the rich people wanted it, and it was prized more than the Venetian glass.

9. One day an Englishman, hunting for curiosities among the ruins of Thebes, found a glass bead covered with tiny pictures. Now, in the days of ancient Thebes, hieroglyphics, as such pictures were called, were used instead of letters and words; and when these little pictures were read they were found to mean, "The good queen Ramaka, the loved of Athor, protectress of Thebes."

10. As Queen Ramaka lived more than three thousand years ago, this bead was believed to have been made then and to have lain untroubled for centuries in the ruins, and to prove that glassmaking was known at that time.

11. Another famous curiosity in glass is the Barberini vase. No one knows exactly how old it is, but it was found in a tomb near Rome about four hundred years ago. The claim is made that it is at least two thousand years old.

12. It is made of two layers of glass, one over the other. On this vase skillful painters and engravers have represented the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. Thetis holds a serpent in her left hand and gives her right hand to Peleus. Neptune, the god of the sea, is in front of them, as if to bless their marriage, while Cupid hovers near them in the air. The outer layer being opaque, brings out

these figures, like clear-cut marble, in the deep blue background of the lower layer.

13. On the reverse side of the vase Peleus and Thetis again appear, with a goddess near them and a bust of Ganymede below. This vase was sold for nine thousand dollars to the Duchess of Portland, and is now called the Portland vase.

14. The Peach-blow vase is one of the celebrated vases of modern times. It possesses the delicate shadings of the peach blossom, and is said to have been sold for thirty-seven thousand dollars.

15. The Crystal Palace, in England, was built almost entirely of glass. In a thousand ways the beauty and practical utility of this now common material are proclaimed on every hand.

1. Innumerable, peasant, inconvenient, excluding, laborious, rivaled, engraving, surpassed, curiosities, hieroglyphics, protectress, opaque, reverse, combine, utility.

2. Mention some of the uses of glass. Name some of the different kinds of glass. Can you mention any of "the lost arts"? Did the Indians use "picture writing" when Columbus discovered America? Who first invented letters? What are "letters"?

XXXV. THE FIORDS OF NORWAY.

1. Every one who has looked at the map of Norway must have been struck with the singular char

acter of its coast. It looks so jagged, such a strange mixture of sea and land, that it appears as if there must be a perpetual struggle between the twothe sea striving to inundate the land, and the land pushing itself out into the sea, till it ends in their dividing the region between them.

2. On the spot, however, this coast is very sublime. The long straggling promontories are mountainous, towering ridges of rock springing up in precipices from the water; while the bays between them, instead of being rounded, with shelving sandy shores on which the sea tumbles its waves, as in bays of our coast, are, in fact, long, narrow valleys filled with sea, in place of being laid out in fields and meadows.

3. The high rocky banks shelter these deep bays, called fiords, from almost every wind, so that their waters are usually as still as those of a lake. For days and weeks together they reflect each separate tree-top of the pine forests which clothe the mountain sides, the mirror being broken only by the leap of some sportive fish or the oars of the boatman as he goes to inspect the sea fowl from islet to islet of the fiord, or carries out his nets or his rod to catch the sea trout or char, the cod or herring, which abound in their seasons on the coast of Norway.

4. It is difficult to say whether these fiords are more beautiful in summer or in winter. In summer

they glitter with golden sunshine, and purple and green shadows from the mountain and forest lie on them. These may be more lovely than the faint light of the winter moons of those latitudes and the

us; and these planets, and the constellations of the sky, as they silently glide over from peak to peak of these rocky passes, are imaged on the water so clearly that the fisherman, as he unmoors his boat for his evening task, feels as if he were about to shoot forth his vessel into another heaven and to cleave his way among the stars.

5. Still as everything is to the eye, sometimes for a hundred miles together along these deep sea valleys, there is rarely silence. The ear is kept awake by a thousand voices. In the summer there are cataracts leaping from ledge to ledge, the bleating of the kids that browse there, the flap of the great eagle's wing as it dashes abroad from its eyrie, and the cries of clouds of sea birds which inhabit the islets; and all these sounds are mingled, and multiplied by the strong echoes till they become a din as loud as that of a city.

6. Even at night, when the flocks are in the fold and the birds at roost, and when the echoes themselves seem to be asleep, there is occasionally a sweet music heard, too soft for the listening ear to catch by day. Every breath of summer wind that steals through the pine forests makes this music as it goes.

7. The stiff, spiny leaves of the fir and pine vibrate with the breeze like the strings of a musical instrument, so that every motion of the