carried by them to a high degree of excellence,
which is very little known in our own
day, although some artists are resolutely
seeking to revive it. This art is called niello-
work. The chief agent employed was a
mixture of silver, lead, and sulphur, with or
without copper; and as the sulphur had the
effect of blackening the other ingredients, the
mixture was called ingellum, and afterwards
niello. This kind of metal-work was
noticed by the mediæval writers from the
seventh to the thirteenth centuries, and it
was evidently an object of much attention.
The art is, in fact, like damascene, an incrusting
of one metal with another. The article
intended to be thus incrusted, usually made
of gold, or silver, or copper, had incised upon
it the required design, into which niello was
inlaid in small grains; this niello, after being
fused by the action of fire, was polished.
Originally the incisions or channels in the
metal were cut broadly, and of an equable
depth; giving to the entire work, after the
introduction of the niello, the appearance of
a rude picture, the outlines of which were
formed sometimes by the metal and sometimes
by the niello. But in a later and improved
mode of practising the art, the designs on the
metal were engraved with great delicacy, and
when needful, were carefully shaded by lines.
The celebrated Florentine goldsmith, Finiguerra,
about the middle of the fifteenth
century, introduced a method of taking impressions
from plates he had engraved, on thin
paper, with a view of ascertaining their fitness
to receive the niello; these impressions have
in some few cases been preserved, as art-
curiosities, and they, as well as the plates
themselves, are termed nielli.

Most of the niello-work is on silver plates;
and the contrast between the darkness of the
niello and the brightness of the silver produces
an effect not much unlike that of a print from
a steel or copper plate. For many ages no
one practised this pretty art; but within the
last few years, M. Wagner, a goldsmith from
Berlin, has revived it at Paris; and some of
the London goldsmiths are beginning to turn
their attention this way. It is, however, the
old school of goldsmiths who threw themselves
with heart and soul into this delicate craft.
About four years ago there was a remarkable
exhibition in the rooms of the Society of Arts,
of ancient and mediæval art; in which the
capabilities of niello-work were fully
developed. It can scarcely be a matter for
question that this niello process is capable
of producing very pleasing effects. The
Science and Art Department of the Board of
Trade have purchased a chalice, and placed
it in the museum at Marlborough House as a
specimen of modern English skill in this art,
and in the sister art of incrusting metal
surfaces with enamel; the chalice, with its
silver groundwork, its parcel-gilt adornment,
and its incrustations in niello and enamel, is
a beautiful production.

A patchwork of enamels is another variety,
in which a groundwork of metal is adorned
with pictures or ornamental designs in enamel.
An enamel painting, as understood and
practised in our own day, is a very patient
application of opaque coloured glass, or enamel to
a copper ground, by the aid of heat, and with
such an attention to the colours of the enamel
selected as to produce the design intended.
But the enamel workers of earlier days had
very elaborate modes of interspersing the
metal among the enamel and the enamel
among the metal. One of the old methods,
was so practised that the design was
produced in outline by thin bands of metal,
usually gold, placed edgewise on a metal
plate, and afterwards filled in by enamel. In
another method, the design was formed on a
solid plate of metal, most frequently copper,
by sculped recesses or channels, into which
enamel was inlaid. It is evident, therefore,
that in one case a metallic outline surrounded
an enamel picture, while in the other an
enamel outline surrounded a metallic
picture. Seven hundred years ago, the citizens
of Limoges produced works in these kinds
of enamel, which have ever since
maintained a high rank in the estimation of
connoisseurs.

And thus it is that patchwork is not
merely an economical motherly mode of
making a quilt out of bits of printed cotton
and chintz; but is also a mode by which
men, whose workmen's fingers are aided by
artists' brains, can combine together bits
of wood, glass, enamel, metal, and other
materials, and out of them elaborate
beautiful and delicate works.

LOVE AND SELF-LOVE.

IT was during the very brightest days of
the republic of Venice, when her power was in
its prime, together with the arts which have
made her, like every Italian state, celebrated
all over the world—for Italy has
produced in poetry and painting, and in the
humbler walk of musical composition, the
greatest of the world's marvels—that Paolo
Zustana was charged by the Marquis di
Bembo to paint several pictures to adorn
his gallery. Paolo had come from Rome at
the request of the Marquis, who had received
a very favourable account of the young
artist—he was but thirty. Paolo was handsome,
of middle height, dark, and pale;
he had deep black eyes, a small mouth, a
finely traced moustache, a short curling
beard, and a forehead of remarkable
intellectuality. There was a slight savageness in
his manner, a brief sharp way of speaking,
a restlessness in his eye, which did not
inrease the number of his friends. But when
men knew him better, and were admitted
into his intimacy—a very rare occurrence
—they loved him.

Then, he was generous-hearted and noble;