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proper ensign of the ftieffenger of the gods, he carries it with him in his attendance upon the•fouls of the deceased, to the realms of Pluto.

Turn Virgam capita bac animas tile evocat orco

Pallenteis, alias sub trisia tartara mittit,

Datsomnos, adimitque, & lumina morte rejignat. Æn. IV.

Upon which account he was prayed to: Ajax in Sophocles, before he stabbed himself, thusaddresses him.

——-Infernal Mercury I call.

Safe to conduct me to the shades below.

Pie also presided over steep and dreams. As to the purse, it seems a stolen one ; this may give abeneficial hint to the careless part of mankind, by teaching them a proper vigilance in the care oftheir goods.

Callidum quidquid placuit jocqfo

condere furto. floR. Lib. I. Od. 10.

In the markets, Mercury was called Hermes Agoraios; and from the cheats and frauds socommonly practised in dealings, became the- god of thieves; in this office-, having too muchbusiness, he was assisted by a goddess called Laverna, to whom prayers were addressed for successin thieving and cheating.

■«--- —Pidchra Laverna,

Da mihi Jailer e da justo fanSloque videriNoclem peccatis, & fraudtbus objice nubem .

Perhaps some may shrewdly suspect, that since the poet wrote, the goddess has encouraged hervotaries to cheat in broad day, and with manifest impudence.

In the Metamorphoses, we read of a son of Mercury, whom some of the commentators sup-pose to have risen to very eminent business in a certain profession, from an ingenuity natural to himin pleading, of making black ’white, and ’white black.

Naicifur Autolychus, firtum ingeniofus ad omne£>uifacere ajj'uerat, patriœ non degener artisCandida de nigris & de candentibus al'ra.

Ovid. Met am. Lib. XL

Mercury is sometimes taken for the fun, and then by the ram he is represented in that portionof the ecliptick, called Aries. From Paufanias, we learn that the ram likewise alludes to themysteries of the Eleusinian games. When Mercury is sidled Criophorus, or the ram-bearer, it isrelative to a solemnity observed by the Tanagreans in Bœotia, in commemoration of their beingdelivered from the plague, by the god carrying a ram upon his shoulders, and walking with itround the city ; upon this festival, therefore it was customary for one of the most beautiful youthsto walk round the walls, with a lamb or ram upon his shoulders.

The Cornelian from which this design is taken, is mentioned by Leo Agostini, gemme antiche.

They who are fond of expatiating Upon these fancies of antient fables, will find an extensivefield to range in, by turning over some of the numerous works engraved from the best cabinetsof Europe. We have ottered these few, because we think that with the architecture of the Gre-cians, we should always have in view the gracefulness and fignificancy of their compositions inworks of sculpture ; how the study of both may tend to the emolument of their sister Art, theworks of the greatest painters from Raphael downwards, sufficiently declare. To sum up thewhole in the words of an original artist, " the art of composing, is the art of varying well,

" taking heed, that variety be without confusion, simplicity without nakedness, richness without" tawdrinfefs, distinctness without hardness, and quantity without excess.”

TO THE BOOKBINDER.

The plates may be placed in two different manners, either by ranging them all in their pro-per order at the end of the book, or by placing each plate in its respective part as near to the ex-planation of it as possible.