further in advance conduct us to a scene the
exact duplicate of that we have just quitted.
Four more altars, four more triple knots of
men, four more peep-holes into the burning
abyss, are again vigorously working to the
utmost of their strength. The cause of Hebe's
disappearances is now explained. She oscillates,
with equal swing, between two similar
groups of desiccated labourers. Her cooling
presence refreshes in turn the opposite hemispheres
of a hard-working and fast-perspiring
little world.

So, good-day, or good-night to you, my bold
band of bottle-glass blowers! Farewell, probably
for ever, to Hebe the beneficent. Talk
about subjects for pictures out of the heathen
and other mythologies! Here is one that
beats them all, by its artistic combination of
strength, and energy, and earnest purpose,
and brilliant light, and strange obscurity of
darkness, each element contrasting with the
other, and yet bringing into higher relief one
single figure of active youth and beauty.

We emerge into the cold blue outer air, the
very antithesis of the red glare within. The
snow is falling fast, and never did it look so
white, as after our eyes had been wearied with
the dull luminosity of the gradually cooling
bottles. The communicative mutes waylay us on
our exit, and are anxious to know whether they
can further increase our stock of knowledge, of
course with the understanding that the Englishman
has always a franc or two to spare, in
return for a little civil attention. We are
taken to a house where a horse is grinding
away at a single upright millstone, preparing
the burnt pipe-clay of which the crucibles are
made, and with which the whole interior of the
furnace is lined. We are shown the stores of
bottles, in numbers which I will not venture
to mention; of shades from light sea-green to
dark green-black; of sizes from the huge
carboy and portly dame-jeanne to the demi-bouteille,
or pint, whose vin-de-grave I finished
at dinner; and of shapes representative of
two great and enterprising nations, anglaises
and bordelaises, ranged quietly against two
opposite walls, without exhibiting the least
symptoms of an intention to invade each
other's prerogatives. We are shown another
busy apartment, where the larger of these
hollow vitrifactions are covered with wicker-work
from top to toe, to be filled with
genièvre at the distilleries close by, and then
expedited for " America and the Isles; " " the
Isles" meaning, in French acceptation, the
utmost ends, or Thules of the world.

The mutes then enter a subterranean passage,
similar to that in which the sand-cart
vanished. We thread its symmetrical intricacies,
sometimes in darkness, sometimes in
light, sometimes beneath the very shower of
fire which rains from the bottom grate of the
awful furnace. It is as good as worming discoveries
out of the inside of the great pyramid,
—and considerably more cheerful work. In
one alley is a throng of children come to warm
themselves this inclement evening, and to
gather their perquisite of fallen cinders.
Soon, we stumble on a collection of the
materials of which bottle glass is made. Our
droll pea-soup sand is, after all, but a minor
portion of the mixture. For we have yellow-white
sand from Compiègne, cinder ashes,
broken glass, kelp, potter's earth, and so on.
Further advanced, is a winnowing machine,
to dust the ashes into a proper state of fineness.
In other respects, the manufacturers are
not nice; bottle glass seems all the better for
being made of impure matters. Coloured
sands are even preferable to white ones, the
oxide of iron which tinges them acting most
conveniently as a flux. All that need be got
rid of from them, are foreign bodies of decided
magnitude, as pyrites, stones, and such-like
disagreeables. In bottle-glass making, the
great thing to be remembered is to make the
bottles thick enough and strong enough.
France is the land of sparkling wines and
effervescent drinks; and the vessels which
contain them must be able to support a
considerable outward pressure. Champagne
bottles, it appears by experiment, are worthless
unless they will bear the weight of a
dozen atmospheres imprisoned within them.
The time at last arrives to take a real and
final leave. The long one-streeted village is
passed; its inviting inns are stoically despised
—with the certainty of finding something
better in the end; the Fort de Grace is left
to repel the enemy, who doesn't come; the
gate of Arras entered, the street of Swordmakers
traversed, the Little Place diagonally
crossed, and the day's amusement comfortably
closed by an eight-o'clock supper at the table-d'hôte,
in company with the suggestive commis-voyageur ;
the crown of the whole being a
slumber so sound as not even to be disturbed
by dreams of Hebe.

CHLOROFORM.

THE recent occurrence of a case of sudden
death after the administration of Chloroform
in a London hospital reminds us that we are
now fairly entitled by the lapse of time to
pass a very distinct judgment on the value of
this drug as an anaesthetic agent. Since we
last gave an account of Chloroform—at a time
when the whole subject was comparatively
new—a vast mass of experience has been
acquired. The case to which we have just
referred was the first fatal issue within the
practice of the Hospital in which it occurred,
although Chloroform had been administered
in the establishment to sixteen hundred
patients. We propose now to add a few
memoranda to our former notice of the subject,
in order that the leading facts connected
with it may be placed, pretty completely, in
the possession of our readers.

The importance of the discovery being
placed beyond all chance of dispute, it is
worth while to bear in mind the names of