DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.2161#0015
PREFACE. Vll
Another motive for the immediate pub-
lication of whatever can be collected, is the
great and increasing difficulty of obtaining
permission to draw and measure the newly-
discovered antiquities, by which a foreigner
is reduced to snatch from eternal oblivion
only such morsels as a favourable moment
may enable him to delineate. An astonish-
ing number of interesting objects is an-
nually and hourly destroyed by the action
of the weather upon substances and surfaces
which have been once subjected to the
operation of heat and moisture; and this
unavoidable decay is the more to be la-
mented, as strangers are seldom allowed to
draw till the decomposition both of colour
and substance has taken place to a great ex-
tent; while, even if they were delineated by
a native artist, there are no engravers on the
spot of sufficient skill to multiply the copies,
nor a public sufficiently educated to encou-
rage the sale of them.
Another motive for the immediate pub-
lication of whatever can be collected, is the
great and increasing difficulty of obtaining
permission to draw and measure the newly-
discovered antiquities, by which a foreigner
is reduced to snatch from eternal oblivion
only such morsels as a favourable moment
may enable him to delineate. An astonish-
ing number of interesting objects is an-
nually and hourly destroyed by the action
of the weather upon substances and surfaces
which have been once subjected to the
operation of heat and moisture; and this
unavoidable decay is the more to be la-
mented, as strangers are seldom allowed to
draw till the decomposition both of colour
and substance has taken place to a great ex-
tent; while, even if they were delineated by
a native artist, there are no engravers on the
spot of sufficient skill to multiply the copies,
nor a public sufficiently educated to encou-
rage the sale of them.