Their long, graceful drapery was as white as snow; and each wore loosely, beneath the rounded bosom, a dark-blue zone, or bandelet, studded, like the skies at midnight, with little silver stars. Through their dark locks was wreathed the white lily of the Nile,--that flower being accounted as welcome to the moon, as the golden blossoms of the bean-flower are to the sun. As they passed under the lamp, a gleam of light flashed from their bosoms, which, I could perceive, was the reflection of a small mirror, that, in the manner of the women of the East, each wore beneath her left shoulder. There was no music to regulate their steps; but as they gracefully went round the bird on the shrine, some, by the beat of the Castanet, some, by the shrill ring of the sistrum,--which they held uplifted in the attitude of their own divine Isis,--harmoniously timed the cadence of their feet; while others, at every step, shook a small chain of silver, whose sound, mingling with those of the castanets and sistrums, produced a wild, but not an unpleasing harmony. They seemed all lovely; but there was one--whose face the light had not yet reached, so downcast she held it,--who attracted, and at length rivetted all my attention--_The Epicurean, by Thomas Moore, Esq._ * * * * * MATERIALS OF ANCIENT BOOKS. No material for books has, perhaps, a higher claim to antiquity than the skin of the calf or goat tanned soft, and usually dyed red or yellow: the skins were generally connected in lengths, sometimes of a hundred feet, sufficient to contain an entire book, which then formed one roll or _volume_. These soft skins seem to have been more in use among the Jews and other Asiatics than among the people of Europe. The copies of the law found in the synagogues are often of this kind: the most ancient manuscripts extant are some copies of the Pentateuch on rolls of leather.