Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 3.djvu/290

 with the beautiful stone of Carrara, have confined their labours to this more perfect variety. It is however perfectly applicable to various architectural as well as economical objects. A marble perfectly similar to it has lately been imported from America for the same purposes, to many of which its greyish hue and low tone of colour are more applicable than the dazzling white of Carrara. It is of a larger grain and a more compact texture than the Pentelic, with which the beautiful and interesting remains imported by Lord Elgin have lately made us acquainted. But the Pentelic marble, like that of Glen Tilt, contains mica, and from this contamination arises its fissile nature, to which we unhappily owe so much of the injury which these wonderful works have suffered. When polished, the two can scarcely be distinguished from each other; the difference in the size of their grains disappearing, and the grey and watery stains, with the brown stripes of the micaceous laminæ, equally characterizing both.

The discovery of statuary marble in the British dominions has been long a desideratum, but having already in the present volume discussed this question, I shall only briefly remark that how much soever we may admire those wonderful sculptures by Phidias which have been executed in a marble scarcely differing in colour or quality from this of Glen Tilt, we are very well assured on examining the progress of art in Greece, that the marble of Pentelicus was only used in the deficiency of a purer and more uniform stone, and that it was abandoned when later discoveries had made the sculptors of that country acquainted with a better class of marbles. It would be a fruitless attempt to introduce the marble of Glen Tilt, or even those whiter varieties which Scotland produces, in competition with the exquisitely beautiful and easily wrought stone of Carrara,