regular rustic of yourself. I'll never let you be so demoralized again. Its shocking!"

The sharp words and shrill tones seemed to distress her daughter, who came to her side, and sitting down on a low footstool at her feet plead pitifully, taking the thin hand in hers.

"Oh, mother, Aunt Marian loves you dearly; and she was so good to me when I was sick and weak, and they made me so well and strong with their kind care. Don't talk that way."

The worldiy, cold-hearted woman warmed to her child's voice and tender touch, and stroking the bright head that rested on her knee, said, apologetically:

"I've got the neuralgia dreadfully to-day, dear, and it always makes me cross and nervous. But havn't you an engagement to drive this evening with Mr. Howard ?"

"Not till to-morrow; that overpowering Englishman, he's an awful bore! If you could only hear him drawl out under his straw-colored mustache, 'Oh, Missh Maclean, you're so owiginal,'" the mocking ridicule of her tone and manner provoking a smile of amusement from her mother.

"Remember, Lily," she said, "Mr. Howard is enormously rich, and the younger son of a nobleman, with a prospective title."

“Why, mamma, no one is more impressed with the Honorable Howard's importance than-himself. He incessantly reminds one of the famous fact."

"Well, child, remember I wish you to treat him with great consideration.”

The girl's eyes turned with a look of wonder and half anxious curiosity upon her mother, but whatever reply she might have made was checked by the entrance of a servant with a card upon a small silver tray.

"The gentleman is in the front parlor," he explained, as she took the card, and glancing at the name her cheeks flushed into deeper carnation.

"Ask him in here," said Mrs. Maclean. "I'll leave you to entertain him, Lily."

"Why not stay, mother?"

"Because I'm not equal to company to-day; and of course strangers require one's keeping up."

And she moved languidly from the room.

In the great thoroughfare of London, a beautiful maiden's

voice

Requested all to purchase her strawberries fresh and nice,
And daintily interspersed with flowers rich and rare,
Whose fragrance wafted balm on the city's noisome air.
So delicate a cheek, and withal such a graceful mien,
In a wandering vendor of fruit never before was seen;
Admiring glances were leveled from every part of the street,
Still she cried, "Come buy!" in accents calm and sweet.

An Eton student, roving amidst the jostling throng,
Whose mind was tinged with romance from Iliad's thrilling

song,

Chanced to espy the beauty; transfixed with mute surprise,
He paused until his own met the splendor of her eyes.
Then with a lavish hand he bought her fruit and flowers,
And sought his cloistered walls to dream away the hours:
To picture the goddess Flora compared with this lovely maid,
Whose charms were as fresh and dainty as an elt's from
woodland shade.

With rapture he gazed on the clusters-camellias, jessamine and lilies,

A garland as fair to the eye as ever was worn by fairies;
As the delicate wicker basket he gently relieved of its store,
A splendid ring of gold fell noiselessly to the floor.
The glowing gem he sought, and with wonder scanned it o'er,
Nor noted that brother student had softly oped the door,
And stood with sly grimace watching his chum's amaze,
As if fearing some love romance was about his mind to daze.

Two initials, faintly traced, at length rewarded his eye;
He rose to seek the maid, and saw the laughing spy,
Who cried, "Ho, ho, sir knight! what mystery is here?
Do not that toy conceal; there's love in this, I fear.”
But his friend, the more amazed, his strange adventure told,
And showed the diamond ring of purest yellow gold;
While he vowed the lady fair who this charmed brilliant wore
To find, though he had to rove the United Kingdom o'er.
"Ah, you need not to look far!" his startled colleague said,
As a tiny spring was pressed, revealing a crowned head,
And a lion en rampant showed the royal stamp and mark:
'Twas plain the strawberry girl was a princess "on a lark!"
Quickly the breathless pair were out upon the street,
And Fortune their footsteps led the lady rogue to meet;
As her dainty foot was raised to step within state coach,
The glittering bauble handed they-plea for rude approach.
With gallant bows they meekly told how costly ring was
found,

Then bowed again, their faces grave bent almost to the ground

Deeply blushed the high-born girl-in a few words conde

scended

To tell them that a royal bet thus luckily had ended.
Unperceived from her finger had slipped the jewel rare,
While she was busied in sorting the flowers with studied care.
So they were bound this secret never to mortal relate,
For her own fair hand gave them a purse ere the carriage
passed the gate.

No material invented by man is to be compared with glass in the service it has rendered. In a thousand ways we find it applied to add to the physical comforts of the race. It is used to admit

SPECIMEN OF ANCIENT GLASS MOSAIC.

the light of day into our dwellings, and at the same time it serves as a screen from the wind and rain and cold. As a mirror it is made to throw back the rays that fall upon it, and perfectly reflect the image of any object. Nothing is so especially suited for vessels for holding and keeping liquids as this cleanly substance, the purity of its material permitting the presence of foreign substances to be instantly detected. It is capable of resisting the action of all the powerful chemical reagents, and thus its service is beyond value to the chemist. Its use applied to the eye as spectacles is nearly equal to the reparation of sight. To its aid astronomy and science are indebted for their greatest advancement. It has brought within the ken of man solar systems so remote that the unassisted vision could never have detected them, and new worlds of living creatures, too minute for their forms to imprint a sensible image upon the delicate mechanism of the eye, have been opened to the sight by its aid. By it our conceptions of the universe have been extended and magnified, thus exalting the power and glory of Him who created it.

VOL. XIV.-3

When we speak of glass, we mean more particularly that chemical compound of which silica and alkali are the principal and essential constituents. In chemistry any product of fusion having the peculiar lustre known as vitreous, hard and brittle, is called glass, whether transparent or not. But in common use the term expresses the transparent product derived from the fusion of silica with an alkali, to which lime or a metallic oxide is added. No mere words will give a definite idea of its various properties. It is practically indestructible, yet it is so brittle, except in its old or new toughened variety, that among poets it is almost another name for fragility. It is transparent, yet will contain the strongest acids and solutions. In various thicknesses it plays the most wonderful tricks with our eyesight. Even an artist cannot represent it as he can trees and beasts and flowers. In short, it seems to be endowed with as many contradictory attributes as Miss Fanshaw discovered in the letter H.

But after all, the most wonderful thing about

bonate of soda, who, landing on the coast below Acre, and camping for the night, observed the sand upon the beach melted by the fire, and forming glass in contact with some lumps of soda. The tale is evidently an invention. A stronger

SPECIMEN OF ANCIENT GLASS MOSAIC.

heat than could be obtained from an open fire would be required to effect the stated result; and besides, glass must already have had a history of a thousand years or more. Egypt seems to have been the seat of its earliest manufacture. From pictures found in tombs on the banks of the Nile, it is supposed that the art of glass-making was practiced at the time of the fourth dynasty, a period so remote that Egyptologists cannot give it a date in years. On other monuments quite as old, are hieroglyphics representing glass-blowers at work much after the fashion of the present day.

The oldest specimen of pure glass, bearing anything like a date, is a little moulded lion's head, bearing the name of an Egyptian king of the eleventh dynasty, in the Slade collection at the British Museum. Its age may moderately be placed at two thousand years B.C. The skillful workmanship clearly shows that the art was nothing new. Of later date there are numerous examples, such as a head found at Thebes which has the name of Queen Amunmhet, of the eighteenth dynasty. Of the same period are vases and goblets and many fragments.

The principal use to which glass was applied by the Egyptians seems to have been for the manu

facture of bottles, vases and other utensils, beads, and fancy work. Wine was generally brought to the table in glass bottles, or handed to guests in cups of this material; and a body was sometimes buried in a glass coffin. Occasionally a granite. sarcophagus was covered with a coating of vitrified matter usually of a deep-green color, which displayed, by its transparency, the sculptures or hieroglyphic legends engraved upon the stone, a process that was well understood by that intellectual people.

Such in fact was their skill in making glass and in the mode of staining it of various hues, that they not only successfully counterfeited the emerald, the amethyst, and other precious stones, but they even arrived at a degree of excellence in the art of introducing numerous colors into the same vase, a process which modern workmen, in spite of the many improvements in many branches of this manufacture, have never yet been able to do. They had also the secret of introducing gold between two surfaces of glass, and in some of their bottles, a gold band alternates within a set of blue, green, and other colors. Another curious process known to the early Egyptians was the one whereby the pattern on the surface was made to pass in right lines directly through the substance, so that if any number of horizontal sections were made

EGYPTIAN LANTERN.

Glass bugles and beads were in common use by the Egyptians for necklaces, and also for a sort of network with which they covered the wrappers and cartonage of mummies. These were often colored to counterfeit the rich hues and brilliancy of precious stones. A necklace of false stones could be purchased at an Egyptian jeweler's to please the wearer or deceive a stranger by the appearance of reality. The green emerald, the purple amethyst, rubies and turquoise were successfully imitated, and mock pearls have been found so well counterfeited that it was difficult to detect the imposition with a strong lens.

The immense emeralds mentioned by ancient authors were without doubt glass imitations of those precious stones. Such must have been the emerald presented by an Egyptian Pharaoh to the King of Babylon, which was four cubits, or six feet long, and three cubits broad; the colossal statue of Serapis, in the Egyptian labyrinth, nine cubits, or thirteen feet and a half high; and the obelisk in the temple of Jupiter, which was forty cubits or sixty feet in height, and four cubits broad, composed of four huge emeralds.

It has been supposed that the method of cutting glass was unknown to the ancients, and the period. of its invention was limited to the commencement of the seventeenth century of our era, when Gaspar Lehmann, at Prague, first succeeded in it, and obtained a patent from the Emperor Rudolph II.; but this statement is made absurd from the

fact that specimens of ancient glass cut and engraved have been found in Egypt. The art was practiced there at a remote period, as is shown by the discovery of vases and beads with hieroglyphics and various devices engraved upon them, some of them bearing the date of the first Osirtasen 2200 years B.C. They were also acquainted with ground glass, and frequently, as must have been the case with those specimens bearing figures and ornaments in reliefs, cast in moulds.

It cannot be doubted that the story preserved by Pliny, which assigns the credit of the invention to the Phoenicians, is so far true that those adventurous merchants carried specimens to other countries from Egypt. Glass was certainly in great demand by the ancient nations, and the Tyrians being the chief purveyors of those early times, may well have carried that article of luxury to the various countries upon the Mediterranean. The manufacture as well as the patterns of many of the specimens found in Greece, Etruria and Rome show that they were of Egyptian work; and though imitated in Italy and Greece, the original art was without doubt borrowed from the. workmen of the Nile.

Egypt, in fact, continued to be the great seat of glass manufacture for many centuries, although

A SUPERB EGYPTIAN LANTERN.