Though the precise period of the fabrication of the funereal vessels found in Corsica is not ascertained, they must be considered of very ancient date. These vessels, when found entire, at first appear completely closed up, and no trace of joining can be discovered. But it has been ascertained that they are composed of two equal parts, the end of one fitting exactly into the other, and so well closed that the body, or at least the bones which they contain, appear to have been placed within them before they were baked upon the kiln. Diodorus Siculus, in speaking of the usages of the Balearic Isles, states that these people were in the habit of beating, with clubs, the bodies of the dead which, when thus rendered flexible, were deposited in vessels of earthenware. This practice of the Corsicans coincides singularly with that of the Coroados Indians, who inhabit a village on the Paraïba river, near Campos, in the Brazils. They use large earthen vessels, called camucis, as funereal urns. The bodies of their chiefs, reduced to mummies, are placed in them in a bent posture, decked with their ornaments and arms, and are then deposited at the foot of the large trees of the forest.
The cut which we here give speaks for itself. It represents the funereal jar containing the chief as described; the animal at his feet appears to be a panther or tiger cat.
WRITING MATERIALS.
The materials used for writing on have varied in different ages and nations. Among the Egyptians slices of limestone, leather, linen, and papyrus, especially the last, were universally employed. The Greeks used bronze and stone for public monuments, wax for memorandums and papyrus for the ordinary transactions of life. The kings of Pergamus adopted parchment, and the other nations of the ancient world chiefly depended on a supply of the paper of Egypt. But the Assyrians and Babylonians employed for their public archives, their astronomical computations, their religious dedications, their historical annals, and even for title-deeds and bills of exchange, tablets, cylinders, and hexagonal prisms of terra-cotta. Two of these cylinders, still extant, contain the history of the campaign of Sennacherib against the kingdom of Judah; and two others, exhumed from the Birs Nimroud, give a detailed account of the dedication of the great temple by Nebuchadnezzar to the seven planets. To this indestructible material, and to the happy idea of employing it in this manner, the present age is indebted for a detailed history of the Assyrian monarchy; whilst the decades of Livy, the plays of Menander and the lays of Anacreon, confided to a more perishable material, have either wholly or partly disappeared amidst the wreck of empires.
CURIOUS DISPUTE AND APPROPRIATE DECISION.
Fuller, in his 'Holy State,' p. 170, gives a very apposite story; a poor man in Paris, being very hungry, went into a cook shop, and staid there so long, (for the master was dishing-up meat,) that his appetite being lessened by the steam, he proposed to go without his meal; the cook insisted upon payment all the same. At length, the altercation was agreed to be referred to the first person that passed the door; that person happened to be a notorious idiot. Having heard the complaint, he decreed that the poor man's money should be placed between two empty dishes, and that the cook should be recompensed with the jingling of his cash, as the other was with the fumes of the meat; and this little anecdote is literally matter of fact.
THE TEA-POT.
No specimen of the ceramic art possesses greater variety of form than the tea-pot. On none has the ingenuity of the potter been more fully exercised, and it is worthy of remark, that the first successful production of Böttcher in hard porcelain was a tea-pot. The so-called Elizabethan tea-pots must be of a later date, for tea was not known in England until the time of Charles II; but it is interesting to trace the gradual increase in the size of the tea-pot, from the diminutive productions of the Elers, in the time of Queen Anne and George I., when tea was sold in apothecaries' shops, to the capacious vessel which supplied Dr. Johnson with "the cup that cheers but not inebriates."
Mr. Croker, in his edition of Boswell's Life, mentions a tea-pot that belonged to Dr. Johnson which held two quarts; but this sinks into insignificance compared with the superior magnitude of that in the possession of Mrs. Marryat, of Wimbledon, who purchased it at the sale of Mrs. Piozzi's effects at Streatham. This tea-pot, which was the one generally used by Dr. Johnson, holds more than three quarts. It is of old Oriental porcelain, painted and gilded, and from its capacity was well suited to the taste of one "whose tea-kettle had no time to cool, who with tea solaced the midnight hour, and with tea welcomed the morn." George IV. had a large assemblage of tea-pots, piled in pyramids, in the Pavilion at Brighton. Mrs. Elizabeth Carter was also a collector of tea-pots, each of which possessed some traditionary interest, independently of its intrinsic merit; but the most diligent collector of tea-pots was the late Mrs. Hawes. She bequeathed no less than three hundred specimens to her daughter, Mrs. Donkin, who has arranged them in a room appropriated for the purpose. Among them are several formerly belonging to Queen Charlotte. Many are of the old Japan; one with two divisions, and two spouts for holding both black and green tea; and another of a curious device, with a small aperture at the bottom to admit the water, there being no opening at the top, atmospheric pressure preventing the water from running out. This singular Chinese toy has been copied in the Rockingham ware.