and the pear and the cherry trees do not fill their branches with pink
and white flowers, and make as lovely a spring opening as any
apple-trees in the land. Oh no! It is only because there are so many
apple-trees and so many apple-orchards, that the peaches and pears are
a little overlooked in blossom-time.
A sweet place is the apple-orchard, when the grass is green, the trees
are full of flowers, the air full of fragrance, and when every breeze
brings down the most beautiful showers of flowery snow.
And how beautiful and delicate is every individual flower! We are so
accustomed to looking at blossoms in the mass--at treesful and whole
orchardsful--that we are not apt to think that those great heaps of
pink and loveliness are composed of little flowers, each one perfect
in itself.
And not only is each blossom formed of the most beautiful white
petals, shaded with pink; not only does each one of them possess a
most pleasant and delicate perfume, but every one of these little
flowers--every one which comes to perfection, I mean--is but the
precursor of an apple. This one may be a Golden Pippin; that one which
looks just like it may be the forerunner of a Belle-flower; while the
little green speck at the bottom of this one may turn into a Russet,
with his sober coat.
The birds that are flying among the branches do not think much about
the apples that are to come, I reckon, and neither do the early
butterflies that flutter about, looking very much like falling
blossoms themselves. And, for that matter, we ourselves need not think
too much about the coming apple crop. We ought sometimes to think of
and enjoy beauty for its own sake, without reference to what it may do
in the future for our pockets and our stomachs.
There are other kinds of blossoms than apple-blossoms, or those of any
tree whatever. There are little flowers which bloom as well or better
in winter than in summer, and which are not, in fact, flowers at all.
These are ice-blossoms.
Perhaps you have never seen any of them, and I think it is very
likely, for they can only be formed and perceived by the means of
suitable instruments. And so here is a picture of some ice-blossoms.
[Illustration]
These curious formations, some of which appear like stars, others like
very simple blossoms, while others are very complex; and some of which
take the form of fern-leaves, are caused to appear in the centre of a
block of ice by means of concentrated rays of lights which are
directed through the ice by means of mirrors and lenses. Sometimes
they are observed by means of a magnifying-glass, and in other
experiments their images are thrown upon a white screen.
[Illustration]
We may consider these ice-flowers as very beautiful and very
wonderful, but they are not a whit more so than our little blossoms of
the apple-orchard.
The latter are more common, and have to produce apples, while the
ice-flowers are uncommon, and of no possible use.
That is the difference between them.
ABOUT GLASS.
Glass is so common and so cheap that we never think of being grateful
for it. But if we had lived a few centuries ago, when the richest
people had only wooden shutters to their windows, which, of course,
had to be closed whenever it was cold or stormy, making the house as
dark as night, and had then been placed in a house lighted by glass
windows, we would scarcely have found words to express our
thankfulness. It would have been like taking a man out of a dreary
prison and setting him in the bright world of God's blessed sunshine.
After a time men made small windows of stones that were partly
transparent; and then they used skins prepared something like
parchment, and finally they used sashes similar to ours, but in them
they put oiled paper. And when at last glass came into use, it was so
costly that very few were able to buy it, and they had it taken out of
the windows and stored carefully away when they went on a journey, as
people now store away pictures and silver-plate.
Now, when a boy wants a clear, white glass vial for any purpose, he
can buy it for five cents; and for a few pennies a little girl can buy
a large box of colored beads that will make her a necklace to go
several times around her neck, and bracelets besides. These her elder
sister regards with contempt; but there was a time when queens were
proud to wear such. The oldest article of glass manufacture in
existence is a bead. It has an inscription on it, but the writing,
instead of being in letters, is in tiny little pictures.
Here you see the bead, and the funny little pictures on it. The
pictures mean this: "The good Queen Ramaka, the loved of Athor,
protectress of Thebes." This Queen Ramaka was the wife of a king who
reigned in Thebes more than three thousand years ago, which is
certainly a very long time for a little glass bead to remain unbroken!
The great city of Thebes, where it was made, has been in ruins for
hundreds of years. No doubt this bead was part of a necklace that
Queen Ramaka wore, and esteemed as highly as ladies now value their
rubies. It was found in the ruins of Thebes by an Englishman.
[Illustration]
It may be thought that this bead contradicts what has been said about
there being a time when glass was unknown, and that time only a few
centuries ago. But it is a singular fact that a nation will perfectly
understand some art or manufacture that seems absolutely necessary to
men's comfort and convenience, and yet this art in time will be
completely lost, and things that were in common use will pass as
completely out of existence as if they had never been, until, in after
ages, some of them will be found among the ruins of cities and in old
tombs. In this way we have found out that ancient nations knew how to
make a great many things that enabled them to live as comfortably and
luxuriously as we do now. But these things seem to have perished with
the nations who used them, and for centuries people lived
comfortlessly without them, until, in comparatively modern times, they
have all been revived.
Glass-making is one of these arts. It was known in the early ages of
the world's history. There are pictures that were painted on tombs two
thousand years before Christ's birth which represent men blowing
glass, pretty much as it is done now, while others are taking pots of
it out of the furnaces in a melted state. But in those days it was
probably costly, and not in common use; but the rich had glass until
the first century after Christ, when it disappeared, and the art of
making it was lost.
[Illustration]
The city of Venice was founded in the fifth century, and here we find
that glass-making had been revived. You will see by this picture of a
Venetian bottle how well they succeeded in the manufacture of glass
articles.
Venice soon became celebrated for this manufacture, and was for a long
time the only place where glass was made. The manufacturers took great
pains to keep their art a secret from other nations, and so did the
government, because they were all growing rich from the money it
brought into the city.
In almost any part of the world to which you may chance to go you
will find Silica. You may not know it by that name, but it is that
shining, flinty substance you see in sand and rock-crystal. It is
found in a very great number of things besides these two, but these
are the most common.
Lime is also found everywhere--in earth, in stones, in vegetables and
bones, and hundreds of other substances.
Soda is a common article, and is very easily produced by artificial
means. Potash, which has the same properties as soda, exists in all
ashes.
Now silica, and lime, and soda, or potash, when melted together, form
glass. So you see that the materials for making this substance which
adds so much to our comfort and pleasure are freely given to all
countries. And after Venice had set the example, other nations turned
their attention to the study of glass-making, and soon found out this
fact, in spite of the secrecy of the Venetians. After a time the
Germans began to manufacture glass; and then the Bohemians. The latter
invented engraving on glass, which art had also been known to the
ancients, and then been lost. They also learned to color glass so
brilliantly that Bohemian glass became more fashionable than Venetian,
and has been highly thought of down to the present day.
On the next page we see an immense drinking-glass of German
manufacture, but this one was made many years after glass-making was
first started there.
This great goblet, which it takes several bottles of wine to fill, was
passed around at the end of a feast, and every guest was expected to
take a sip out of it. This was a very social way of drinking, but I
think on the whole it is just as well that it has gone out of fashion.
The old Egyptians made glass bottles, and so did the early Romans, and
used them just as we do for a very great variety of things. Their
wine-bottles were of glass, sealed and labelled like ours. We might
suppose that, having once had them, people would never be without
glass bottles. But history tells a different story. There evidently
came a time when glass bottles vanished from the face of the earth;
for we read of wooden bottles and those of goat-skin and leather, but
there is no mention of glass. And men were satisfied with these
clumsy contrivances, because in process of time it had been forgotten
that any other were ever made.
[Illustration]
Hundreds of years rolled away, and then, behold! glass bottles
appeared again. Now there is such a demand for them that one country
alone--France--makes sixty thousand tons of bottles every year. To
make bottle-glass, oxide of iron and alumina is added to the silica,
lime, and soda. It seems scarcely possible that these few common
substances melted over the fire and blown with the breath can be
formed into a material as thin and gossamer, almost, as a spider's
web, and made to assume such a graceful shape as this jug.
[Illustration]
This is how glass bottles, vases, etc., are made. When the substances
mentioned above are melted together properly, a man dips a long,
hollow iron tube into a pot filled with the boiling liquid glass, and
takes up a little on the end of it. This he passes quickly to another
man, who dips it once more, and, having twirled the tube around so as
to lengthen the glass ball at the end, gives it to a third man, who
places this glass ball in an earthen mould, and blows into the other
end of the tube, and soon the shapeless mass of glass becomes a
bottle. But it is not quite finished, for the bottom has to be
completed, and the neck to have the glass band put around it. The
bottom is finished by pressing it with a cone-shaped instrument as
soon as it comes out of the mould. A thick glass thread is wound
around the neck. And, if a name is to be put on, fresh glass is added
to the side, and stamped with a seal.
[Illustration]
This is also the process of making the beautiful jug just mentioned,
except that three workmen are engaged at the same time on the three
parts--one blows the vase itself, another the foot, and the third the
handle. They are then fastened together, and the top cut into the
desired shape with shears, for glass can be easily cut when in a soft
state.
You see how clearly and brightly, and yet with what softness, the
windows of the room are reflected in that exquisite jug It was made
only a few years ago.
I will now show you an old Venetian goblet, but you will have to
handle it very carefully, or you will certainly break off one of the
delicate leaves, or snap the stem of that curious flower.
Such glasses as these were certainly never intended for use. They were
probably put upon the table as ornaments. The bowl is a white glass
cup, with wavy lines of light blue. The spiral stem is red and white,
and has projecting from it five leaves of yellow glass, separated in
the middle by another leaf of a deep blue color. The large flower has
six pale-blue petals.
[Illustration]
And now we will look at some goblets intended for use. They are of
modern manufacture, and are plain and simple, but have a beauty of
their own. The right-hand one is of a very graceful shape, and the one
in the middle is odd-looking, and ingeniously made with rollers, and
all of them have a transparent clearness, and are almost as thin as
the fragile soap-bubbles that children blow out of pipe-bowls. They do
not look unlike these, and one can easily fancy that, like them, they
will melt into air at a touch.
[Illustration]
Because the ancients by some means discovered that the union of
silica, lime, and soda made a perfectly transparent and hard substance
it by no means follows that they knew how to make looking-glasses For
this requires something behind the glass to throw back the image. But
vanity is not of modern invention, and people having from the
beginning of time had a desire to look at themselves, they were not
slow in providing the means.
The first mirrors used were of polished metal, and for ages nobody
knew of anything better. But there came a time when the idea entered
the mind of man that "glass lined with a sheet of metal will give back
the image presented to it," for these are the exact words of a writer
who lived four centuries before Christ. And you may be sure that
glass-makers took advantage of this suggestion, if they had not
already found out the fact for themselves. So we know that the
ancients did make glass mirrors. It is matter of history that
looking-glasses were made in the first century of the Christian era,
but whether quicksilver was poured upon the back, as it is now, or
whether some other metal was used, we do not know.
But these mirrors disappeared with the bottles and other glass
articles; and metal mirrors again became the fashion. For fourteen
hundred years we hear nothing of looking-glasses, and then we find
them in Venice, at the time that city had the monopoly of the glass
trade. Metal mirrors were soon thrown aside, for the images in them
were very imperfect compared with the others.
These Venetian glasses were all small, because at that time sheet
glass was blown by the mouth of man, like bottles, vases, etc., and
therefore it was impossible to make them large. Two hundred years
afterward, a Frenchman discovered a method of making sheet glass by
machinery, which is called _founding_, and by this process it can be
made of any size.
But even after the comparatively cheap process of founding came into
use, looking-glasses were very expensive, and happy was the rich
family that possessed one. A French countess sold a farm to buy a
mirror! Queens had theirs ornamented in the most costly manner. Here
is a picture of one that belonged to a queen of France, the frame of
which is entirely composed of precious stones.
[Illustration]
I have told you how the Venetians kept glass-making a secret, and how,
at last, the Germans learned it, and then the French, and their work
came to be better liked than that of the Venetians. But these last
still managed to keep the process of making mirrors a profound secret,
and the French were determined to get at the mystery. Several young
glass-makers went from France to Venice, and applied to all the
looking-glass makers of Venice for situations as workmen, that they
might learn the art. But all positively refused to receive them, and
kept their doors and windows tightly closed while they were at work,
that no one might see what they did. The young Frenchmen took
advantage of this, and climbed up on the roofs, and cautiously made
holes through which they could look; and thus they learned the
carefully-kept secret, and went back to France and commenced the
manufacture of glass mirrors. Twenty years after, a Frenchman invented
founding glass, which gave France such a great advantage that the
trade of Venice in looking-glasses was ruined.
You would be very much interested in watching this process of founding
glass. This is the way it is done. As soon as the glass is melted to
the proper consistency, the furnaces are opened, and the pots are
lifted into the air by machinery, and passed along a beam to an
immense table of cast iron. A signal is given, and the brilliant,
transparent liquid glass falls out and spreads over the table. At a
second signal a roller is passed by machinery over the red-hot glass,
and twenty men stand ready with long shovels to push the sheet of
glass into an oven, not very hot, where it can slowly cool. When taken
out of the oven the glass is thick, and not perfectly smooth, and it
has to be rubbed with sand, imbedded in plaster of Paris, smoothed
with emery, and polished by rubbing it with a woollen cloth covered
with red oxide of iron, all of which is done by machinery.
We know that cut glass is expensive, and the reason is that cutting it
is a slow process. Four wheels have to be used in succession, iron,
sandstone, wood, and cork. Sand is thrown upon these wheels in such a
way that the glass is finely and delicately cut. But this is imitated
in pressed glass, which is blown in a mould inside of which the design
is cut. This is much cheaper than the cut glass.
[Illustration]
A higher art than cutting is engraving on glass, by which the figures
are brought out in relief. Distinguished artists are employed to draw
the designs, and then skilful engravers follow the lines with their
delicate tools. If you will examine carefully the engraving on this
Bohemian goblet, you will see what a wonderful piece of workmanship it
is.
It seems almost a pity that so much time and labor, skill and genius
should be given to a thing so easily broken. And yet we have seen that
a good many glass articles have been preserved for centuries. The
engraving on the Bohemian goblet is ingenious, and curious, and
faithful in detail, but the flowers on this modern French flagon are
really more graceful and beautiful.
[Illustration]
About four hundred years ago there was found in a marble coffin, in a
tomb near Rome, a glass vase which is now famous throughout the world.
There is good reason for supposing it to have been made one hundred
and thirty-eight years before Christ, consequently it is now about two
thousand years old. For many years this was in the Barberini palace in
Rome, and was called the Barberini Vase. Then it was bought by the
Duchess of Portland, of England, for nine thousand dollars, and since
then has been known as the Portland Vase.
She loaned it to the British Museum, and everybody who went to London
wanted to see this celebrated vase.
[Illustration]
One day a crazy man got into the Museum, and with a smart blow of his
cane laid in ruins the glass vase that had survived all the world's
great convulsions and changes for two thousand years! This misfortune
was supposed to be irreparable, but it has been repaired by an artist
so cleverly that it is impossible to tell where it is joined together.
[Illustration]
This vase is composed of two layers of glass, one over the other. The
lower is of a deep blue color, and the upper an opaque white, so that
the figures stand out in white on a deep blue background.
[Illustration]
The picture on it represents the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. The
woman seated, holding a serpent in her left hand, is Thetis, and the
man to whom she is giving her right hand is Peleus. The god in front
of Thetis is Neptune, and a Cupid hovers in the air above. On the
reverse side are Thetis and Peleus, and a goddess, all seated. At the
foot of the vase is a bust of Ganymede, and on each side of this in
the picture are copies of the masks on the handles.
Now I have shown you a few of the beautiful things that have been made
of glass, but there are very many other uses to which glass is applied
that have not even been alluded to. Steam engines, that work like real
ones, have been made of glass; palaces have been built of it; great
telescopes, by which the wonders of the heavens have been revealed,
owe their power to it; and, in fact, it would seem to us, to-day, as
if we could as well do without our iron as without our glass.
CARL.
In the middle of a dark and gloomy forest lived Carl and Greta. Their
father was a forester, who, when he was well, was accustomed to be
away all day with his gun and dogs, leaving the two children with no
one but old Nurse Heine; for their mother died when they were very
little. Now Carl was twelve years old, and Greta nine. Carl was a
fine-looking boy, but Nurse Heine said that he had a melancholy
countenance. Greta, however, was a pretty, bright-faced, merry little
girl. They were allowed to wander through a certain part of the
forest, where their father thought there was no especial danger to
fear.
In truth, Carl was not melancholy at all, but was just as happy in his
way as Greta was in hers. In the summer, while she was pulling the
wood flowers and weaving them into garlands, or playing with her dogs,
or chasing squirrels, Carl would be seated on some root or stone with
a large sheet of coarse card-board on his knee, on which he drew
pictures with a piece of sharpened charcoal. He had sketched, in his
rough way, every pretty mass of foliage, and every picturesque rock
and waterfall within his range. And in the winter, when the icicles
were hanging from the cliffs, and the snow wound white arms around the
dark green cypress boughs, Carl still found beautiful pictures
everywhere, and Greta plenty of play in building snow-houses and
statues. And, moreover, Carl had lately discovered in the brooks some
colored stones, which were soft enough to sharpen sufficiently to give
a blue tint to his skies, and green to his trees; and thus he made
pictures that Nurse Heine said were more wonderful than those in the
chapel of the little village of Evergode.
I have said that the forest was dark and gloomy, because it was
composed chiefly of pines and cypresses, but it never seemed so to
the children. They knew how to read, but had no books that told them
of any lands brighter and sunnier than their own. And then, too,
beyond the belt of pines in which was their home, there was a long
stretch of forest of oaks and beeches, and in this the birds liked to
build their nests and sing; and there were such splendid vines, and
lovely flowers! And, right through the pine forest, not more than half
a mile from their cottage, there was a broad road. It is true, it was
a very rough one, and but little used, but it represented the world to
Carl and Greta. For it did sometimes happen that loaded wagons would
jolt over it, or a rough soldier gallop along, and more rarely still,
a gay cavalier would prance by the wondering children.
For there was a war in the land. And when, after a time, the armies
came near enough to the forest for the children to hear occasionally
the roll of the heavy guns, a strange thing happened.
One evening when they arrived at home, they found in their humble
little cottage one of the gay-looking cavaliers they had sometimes
seen on the forest road, and with him was a very beautiful lady. Old
Nurse Heine was getting the spare room ready by beating up the great
feather bed, and laying down on the floor the few strips of carpet
they possessed. Their father was talking with the strangers, and he
told them that Carl and Greta were his children; but they took no
notice of them, for they were completely taken up with each other, for
the gentleman, it appeared, was going away, and to leave the lady
there. Carl greatly admired this cavalier, and had no doubt he was the
noblest-looking man in the world, and studied him so closely that he
would have known him among a thousand. Presently the forester led his
children out of the cottage, and soon after the cavalier came out, and
springing upon his horse, galloped away among the dark pines.
[Illustration]
The strange lady was at the cottage several weeks, and the children
soon learned to love her dearly. She was fond of rambling about with
them, and was seldom to be found within the house when the weather was
fair. She never went near the road, but preferred the oak wood, and
sometimes when the children were amusing themselves she would sit for
hours absorbed in deep thought or singing to herself in a sad and
dreamy way.