trouble. And, oh!' she concluded, half to her- | said she could walk. This I strongly dissuaded self, what will Kitty say now ?'"

her from doing, and Ethel insisted that the men should carry her. This was done, and in a short time we got back to the Hermitage, where

"All right. Never mind. Drive on, old the old lady was in no end of a worry. In the

midst of the row I slipped away, and waited till the carriage drove off. Then I followed at a sufficient distance not to be observed, and The child-angel saw where their house was.”

THE SHADOW.

AFTER A BALLAD OF HEINE'S.

GLASS-BLOWING AS A FINE ART.*

GLASS VASE, WITH FIGURES IN BOLD RELIEF.-ROMAN, FOURTH CENTURY.

THH

trans

With these he
forms the sand of nature
into every variety of form
and structure. There is
perhaps no other art in
which the instrumentality
is so simple, and the re-
sults are so complex.

The juvenile mineralogist, constructing his first cabinet, brings home, as a rare curiosity, a crystalline stone which shines like glass. It is glassthe glass of nature, the foundation of much of modern civilization and science, without which neither astronomy, chemistry, nor physiology could ever have emerged from their crude condition, since without it neither the telescope, the microscope, nor the chemist's vessels would have been possible. Subjected to an intense heat, and mixed with other substances, such as soda, lime, oxide of iron, oxide of lead, oxide of tin, according to the fabric to be wrought, it becomes ductile, is drawn out into the most tenuous threads, is rolled, beaten, moulded, cut at

HE modern necromancer drops a little care- | will, yields to even the slightest breath of fully selected sand into his crucible, waves the workman, and, patterned by him, takes his wand over it, and draws forth such a variety any form he chooses to impart to it. Coolof objects, both of use and beauty, as puts to ing, it loses its curiously ductile character, the blush the fabled achievements of the Orient- and becomes again the hardest and most al magicians. Dishes for our table, vases for brittle of substances. This quartz rock the our flowers, ornaments of all kinds for our man- boy fancies to be a precious stone. He is tel; eyes with which we peer into immensity and laughed at for his wild conjecture. It is a read the secrets of other worlds, or search the chance if he be not nearer right than those who invisible creation and read the secrets of our ridicnle him. Colored in nature's marvelous own; mirrors which vainly strive to teach us to dye-house, it becomes precious only because it "see ourselves as others see us ;" and windows is more rare. Violet, it is an amethyst; unwhich flood our houses with warmth and light, crystallized and waxy in its structure, it is a and exclude the rain and wind vainly striving chalcedony; red, it is a carnelian; of variegato follow-these are among the products of the ted colors, it is an agate; opaque, and yet colnecromantic art which we call glass-making. ored, red, yellow, brown, it is a jasper. In a word, the same substance which is the chief component of glass is also the base of most precious stones, yet in its commonest form most precious of all; for we might well relinquish jasper, agate, chalcedony, and amethyst for glass, if we could obtain the latter only by such an exchange.

We have said that they are produced by a wave of the wand. This is almost literally true. The chief instruments of the glass manufacturers are a furnace, a pontee, † and a blowpipe.

• For a picturesque and graphic account of the more common processes of the glass manufacture, see Harper's Magazine for May, 1869, article, " Glass-Blowing for Little Folks."

† A long rod of solid iron, serving either for drawing the glass out only, or twisting it to a fine thread. VOL. XLII.-No. 249.-22

We have spoken of glass-blowing as though it were a modern art. Let us frankly confess that this sentence will subject us to criticism.

For if modern civ- ers are engaged in the more difficult process of constructing a vase, which has already nearly reached the form which they aim to give to it. These hieroglyphics would alone be sufficient evidence of the substantial justice of the claim of remote antiquity to the honor of having invented glass manufacturing. But that claim does not rest on hieroglyphics alone. Sir Gardner Wilkinson found among the ruins of Thebes one of the products of these ancient glass-works. This was a bead, evidently part of a royal necklace, and bearing an inscription in hieroglyphic characters, which the learned translate thus: "The good goddess Ra-ma-ka, the loved of Athor, protectress of Thebes." Quite agreeing with the antiquarians that this may fairly be regarded as a demonstration that glass-works were known to the ancient Egyptians, we also perceive in it an evidence that the art was in a very crude state, and that its products were then as rare as they now are common. For this inscription carries with it the evidence that a bead

ilization has hosts of eulogists, ancient civilization is not wanting its chivalric defenders. Many there be who believe in the literal truth of the aphorism, "There is no new thing under the sun. It is therefore asserted, not only that glass-work is no new invention, but that modern art has not yet reached the excellence of antique art. To a certain class of antiquarians civilization appears like the ruins of Pompeii-a structure long since perfected, but buried, for a time, beneath the incrustation of ignorance and barbarism. All that the nineteenth century can do, in their opinion, is to excavate in these ruins of the past, and exhume their buried stores. To those who assert that in every thing "the ancients are our masters" this at least must be conceded, that glass-blowing as a fine art is not a creation of the moderns. Learned men have even fancied that they traced it back to the days of Tubal Cain.

We think the traces are so dim in those fardistant ages as to defy deciphering. It is, however, quite clear that it was known in rude forms, but in the essential process, to the Egyptians in the days of Moses; how much earlier history does not tell us, and it would be in vain to attempt to conjecture. On the tombs of Beni Hassan, a little village of Central Egypt,

THEBAN GLASS-MAKERS.

THEBAN GLASS-MAKERS.

of glass, or at most a necklace of beads, such as now serves the purpose of a somewhat common gift to children, or a cheap medium of barter in dealing with savages, was then so great a rarity, and so highly esteemed, that it was thought worthy to be bestowed as a gift upon the queen. Perhaps Theban manufacturers did not disdain the modern methods of ad

vertising. Perhaps some enterprising artisan gave to royalty one of the first products of a new invention, that by introducing it into court he might make this

Nor are these remains of ancient glass manufactures confined to Egypt. Layard has brought to light in Nineveh vases and other vessels of glass of no inconsiderable artistic beauty. These, however, like those found in Egypt, bear indications of belonging to royalty alone, or, at

the construction of which is variously imputed | new method of ornamentation popular in the by antiquarians to 2000 and to 3500 B.C., the art fashionable world. is depicted in its various phases, rudely indeed, but with sufficient accuracy to enable us to trace in this far-distant past the rudiments of modern art. We have the work man crouching at the foot of the furnace, drawing from it the molten glass, and two of his companions seated on the ground, with their blowpipes at their mouths, moulding the molten glass by a process which is almost literally imitated in the modern glassworks; while yet oth

BEAD OF A ROYAL
NECKLACE

INSCRIPTION IN HIEROGLYPHICS.

least, only to the wealthier and higher classes. | ity than any other gossip which has no better The glory of modern civilization consists, per- foundation than "it is said." Since, in modhaps, less in positively new inventions than in bringing within the reach of the common people those objects of beauty and of convenience which were before the peculiar property of kings and nobles. Glass may have been known to the ancients. But houses with glass windows were rare as late as the twelfth century; and leathern bottles were not replaced in common use by those of glass till the beginning of the sixteenth.*

ern art, the materials of which glass is made fuse at a concentrated heat of not less than 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, a heat which inevitably destroys the melting-pots of fire-proof brick in one or two months, and the best-made furnaces in as many years-we must beg leave to regard with incredulity these traditional stories of the open-air and accidental furnaces of the Phoenicians and the Hebrews. It is far more likely that the first hints of glass were derived in quite a different manner. The smelting of ores, and the baking of bricks and articles of pottery, are among the most ancient of arts. Both require an intense heat. It is not at all improbable that the admixture of clay and ashes in these furnaces produced glassy cinders, the resemblance of which to precious stones gave them their first value, and afforded the clew the following of which resulted in the manufacture of glass and glass-wares.

If history furnishes some evidence of the antiquity of glass-making, it furnishes none-none, at least, that is reliable-of the origin of the art. Pliny, indeed, undertakes to give its birth-place, and the happy accident to which the world is indebted for it. "It is said," he tells us, "that some Phoenician merchants, having landed on the coast of Palestine, near the mouth of the river Belus, were preparing for their repast, and not finding any stones on which to place their pots, took some cakes of nitre from their cargo for that purpose. The nitre being thus submitted to the action of fire with the sand on the shore, they, together, produced transparent streams of an unknown fluid, and such was the origin of glass." A somewhat similar story is told on the authority of Josephus. "Some say that the children of Israel having set fire to some woods, the fire was so fierce that it heated the nitre with the sand, so as to make them melt, and run down the slopes of the hills; and that thenceforward they sought to produce artificially what had been effected by accident in making glass." These reports, often quoted as containing an historical account of the origin of glass, possess, in fact, no greater author-sands of Egypt and in the ruins of Nineveh.

In the accounts of Jean Avier, Receiver-General of Auvergne, there is a memorandum (1413) referring to the construction of window-frames for the castle, for "oiled linen in default of glass." Fifty-four years later (1467) there were ordered for the palace of the Duke of Burgundy "twenty pieces of wood to make frames for paper, serving as chamber windows." Even a century later (1567), in a document drawn up by the steward of the Duke of Northumberland, it is stated that "because during high winds the glass in this and the other castles of his lordship are destroyed, it would be well for the glass in every window to be taken out and put in safety when his Grace leaves. And if at any time his Grace or others should live at any of the said places, they can be put in again without much expense; whilst as it is at present, the destruction would be very costly, and would demand great repairs." Even as late as the close of the eighteenth century, not a hundred years ago, there existed, not only in provincial towns, but also in Paris itself, a corporation of makers of window-sashes, whose trade was to fill windows, not with glass, but merely with

pieces of oiled paper. From this doubtless arose the old French proverb, "The abbey is poor-the windows are only of paper."

Tacitus gives the same account as Pliny, but in a simpler manner; for, leaving unexplained the process of melting employed, and entirely suppressing the mention of the cooking-vessels, he merely states that some sand found at the mouth of the Belus, a river which flows into the sea of Judæa, when mixed with nitre and melted by fire, produced glass. The shore, though of moderate extent, still affords an inexhaustible supply.

Whatever may have been the origin of glass manufacture, it is certain that in the best days of the Roman empire glass had not only become an important article of manufacture and of commerce, but also nearly all the rarer processes of modern art had been discovered and employed. The subjugation of Egypt by Rome, 26 B.C., was followed first by large importations of manufactured glass, and then by the importation of the process of manufacturing itself. To the rude processes of the East the Romans added much, if we may judge any thing by comparing the specimens of their handiwork which have survived the lapse of centuries with those which have been discovered among the

They were the first, probably, to employ glass for windows. Some remnants of glass panes are to be found to-day, in their frames, in the buried houses of Herculaneum and Pompeii. They substituted glass as a material for bottles, in place of the leather which is still in vogue among the poorer classes in the Orient. Epicureans in wine then, as now, determined the age of their article by the seal upon the cork, and the label impressed upon the glass.* Glass goblets were less popular. Gold and silver reluctantly yielded the palm to their new-fangled rival, which sought popularity by appealing, not to the poverty of the poor, but to the desire of novelty among the rich. Even artificial stones and pearls of glass were not unknown, as we shall hereafter see. Whether mirrors of glass were known to the Romans, or whether they depended exclusively, as they certainly did chiefly, upon the resource of the Jews-polished metals-is a matter of grave dispute among the learned; a dispute into which we shall not venIt is safe, however, to say that

ture to enter.

the only use of glass which modern art can

"They immediately bring glass bottles, carefully sealed; on the neck of each is a label marked thus: Opinian Falernian; one hundred years old.'"-PETRONIUS, Satyricon, b. xxxiv.

stated, were eight-and-thirty feet in height; and placed between these columns, as already mentioned, were brazen statues, three thousand in number. The area of this theatre afforded accommodation for eighty thousand spectators; and yet the theatre of Pompeius, after the city had so greatly increased, and the inhabitants had become so vastly more numerous, was considered abundantly large with its sittings for forty thousand only."

We have said that the rarer processes of modern art were discovered and employed by the Romans. This fact is curiously illustrated by a work of art successively known as the Barberini and the Portland vase. This vase was found about the sixteenth century in a marble sarcophagus in the environs of Rome. After being for more than two centuries the principal ornament in the gallery of Princess Barberini, at Rome, it was sold at auction, and purchased by the Duchess of Portland for the sum of £1872 -about $10,000. This vase, which changed its name with its owner, was henceforth known as the Portland vase. The Duchess, being a publicspirited lady, and not of that sort who enjoy a piece of property the more by excluding from its enjoyment every one else, placed it claim with assurance, as exclusively its own, is in the British Museum, where its rare workthe employment of it in those optical instru- manship attracted great attention, and where ments which are at once the children and the its celebrity was still farther increased. Alas parents of so much of modern science. Even for the frailty of all things terrestrial, parthe Crystal Palace is borrowed from the past, ticularly those which are made of glass! whence we plagiarize for our civilization as This vase, as beautiful as it was curious, well as for our literature. "During his ædile- which had survived for centuries in the tomb, ship," we quote from Pliny, book xxxvi., chap- was destined to perish when brought forth ter 24, "and only for the temporary purposes to light. A madman named Lloyd, passing of a few days, Scaurus executed the greatest through the Museum, struck it a blow with his work that has ever been made by the hands of stick, which broke it in many pieces. The loss man, even when intended to be of everlasting seemed irreparable. In truth, the accident has duration; his theatre, I mean. This building resulted in enhancing the value of the demolconsisted of three stories, supported upon three ished vase. The pieces were gathered up with hundred and sixty columns; and this, too, in a care. The services of an ingenious artist were city which had not allowed without some cen- called in, who succeeded in putting them tosure one of its greatest citizens to erect six pil-gether so perfectly that the most careful scrulars of Hymettian marble. The ground story was of marble, the second of glass-a species of luxury which ever since that time has been quite unheard of-and the highest of gilded wood. The lowermost columns, as previously

PORTLAND VASE

tiny fails to detect the numerous places where they are joined together. This unique vase, which is attributed to the second century, is thus, since its resurrection, a greater curiosity than ever, for it now equally attests the skill