named from the feven metals, afcending to heaven, may ferve to prove that they knew. fufficient of chemistry, even at that early period, to exalt and to fix thofe colours. Hence the Perfian works in embroidery, their rich tapestries, and carpets of flowered filk, were in not lefs high request through all antiquity than the painted cotton and fine linen, or findon, of India. Before I quit this subject, I cannot help remarking the striking fimilarity between the ladder that reached to heaven, in Abraham's vision, and this fymbolic ladder of the Persian magi. Terah, the father of Abraham, muft have been fkilled in metallurgic science; for, he was a maker of TERAPHIM, i, e. of idols cast in brass or copper, under the aspect of certain planets. Either, then, Abraham, feizing this idea of the magi, sanctioned a symbol, which was only a harmlefs, but expreffive, emblem of the gradual ascenfion to heaven of the purified foul, in the immortality of which the Perfians believed; or, what I own is more probable, the Pagans from his dream caught the image, and introduced it into the mysterious rites of their degraded superstition. At all events, the fact proves the high antiquity of the symbolical allusion,

and not lefs of their chemical knowledge, fince Abraham flourished near two thousand years before Christ.

To return to the Indians; and to confider, first, their method and the materials ufed in painting on cotton. The more pure from mixture, the more lively and beautiful, though not more permanent, are faid to be the colours. In their firft efforts to excel in this line, the Indians probably used only the fimple expreffed juice of flowers and fhrubs, the most vivid they could felect. Foffil earths of various colours, as ochre, the yellow and the red, might afterwards be employed; and, lastly, as they advanced in chemical knowledge, minerals lent their aid to exalt their tints, to give them stability, and increase their variety. The two prevailing colours on the filks and cottons imported from India are the deep blue and the bright red; and the bafis of thefe is well known to be indigo and gum-lac. Indigo is formed from the leaves of a plant, which grows about two feet high, called Indicum by the ancients, from the river Indus, down which it was brought from Lahore, of which city formerly it was the taple commodity. Its native ap

pellation

pellation is NILI, literally BLUE.

The finest fort is however cultivated about Biana and Agra, and the colouring fubftance is the fecula, or dregs, made by means of water and oil-olive out of thofe leaves. It is brought to us in cakes of fo intenfe a blue as to appear almoft black; in consequence of which, when employed by the painters, it is obliged to be ground up with white, or it could not be ufed with effect. That fpecies which is brought from the Weft Indies is of inferior fineness to what is imported from the Eaft; for, it is made of the whole plant, stalk, and leaf, macerated together, and confequently has many impurities blended with it. The Weft-Indian fpecies is, therefore, only used in dying, while the finer forts of indigo are still used by painters both in Afia and Europe. To render indigo in this country totally foluble for the purpose of dying, it requires an equal quantity of fixed alcaline falt. On digefting this with a gentle heat, the matter first appears copper-coloured, then of a deep green. The fubftance dipped in it comes out perfectly green; but, when exposed to the air, almost instantly changes to a fine blue.

The

The gum-lac, or LACCA of the ancients, has been mistaken for a vegetable production, but is in fact an animal substance, somewhat of the nature of cochineal, and is the production of an infect, refembling a bee, which depofits this glutinous fediment on the branches of certain trees, adhering to which it is brought to us, and thence bears among commercial men the technical name of flicklac. The colour is obtained by fimply boiling the stick-lac in water, then filtering the decoction, and evaporating the fuperfluous humidity. With these two colours, but not these only, fince India affords innumerable other vegetable as well as mineral fubftances adapted to the purpose, are the beautiful callicoes produced in her looms, painted or stained; and, though the ingenuity of European artists, with the aid of highly improved chemistry, have, in the place of these beautiful and durable colours, invented others poffibly better adapted to painting in its prefent advanced stage of excellence, when the gradation of light and shade in pictures is to be so distinctly marked, yet none have hitherto rivalled thofe of India in united brilliancy and permanency; and, could the genuine Oriental

Oriental indigo and lac, in their purest state, be obtained, they would perhaps still prefer the former to the beft ultramarine and Pruffian blue, and the latter to even vermilion, carmine, and all the factitious lacs in the whole clafs of red colours. In the practice of the Indian artist, however, there is no viciffitude; the mode of painting and dying ufed twenty centuries ago, when Greece and Rome exchanged their hoarded bullion for her productions, ftill prevails; the cottons are prepared by fome chemical process, unknown in Europe, to receive the various colours in tended to be impreffed either by the pencil or in the vat, and they retain them, while the fubftance on which they are impreffed exists, with little alteration.

To be more particular in regard to their mode of painting the cottons in India. M. Sonnerat, after confirming what has been juft obferved concerning the brilliancy of the colours being heightened by fome previous preparation, and the quality of the water in which the linen is whitened, adds, "When the outline is drawn, the linen receives the first washing; an ordinary workman then extends it on the ground, and, fitting down, puts on

the