_and they two made a_ LEAGUE _together_:" [1 Kings v. 11, 12.]