to utilise it for miscellaneous public
purposes; that what should be a forest of
masts is but a thicket; that the great Linen
Hall is turned into a barrack; the noble
Royal Exchange into a police-office; that
everywhere and on all sides there are stately
shells standing with but dry and shrivelled
kernels; that, in a room in Henrietta
Street, called the Encumbered Estates
Court, from the time of its establishment
up to the month of March last, there
passed under the judicial hammer one million
and a half acres of land, or something more
than one-fourteenth of the entire arable
superficies of the island (but it is a consoling
reflection that these broad acres fetched
unhoped for prices, and that the new hands
into which they have fallen will be able to
deal better with them than when they were
hampered and encumbered). But what a
history of year-long misery, and reckless
extravagance, and desperation, seems to
unfold itself at the bare enumeration of those
figures? They seem to answer the whole
question of Irish distress at once.

Bring in the lights, for the twilight has
deepened into night, and the room is full of
shadow.

LITTLE BITS.

Do we doubt that pictures and decorations,
of a very graceful kind, depend upon little
bits? Have we heard nothing about mosaics,
and inlayings, and buhl, and marquetry, and
parquetry, and niello, and pietre dure, and
tesselated pavements, and encaustic tiles?
All these are but so many applications of
little bits—bits of enamel, bits of glass, bits
of gems, bits of stone, bits of marble, bits of
metal, bits of wood, bits of cement, bits of
clay. Marked developments of skill and
patience are connected with the working
up of these little bits; and all the world
knows that productions of great beauty
result. Enamel, pebbles, marble, and clay,
irrespective of metal and wood, form a very
pretty family of little bits, as a brief glance
will easily show us.

The little bits of enamel which constitute
mosaic are the subjects of a most minute and
tiresome routine of processes—perhaps more
than the products are worth. A true mosaic
picture consists of an infinity of little bits of
enamel, disposed according to their colours,
and imbedded in a frame-work prepared for
their reception. Enamel is nothing more than
opaque glass, the colours being given by the
admixture of various metallic oxides. The
number of varieties is quite enormous; for in
order to produce all the hues of a picture,
there must not only be every colour, but
many shades or tints of each. The Pope
himself is a mosaic manufacturer. He keeps
up an establishment near St. Peter's; and, at
this establishment there are, it is asserted.
no fewer than seventeen thousand tints of
enamel, all arranged and labelled in boxes
and drawers, whence they are selected as the
compositor would select his type. The
enamel is cast into slabs; and each slab, by
means of hammers, saws, files, lapidary-
wheels, and other mechanical aids, is cut into
tiny bits; or else the enamel, while hot and
plastic from the furnace, is drawn out into
threads or small sticks; for some of the bits
for a small picture are as thin as sewing-
thread. A back or groundwork for the
picture is prepared, in marble, slate, or
copper; it is hollowed out to a depth varying
from a sixteenth of an inch to an inch,
according to the size of the picture. The cavity
is filled up with plaster of Paris; and the
artist draws his design with great care on
the plaster. When the ground and the
enamels are ready, the mosaicist begins. He
digs out a very small portion of the plaster,
in accordance with particular lines in the
design, and fills up this cavity with a kind of
putty or soft mastic, into which the little bits
of enamel are pressed one by one. Thus hour
by hour, week by week, and even year by
year, the artist proceeds; guided by the
design on the plaster in scooping out each
little portion; and guided by the original
picture or sketch in selecting the colours of
the enamels. When the picture is finished,
it is ground perfectly level with emery; and
any minute defects or interstices are filled
with a mixture of wax and ground enamel.

The works produced in this enamel-mosaic
are in some cases really wonderful. When
Napoleon was lord of the destinies of Italy,
he ordered a mosaic copy of Lionardo da
Vinci's celebrated picture of the Last Supper,
the same size as the original, twenty-four
feet by twelve. Ten mosaicists were employed
for eight years on this work, at a cost of
more than seven thousand pounds. The
Emperor of Austria, we believe, now possesses
this extraordinary production. The face
in a portrait of Pope Paul the Fifth is
said to consist of more than a million-and-
a-half of bits, each no larger than a millet-
seed. There was exihibited in London in
eighteen hundred and fifty-one, a mosaic
table-top, containing a series of beautiful
views in Italy. Perhaps the most wonderful
specimens ever produced were two which
had no back or groundwork whatever,
presenting a mosaic picture on each surface.
They were formed of coloured enamel fibres
fitted side by side, and fused together into a
solid mass. One specimen was an ornamental
device; the other was a representation of a
duck; and both exhibited great delicacy of
outlines and tints by the occasional employment
of transparent coloured glass intermixed
among the opaque coloured enamels. So
minutely were the details worked out, that
the eye of the duck, and the feathers on the
breast and wings, were imitated almost as
exactly as could have been done by a
miniature painter. It was one consequence