The Latin word marmor is derived from the Greek papuauptv, to shine or glitter. The colors by which marbles are distinguished are almost innumerable; but the most remarkable are, 1. The black marble of Flanders. 2. Plain yellow. 3. Yellow with some white veins. 4. Yellow with black dendrites. 5. Yellow with brown figures resembling ruins. 6. Black and yellow. 7. Black and white. 8. Pale yellow, with spots of a blackish-gray color. 9. Yellow, white, and red. 10. Pale yellow. 11. Olive color, with deeper colored cross lines, and dendrites. 12. Brownish red. 13. Flesh-colored and yellow. 14. Common red marble. 15. Crimson, white, and gray. 16. Reddish-brown lumps on a whitish ground. 17. Bluish gray. 18. Snowy white. The varieties of marble, numerous as they are, have been improperly augmented by virtuosos, and some people who collect specimens for the sake of gain. The Italians are particularly curious in this way; and most of the names imposed upon marbles are given by them. Every marble brought from an unknown place is called by them antico; when distinguished by a number of bright colors it is called brocatello, or brocatellato. When they want some of the originals to complete a whole set of marbles they either substitute others which have the nearest resemblance to them; or, lastly, they stain white marbles according to their own fancy, and impose them on the world as natural. The finest solid modern marbles are those of Italy, Blankenburg, France, and Flanders. Very fine marble is also found in some of the Western Islands of Scotland. Those of Germany, Norway, and Sweden, are of an inferior kind, being mixed with a kind of scaly limestone; and even several of those above mentioned are partly mixed with this substance, though in an inferior degree. The specific gravity of marble is from 2700 to 2800; that of Carriera, a very fine Italian marble, is 2717. Black marble owes its color to a slight mixture of iron. Mr. Bayen found some which contained five per cent. of the metal; notwithstanding which the lime prepared from it was white, but in time it acquired an ochry or reddish-yellow color. Marble, when chemically examined, appears to consist of calcareous earth; and is, like limestone or chalk, capable of being converted into a strong quicklime. Dr. Black derives the origin of marbles, as well as limestone and marl, from the same source, viz. from the calcareous matter of shells and lithophyta. In one kind of limestone, known by the name of Portland stone, and consisting of round grains united together, it was supposed to be composed of the spawn of fish; but comparisons of other phenomena have explained it. It is plain that it has been produced from a calcareous sand, which is found on the shore of some of the islands in the southern climates. By the constant agitation the softer parts are worn off, and the harder parts remain in the form of particles that are highly polished, and which are afterwards gradually made to concrete together by causes of which we have yet no knowledge. There are indeed some few of the limestones and marbles in which we cannot discover any of the relics of the shells; but there are many

signs of their having been in a dissolved or liquefied state; so we cannot expect to see the remains of the form of the shells; but, even in many of the marbles that have the greatest appearance of a complete mixture, we still find often the confused remains of the shells of which they have been originally composed. We should still find it difficult to conceive how such masses should have derived their origin from shells; but, considering the many collections that we have an opportunity of seeing in their steps towards this process, and a little concreted together, so that by their going a step farther they might form limestone and marbles, we may see the possibility of their being all produced in the same manner. Thus vast quantities of shells have been found in the ci-devant province of Touraine in France: and indeed there is no place where they have not been found. The lithophyta likewise seem to be a very fruitful source of this kind of earth. In the cold climates, where the moderate degree of heat is not so productive of animal life, we have not such an opportunity of observing this; but in the hot climates the sea as well as the land swarms with innumerable animals; and, at the bottom, with those that produce the corals and madrepores. We learn, from the history of a ship that was sunk in a storm in the Gulf of Mexico, the vast growth there is of these bodies. About thirty years after they attempted to dive into it, to get out a quantity of silver; but they found great difficulty in getting it, from the ship being overgrown with coral. Sir Hans Sloane in the Philosophical Transactions, and in his History of Jamaica, observes that the ship's timber, the iron, and money, were all concreted by the growth of the calcareous matter. a tract of many thousands of years the quantity of it should be very great; and, as this is going on through a very great extent of the bottom of the sea, it will produce very extensive as well as massy collections of calcareous matter. According to Sir William Hamilton, many variegated marbles and precious stones are the produce of volcanoes. See Philosophical Transactions, vol. lviii. 12.

So in

MARBLE, ARTIFICIAL. The stucco of which they make statues, busts, basso-relievos, and other ornaments of architecture, ought to be marble pulverised, mixed in a certain proportion with plaster; the whole well sifted, worked up with water, and used like common plaster. See STUCCO. A kind of artificial marble is also made of the flaky selenites, or a transparent stone resembling plaster; which becomes very hard, receives a tolerable polish, and may deceive a good eye. This kind of selenites resembles Muscovy tale. Another kind is formed by corrosive tinctures, which, penetrating into white marble to the depth of a line or more, imitate the various colors of dearer marble. There is also a preparation of brimstone in imitation of marble. To do this, provide a flat and smooth piece of marble; on this make a border or wall, to encompass either a square or oval table, which may be done either with wax or clay. Then, having several sorts of colors, as white, lead, vermilion, lake, orpiment, masticot, smalt, Prussian blue, &c., melt on a slow fire some

brimstone in several glazed pipkins; put one particular sort of color into each, and stir it well together; then, having before oiled the marble all over within the wall, with one color, quickly drop spots upon it of larger and less size; after this take another color, and do as before, and so on till the stone is covered with spots of all the colors you design to use. When this is done, consider what color the mass or ground of the table is to be; if of a gray color, then take fine sifted ashes, and mix it up with melted brimstone; or if red, with English red ochre; if white, with white lead; if black, with lamp or ivory black. The brimstone for the ground must be pretty hot, that the colored drops on the stone may unite and incorporate with it. When then the ground is poured even all over, put a thin wainscot board upon it, while the brimstone is hot, making also the board hot, which ought to be thoroughly dry, to cause the brimstone to stick the better to it. When the whole is cold, take it up, and polish it with a cloth and oil, and it will look very beautiful.

MARBLE, COLORING. This is a nice art; and, to succeed in it, the pieces of marble on which the experiments are tried must be well polished, and free from the least spot or vein. The harder the marble is, the better will it bear the heat necessary in the operation; therefore alabaster and the common soft white marble are very improper for performing these operations upon. Heat is always necessary for opening the pores of marble, so as to render it fit to receive the colors but the marble must never be made red hot; for then the texture of it is injured, and the colors are burnt, and lose their beauty. Too small a degree of heat is as bad as one too great; for in this case, though the marble receive the color, it will not be fixed in it, nor strike deep enough. Some colors will strike even cold; but they never sink in so well as when a just degree of heat is used. The proper degree is that which, without making the marble red, makes the liquor boil upon its surface. The menstruums used to strike in the colors must be varied according to the nature of the color to be used. A lixivium made with horses' or dogs' urine, with four parts of quicklime and one of potashes, is excellent for some colors; common lye of wood ashes is very good for others; for some spirit of wine is best; and lastly, for others, oily liquors, or common white wine. The colors which succeed best with the peculiar menstruums are these:-Stone blue dissolved in six times the quantity of spirit of wine, or of the urinous lixivium, and litmus dissolved in common lye of wood ashes. An extract of saffron, and that color made of buckthorn berries, called by painters sap green, both succeed well when dissolved in urine and quicklime, and tolerably well when dissolved in spirit of wine. Vermilion, and a very fine powder of cochineal, also succeed very well in the same liquors. Dragons' blood succeeds in spirit of wine, as does also a tincture of logwood in the same spirit. Alkanet root gives a fine color; but the only menstruum to be used for it is oil of turpentine; for neither spirit of wine nor any lixivium will do with it. There is another kind of sanguis draconis com

monly called dragons' blood in tears, which, mixed with urine, gives a very elegant color. There are other colors which must be laid on dry and unmixed. These are-dragons' blood, of the purest kind, for a red; gamboge for å yellow; green wax for a green; common brimstone, pitch, and turpentine, for a brown color. The marble for these experiments must be made considerably hot, and then the colors are to be rubbed on dry in the lump. Some of these colors, when once given, remain immutable, others are easily changed or destroyed. Thus the red color given by dragons' blood, or by a decoction of logwood, will be wholly taken away by oil of tartar, and the polish of the marble not hurt by it. A fine gold color is given in the following manner:-Take crude sal ammoniac, vitriol, and verdigris, of each equal quantities. White vitriol succeeds best; and all must be thoroughly mixed in fine powder. The staining of marble to all the degrees of red or yellow, by solutions of dragons' blood or gamtoge, may be done by reducing these gums to powder, and grinding them with the spirit of wine in a glass mortar. But, for smaller attempts, no method is so good as mixing a little of either of these powders with spirit of wine in a silver spoon, and holding it over burning charcoal. A fine tincture may thus be extracted, and, with a pencil dipt in this, the finest traces may be made on the marble while cold; which on heating it afterwards, either on sand or in a baker's oven, will sink very deep, and remain distinct on the stone. It is very easy to make the ground color of the marble red or yellow, and leave white veins in it. This is to be done by covering the places where the whiteness is to remain with some white paint, or even with two or three folds only of paper; either of which will prevent the color from penetrating. All the degrees of red are to be given to marble by this gum alone; a slight tincture of it, without the assistance of heat to the marble, gives only a pale flesh color; but the stronger tinctures give it deeper: to this the assistance of heat adds greatly. The addition of a little pitch to the tincture gives it a tendency to blackness, or any degree of deep red that may be desired. A blue color may be given also to marble by dissolving turnsol in lixivium, in lime and urine, or in the volatile spirit of urine; but this has always a tendency to purple, made in either of these ways. A better blue is furnished by the Canary turnsol, which needs only to be dissolved in water, and drawn on with a pencil: it penetrates very deeply into the marble, and the color may be increased by drawing the pencil, wetted afresh, several times over the same lines. This color is apt to diffuse itself irregularly, but may be kept in regular bounds by circumscribing its lines with beds of wax, or any such substance. It should always be laid on cold, and no heat given even afterwards to the marble. One great advantage of this color is, that it is easily added to marbles already stained with other colors, is a very beautiful tinge, and lasts a long time.

MARBLE, ELASTIC, an extraordinary species of fossil, of which there are several tables preserved in the house of prince Borghese at Rome, and

shown to the curious. F. Jaquer, a celebrated mathematician, has given a description in the Literary Gazette of Paris. There are five or six tables of it; their length is about two feet and a half, their breadth about ten inches, and the thickness a little less than three. They were dug up, says abbé Fortis, in the feod of Mondragone; the grain is either of Cararese marble, or of the finest Greek. They seem to have suffered some attack of fire. They are very dry, do not yield to external impression, resound to the hammer like other congenerous marbles, and are perhaps susceptible of a polish. Being set on end, they bend, oscillating backward and forward; when lad horizontally, and raised at one end, they form a curve, beginning towards the middle: if placed on a table, and a piece of wood, or any thing else, is laid under them, they make a salient curve, and touch the table with both ends. Notwithstanding this flexibility, they are liable to be broken if indiscreetly handled; and therefore one table only, and that not the best, is shown to the curious. Formerly they were altogether in the prince's apartment on the ground floor.

MARBLES, ARUNDEL. See ARUNDELIAN MARBLES.

MARBLES FOR PLAYING, OR MARBLE BOWLS, are mostly imported from Holland; where it is said they are made by breaking the stone alabaster, or other substance, into pieces or chips of a suitable size; they are put into an iron mill which turns by water: there are several partitions with rasps within, cut floatways, not with teeth, which turn constantly round with great swiftness; the friction against the rasps makes them round, and, as they are formed, they fall out of different holes, into which size or chance throws them.

MARBLED CHINA-WARE, a species of porcelain or china-ware, which seems to be full of cemented flaws. It is called by the Chinese, who are very partial to it, tsou tchi It is generally plain white, sometimes blue, and has exactly the appearance of a piece of china which had been first broken, and then had all the pieces cemented in their places again, and covered with the original varnish. The manner of preparing it is easy. Instead of the common varnish of the china-ware, which is made of what they call oil of stone and oil of fern mixed together, they cover this with a simple thing made of a sort of coarse agates, calcined to a white powder, and separated from the grosser parts by water, after long grinding in mortars. When the powder has been thus prepared it is left moist, or in form of a sort of cream, with the last water that is suffered to remain in it, and this is used as the varnish. Our crystal would serve full as well as those coarse agates. The occasion of the singular appearance of this sort of porcelain is, that the varnish never spreads evenly, but runs into ridges and veins. Those often run naturally into a sort of Mosaic work, which can scarcely be taken for the effect of chance. If the marbled china be desired blue, they first give it a general coat of this color by dipping the vessel into a blue varnish, and, when this is thoroughly dry, they add another coat of this agate oil.

MARBLEHEAD, a post town and sea-port of Essex county, Massachusetts, four miles and a half south-east of Salem, sixteen north-east of Boston, and from Washington 456 miles. Population 5900. It contains a bank, a custom house, two insurance offices, a market house, alms house, two rope walks, an academy, and five houses of public worship, two for Congregationalists, one for Episcopalians, one for Methodists, and one for Baptists.

The academy was incorporated in 1792, and is a respectable and flourishing seminary, having a limited number of pupils, thirty of each sex, under the care of a preceptor and preceptress. The building is a spacious and handsome edifice. The bank house is a superb edifice, erected in 1766 for a private mansion, at the expense of £10,000 sterling, including furniture. It is sixty-six feet long, forty-four broad, and thirtyfive high, of three stories; and contains the bank, the custom house, and an insurance office.

This town is much more largely concerned in the bank fisheries than any other in the United States, and the business is carried on with great spirit and enterprise. There are now employed in the bank and coast fisheries 103 vessels, carrying 7739 tons, and giving occupation to 760 men; eighty of these vessels, of sixty tons and upwards, are engaged in the fishery of the Grand Bank and of Newfoundland. The shipping employed in foreign commerce amounts to 3794 tons. The total amount belonging to this port is 12,301 tons. The harbour lies in front of the town, a mile long from north-east to south-west, and half a mile wide, and is formed by a narrow strip of land making a semicircle at the southwest. It is very excellent, and may be entered at all times, but is considerably exposed to north-east storms. It is defended by fort Sewall, which stands on a point near the entrance of the harbour, and is one of the finest forts in the country. It is formed by two angular batteries of earth and stone, with a stone and brick wall in their rear. The pieces mounted are two twenty-four, and ten eighteen pounders. The barracks, which are bomb proof, are capable of accommodating a garrison of sixty or seventy men, which is about the number now stationed here.

Few towns in the United States suffered so much as this during the revolutionary and the late war. At the peace of December, 1814, no fewer than 500 of her sons were in foreign prisons. The situation of the town is remarkably salubrious. The average number of births in a year is about 200: of deaths, including those abroad, 120.

MARBLETOWN, a town of Ulster county, New York; ten miles south-west of Kingston. Population 3363.

MARBLING, the art of preparing and coloring marbled paper. There are several kinds of marbled paper; but the principal difference of them lies in the forms in which the colors are laid on the ground: some being disposed in whirls or circumvolutions; some in jagged lengths; and others only in spots of a roundish or oval figure. The general manner of managing each kind is, nevertheless, the same; the paper is dipped in a

away all he had said to the limitation of the papal power. He obtained his confirmation, after seven years suspense, in 1648; was translated to the archbishopric of Thoulouse in 1652; and was made minister of state in 1658. He was made archbishop of Paris in 1662; and died there soon after. His Posthumous Works, with prefaces, notes, &c., were published by M. Baluze. He is deservedly censured for accommodating his learning and talents to his views of interest and ambition.

MAR'CASITE, n. s. Fr. marcassite. An old and exploded term for various ores difficult of reduction. See below.

Here marcasites in various figures wait, To ripen to a true metallic state.

Garth's Dispensatory. The acid salt dissolved in water is the same with oil of sulphur per campanam, and abounding much in the bowels of the earth, and particularly in marcasites, unites itself to the other ingredients of the marcasite, which are bitumen, iron, copper, and earth, and with them compounds alum, vitriol, and sulphur: with the earth alone it compounds alum; with the metal alone, and metal and earth together, it compounds vitriol; and with the bitumen and earth it compounds sulphur: whence it comes to pass, that marcasites abound with those three mineNewton's Opticks. The writers of minerals give the name pyrites and marcasites indifferently to the same sort of body: I restrain the name of pyrites wholly to the nodules, or those that are found lodged in strata that are separate: the marcasite is part of the matter that either constitutes the stratum, or is lodged in the perpendicular fissures.

rals.

Woodward.

The term marcasite has been very improperly used by some for bismuth, and by others for zinc: the more accurate writers, however, always express a substance different from either of these by it, sulphureous and metallick. The marcasite is a solid hard fossil, naturally found among the veins of ores, or in the fissures of stone: the variety of forms this mineral puts on is almost endless. There are, how ever, only three distinct species of it; one of a bright gold colour, another of a bright silver, and a third of a dead white: the silvery one seems to be peculiarly meant by the writers on the Materia Medica. Marcasite is very frequent in the mines of Cornwall, where the workmen call it mundick, but more in Germany, where they extract vitriol and sulphur

from it.

Hill.

MARCASITE, in mineralogy, is a name that has long been given indifferently to all sorts of minerals; to ores, pyrites, and semimetals. Lately it seems to be confined to pyrites; and Wallerius proposes to confine it to such pyrites as are regularly formed. See PYRITES.

MARCEL (G.), advocate to the parliament of Paris, a French chronological writer of the seventeenth century. He published, 1. Tablettes Chronologiques, Contenant, avec ordre, l'etat de l'Eglise en Orient et en Occident; Amsterdam, 1696, 16mo. 2. Tablettes Chronologiques, Contenant la suite des Papes, Empereurs, et Roys, qui ont Regné depuis la naissance de Jesus Christ en Europe, jusq'au present: 24mo. Paris, 1699, elegantly engraved on copper; both dedicated to Louis XIV.

MARCELLIANS, a sect of ancient heretics who flourished about the end of the second cen

tury, so called from Marcellus of Ancyra, their leader, who was accused of reviving the errors of Sabellius. St. Epiphanius observes, that there was a great deal of dispute with regard to the real tenets of Marcellus; but that, as to his followers, it is evident they did not own the three hypostases; for Marcellus considered the Son and Holy Ghost as two emanations from the divine nature, which, after performing their respective offices, were to return again into the substance of the Father; an opinion altogether incompatible with the belief of three distinct persons in the Godhead.

MARCELLO (Benedict), a celebrated musician, descended from one of the most illustrious families in Venice. He lived in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and composed anthems, cantatas, and other works, which the connoisseurs rank as high as any of the musical compositions which the Italian school has produced. He is the Pindar of music,' says M. de la Borde. In analysing his works we disbut there is a difficulty attending the execution cover a profound knowledge and great address; of them which is almost insurmountable. It requires a voice possessed of great powers, and accustomed to the most extraordinary intervals.'

MARCELLUS (Marcus Claudius), a famous Roman general, who, after the first punic war, conducted an expedition against the Gauls. Here he obtained the Spolia Opima, by killing, with his own hand, Viridomarus, the king of the Gauls. This success rendered him popular, and soon after he was entrusted to oppose Hannibal in Italy. He was the first Roman who obtained some advantage over this celebrated Carthaginian, and showed his countrymen that Hannibal was not invincible. The troubles which were

raised in Sicily by the Carthaginians, at the death of Hieronymus, alarmed the Romans; and Marcellus, in his third consulship, was sent with a powerful force against Syracuse. He attacked it by sea and land; but his operations proved long ineffectual, and the invention and industry of Archimedes baffled all the efforts, and destroyed all the stupendous machines and military engines of the Romans during three successive years. The perseverance of Marcellus at last obtained the victory. After this conquest Marcellus was called to oppose Hannibal a second time. In this campaign he behaved with greater vigor than before; the greatest part of the towns of the Samnites, which had revolted, were recovered by force of arms, and 3000 of the soldiers of Hannibal made prisoners. Some time after, in an engagement with the Carthaginians, Marcellus had the disadvantage; but on the next day a more successful skirmish vindicated his military character and the honor of the Roman soldiers. Marcellus, however, was not sufficiently vigilant against the snares of his adversary. He imprudently separated himself from his camp, and was killed in an ambuscade, in the sixtieth year of his age, in his fifth consulship, A. U. C. 544. His body was honored with a magnificent funeral by the conqueror, and his ashes were conveyed in a silver urn to his son.

MARCELLUS, a post town of Onondaga county, New York, ten miles west of Onondaga, and 157