Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/322

 Chap.IX. OF MANCHESTER. 291 coin There we fee the charioteer mounted on his carriage before us, a quiver of arrows peeping over his left (houl4cr, and a fpear protended from his left hand, his feet refting upon the pole or on a foot- board annexed to it, and his body leaning over the horfes in the adk of accelerating their motion. And we have the description of another, which is equally authentic in itfelf, very fimilar in one or two particulars, and more circumftantial There we have the car of a British Regulus bending behind and drawn by a pair of horfes ; its fides being embofled with fpark- ling ftones, its beam of the poliShed yew, and its feat of the fmootheft bone ; its fides being replenished with Spears, the bot- tom being the footftool of the chief, and his red hair flying from his head behind as bending forward tie wields the fpear. The primaeval Britons understood the ufeful art and pra&ifed the convenient labours of the pottery. Many of their earthen veflels have defcended to us by the only way in which they could have defcended, or could have been afcertained to them if they had. They have been discovered in the fepulchers of the Britons upon Salisbury Plain in Cornwall and in Ireland They were fome of them rudely wrought, and others pretty neatly faShioned, They were generally ornamented with little moldings and circular channels about the brim. And all but one had been burned in a kiln or furnace. This muft have been one of the earlieft arts upon which the human understanding exerted its faculties, when it firft began to attend to A better provifion for domeflic occafions and the more agreeable accommo- dation of domeflic life. In all probability therefore it was imported into the ifland with the firft colonifts of the country. And the Britons muft have gradually improved it afterwards, forming the perhaps fhapelefs veffel of their fathers in a regular mold, • Strengthening their unbaked clay by the hardening fires of a ftove, and even enlivening their plain workmanfhip with fome little decorations. But the progrefs of the art in Britain was very unequal to its refinements on the continent. And Shells were the. only drinking-veffels of the Britons *. The Britons Pp 2 of