must refer my readers to Mr. Apsley Pellatt's excellent work, Curiosities of Glass-making. There also will be found an explanation of the millifiore glass, which at first sight seems so inexplicable.

We shall know more of the rich treasures which England possesses in the shape of glass, when Mr. Felix Slade is kind enough to give to the world the catalogue of his matchless collection upon which he has been so long engaged. Mr. Slade does not shrink from giving large prices for good and rare specimens. One instance may be quoted as an example. At the Soltikoff sale there was a goblet of rich emerald green colour, with a bulbed and fluted stem powdered with gold. The top and bottom of the bowl were ornamented with gold and jewelled bands, and between these were two medallions supported by cupids and surrounded by garlands, and containing portraits of a lady and gentleman, in the costume of the latter part of the fifteenth century. On a scroll before the male figure was the inscription, "Amor vol fee." Mr. Slade secured this fine specimen, after a spirited bidding against the agents of the Louvre, for 6,000 francs.

No specimens of glass in the Bernal collection fetched prices at all approaching to this. We find, however, Mr. N. T. Smith giving 501. for one fine specimen; Baron Rothschild, 541. for a tazza; and Mr. Slade, the highest price at that sale for such works, 551. The same sale had some wonderful instances of the manner in which objects of natural history were pressed into service. Bunches of grapes, tulips, rampant horses carrying tazzas, serpents, pelicans, dolphins, and other creatures, are proofs and memorials of the skill of artists in glass in the Venice of former days.

Joan of Arc.

Und büszen will ich's mit der strengsten Busze
Das ich mich eitel über euch erhob.-SCHILLER.

I read or dreamed, one sultry summer time,
How, at the last, France's knightly maiden fled,
And lived in silent honour, nobly wed,

Leaving her heritage of deathless fame
To the chance partner of her mortal shame,
Who should have died with her, and died instead.
Then, with two lines of German in my head,
I shaped her after-life in moody rhyme.

A MOSSY battlemented wall went round
A rosy space of odorous garden ground,
Where the blue brooding sky hung very low,
Above the quaint-peaked shadow of the towers,
Above the sunny marge of ordered flowers,
Among the which I saw a lady go,

Telling her beads, with steady pace and slow;
These done, she lifted half her cypress veil
With marble hands which might have held a sword,
And I beheld her face, sweet, still, and pale,
With tearless eyes, bent on the dewless sward.
Then raising her calm brow, but not her eyes,

To woo the sweetness of the summer skies,
Of her own desolate estate she sang,
Not sadly; but her patient singing rang
So heavily upon her silver tongue,

A tale of peace and patience worse than pain,
That, as I heard, I knew her youth was slain ;
And yet her rounded face might still be young,
Who, making music neither high nor low,
But borne along a level stream of woe,
Jang words like these as nearly as I know:-

"The banners of the battle are gone by,
The flowers are fallen from my maiden crown,
Thorns choke the tender seed of my renown,
Bleeding in sick astonishment I lie,
Where He who set me up hath cast me down.
If only I could hear the clarion cry,

Nay, only feel the chain, and eye the stake;
But it is over now, I cannot wake,

My sun is set, and dreams are of the night;

Dreams? one long, leaden dream, which will not break,
Lies on my aching eyelids till I die.

Dreaming I walk between the earth and heaven;
And heaven is sealed, and earth is out of sight:
No cries, no threats, no heavenly voices now;
Only the memory of a broken vow;

Only the thought of having vainly striven;
And France is still in bonds, and so am I:
I chose my bonds, and shall I be forgiven?
Nay, therefore, I am cast away from God;
For He hath made me like a broken rod
Not worth the burning when its work is done,
That bleaches idly in the summer sun,
Then rots as idly in the autumn rain,
Nor wonders why it left the root in vain.
I am God's broken rod; shall I complain ?

I wake from dreams at best but bitter sweet,

Dreams chilled with danger, flushed with self-conceit; Only the waking seems so like a cheat;

And yet I would not dream the dream again.

I was so blind, so fierce, so cruel then,
When, foremost in the press of fighting men,

I panted with my banner and my sword,
And fought, me seemed, the battles of my Lord.
Alas! His poor are always full of pain,
Whether our Charles or English Henry reign.
My sisters still are happy the old way,
Their lives have taken root in soft deep clay,
In peace they grow, in peace they shall decay,
Seeing their fruit before they fade away;
But all my barren flower of life is shed
In gusts of idle rumour overhead.

They have their wish I would not be as they.

I have my wish-to rest-I rest in pain ;
My wishes kill each other, and the dead
Buzz still with ghostly stings about my head,
Not to be caught, and never to be slain.

O God! is there worse pain in hell than this,—
To taste and loathe the quietness of bliss,
To shudder from the very sins we miss,
To long for any change, and yet to know
That any change must bring a bitterer woe!
God! do the lost in torment praise Thee so?