Page:Sir Thomas Browne's works, volume 3 (1835).djvu/412

 Christ in the Canticles, looking through the nets, which ours hath rendered, "he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice;" that is, partly seen and unseen, according to the visible and invisible sides of his nature. To omit the noble reticulate work, in the chapiters of the pillars of Solomon, with lilies and pomegranates upon a net-work ground; and the graticula or grate through which the ashes fell in the altar of burnt offerings.

That the net works and nets of antiquity were little different in the form from ours at present, is confirmable from the nets in the hands of the retiary gladiators, the proper combatants with the Secutores. To omit the ancient conopeion or gnat-net of the Ægyptians, the inventors of that artifice; the rushy labyrinths of Theocritus; the nosegay nets, which hung from the head under the nostrils of princes; and that uneasy metaphor of reticulum jecoris, which some expound the lobe, we the caul above the liver. As for that famous net-work of Vulcan, which inclosed Mars and Venus, and caused that unextinguishable laugh in heaven,—since the gods themselves could not discern it, we shall not pry into it: although why Vulcan bound them, Neptune loosed them, and Apollo should first discover them, might afford no vulgar mythology. Heralds have not omitted this order or imitation thereof, while they symbolically adorn their scutcheons with mascles, fusils, and saltyres, and while they dispose the figures of Ermines, and varied coats in this quincunical method.

The same is not forgot by lapidaries, while they cut their gems pyramidally, or by æquicrural triangles. Perspective pictures, in their base, horizon, and lines of distances, cannot escape these rhomboidal decussations. Sculptors in their strongest shadows, after this order do draw their double hatches. And the very Americans do naturally fall upon it, in their neat and curious textures, which is also observed in the elegant artifices of Europe. But this is no law unto the woof of the neat retiary spider, which seems to weave