vast cloud of verdure. The fabriques, or factories, are placed generally in the middle of one of these villages, the extent of which can only be known by going from house to house. So closely is each hid in its own fruit-bower, and so surrounded by shrubs and flowers, that the eye can only pick up the buildings by their blue smoke, or get a glimpse of them here and there as you advance; thus some of the villages are elongated to three miles, forming the most delicious walk along its grassy road, generally accompanied by a stream, always overhung by a profusion of wild-flowers, the mountain-ash, and weeping-birch; many of the former only to be found in our gardens.

It has a very picturesque effect to see the inhabitants of these villages with their simple costume; and if it rains, their umbrellas, often of rich colors like their glass, scarlet, green, and deep crimson, with beautiful ruby, emerald, or turquoise handles; not such as a stranger might suppose a gaudy glass bauble, but rich and massive, and having all the appearance of the solid gold and gem-studded handles of the oriental weapons.

The fabrique is built like the rest of the cottages, and only differs from them in size, and the shape and height of its chimney, which, emitting only wood-smoke, has none of the dense sulphuric cloud which blackens and poisons the neighborhood of coal-fed factories; it is never that ostenta

tious building for whose magnitude and embellishments the public are obliged to pay, in the increased charges on its productions. The glass fabriques of Bohemia are all small, in fact only one large apartment, in the center of which is the furnace, a circular structure divided into eight compartments, containing the melted metal for as many colors; one man and a boy are stationed at the door of each compartment, the former to extract the fluid with his pipe, the latter to hold the wooden mold in which the article is blown and shaped. The number of hands employed in an ordinary fabrique are:-Eight men who work in the metal, take it from the fire, and blow it in the molds; eight help to hold the molds, &c.; four to stir the metal, &c.; two breakers; four daylaborers.

The materials of which the glass is composed, as far as can be ascertained, and they seem to make no secret of it, appear to be the same as those in use in England; they say they derive their perfection from their mode of mixing and burning the material. Thus the principal component parts are:-Sand, chalk, potash, brimstone, arsenic, mixed with various colors, regulated by the principal; Uran oxyd, cobalt oxyd, coppré oxyd, nickel oxyd, chrome oxyd, minium, tin oxyd.

The gold used in ornamenting the glass is from the purest ducats, dissolved in strong acid, (artz wasser;) the oil with

formed by men bearing all the appearance of simple cotters, but whose hand sweeps free and careless over the glass with the confidence and ease of an experienced artist, seldom being provided with more than two very ordinary looking brushes, a small one and another a size larger, and working frequently without any pattern, or indicating lines upon the glass they are painting; but, perfect from habitude, the scrolls, and wreaths, and flowers come out with the same facility as one traces a name upon the dewy pane of a window. Often the whole family are brought up from childhood in painting and in drawing on glass, and thus producing a race of hereditary artists; boys from thirteen and upward are employed in the most delicate works in this genre of art. Each cottage where the painting and gilding go on is provided with a small oven, into which the glass is put to bake in the colors, where it is kept for a day and allowed to cool down; the white figures and flowers, when they go into the oven, are of a dark chrome color, but come out pure white, as will be observed on examining any glass on which flowers of this color are painted; the gold, also, when laid on, is of a dead brown, and when burnt in is polished, generally by women of the family. The gold in many instances is left unpolished, and only the stalks and fibers are burnished, which give an excellent effect. It is most interesting to go from one cottage to another in one you are amazed by the exquisite paintings in gold, silver, and colors; in another, the cutting out all those beautiful leaf-work, lily, bell-flower, octagon, and star-shaped

vases,

which is done not only by men, but by their children, girls and boys. In one cottage I was particularly struck by a man, his two daughters, and son, sitting at as many wheels, cutting the most elaborate, but delicate figures; shaping, from the merely turned over bell-vases, those beautiful varieties of lily and flower-indented lamps for suspension, and vessels for holding bouquets; tracing the scrolls, stalks, and fibers with the same ease as the barefooted wife and mother prepared their supper in the wooden bowl on the earthfloor behind them; for there was but one apartment for the fine arts, the nursery, and the kitchen, yet all was neatness, perfect cleanliness, and order; while on the long beam which formed the sill of the

GLASS VASE.

three mullion windows was arranged a number of glass objects in the glorious colors of Bohemian art-ruby, emerald, topaz, chrysopras, turquoise; with pure crystals, which, richly cut, reflected, like a rainbow, the gems by which they are surrounded. In another cottage in Steinschönau I was much pleased with the designs which two young men were painting, both in gold and colors; of which the former were scrolls of a very superior character, and the latter, flowers, butterflies, and insects. I questioned one of the men respecting the forms and characteristics of those he was painting, and which were beautiful illustrations of Natural History; when he brought me in, from a little bed-room, or rather closet, two boxes full of exquisitely-preserved specimens of a great variety of native insects, which he had collected in his leisure hours, and arranged himself, to assist him in his painting. The copies were fac-similes of the originals, both as to colors and character. Among these insects I observed a beautiful miniature crawfish, not so large as a shrimp, a native, also, of the streams in his neighborhood. So identified had these productions of nature become with his imagination, that he was, at the moment I came in, painting some most correctly, without any specimen before him. It is impossible to

express the feelings produced by these people, so simple, so industrious, and, above all, so modest. They could not refrain from surprise at the admiration their everyday productions created in us; and these simple artisans would with difficulty believe that their works were sought for, and thus valued, in all-powerful and wealthy England, where they believe nothing is unknown, nothing imperfect, nothing impossible! One man whom I visited is an extraordinary genius, rarely to be met with; he has been driven by the force of that same genius to seek abroad, in France and Bavaria, (Munich,) food for his mind,

and has brought back with him several folio works of engravings from the best masters, from which he designs. Placing before him one of these works, a Raphael or a Rubens, he either copies the group, or composes from them to suit the form of his vase, which he thus embellishes with the most exquisite figures; his name is Charles Antoin Günther. He lives in a little block-house, as humble as the commonest of those above described, on the declivity of a brae, by a small stream, on which stands the little scattered village of Steinschönau. It is composed of only two apartments below, of which his work-room

is one, and which is not above ten feet square, with just space enough to hold four little lathes for engraving glass, at one of which he works himself, while the others are occupied by three boys, the youngest twelve-and-a-half years old, the eldest fifteen! They all engrave beautifully pieces laid down before them by Günther, and which they follow with a faithfulness and spirit only to be believed on personal inspection. He was at work himself on a vase-goblet, of the shape of the usual green hock-glass, but which might contain a

bottle; it was lapis lazuli blue, enriched by a group of Bacchanalian Cupids and vine-leaves of his own composition, and worked with a spirit and freedom worthy of some of the masters by whose works he was surrounded. What struck me most was one of those exquisite little figures of Raphael's, in his great picture of the "Madona del Sixto," in the Royal Gallery at Dresden; the cherub leaning on the parapet, with his chin resting on one hand, as he gazes on the Virgin. It is exquisitely drawn in pencil, a fac-simile, and pinned

on the wooden wall of the engraver's cottage, immediately opposite his seat. I asked him how he first traced on the glass the subjects which he was to cut; he replied by taking up a plain glass without any figure or indication on its surface, and asking me what subject I should like engraved. On my replying that, being an old deer-stalker, I should be very well pleased with a stag, he immediately applied the wheel to the glass, and in five minutes by my watch produced one of the most splendid, spirited animals I ever saw in the forest, and really worthy of Landseer. The stag is making a spring over some broken palings and rough foreground, and his action and parts can only be appreciated by those who have lived with the deer on the hill and watched them with the feelings of a hill-man, like Günther, who has had opportunities of seeing the deer in his own native woods, where they abound. I brought this glass away with me, though in itself but an inferior article, merely as a specimen of what I had seen done by this man in the space of five minutes, and that, also, without a copy or anything to guide him on the smooth surface of the goblet.

I send you sketches of the artist and his dwelling; and as the portrait exhibits, at the same time, his native costume, it will be in every manner the more interesting, and cannot fail to give a correct idea of the character of this Bohemian mountaineer.

The sketch of Günther's house will also afford an idea of these Bohemian artisans' dwellings, more so than any written description could do. I send you with it a drawing of another of these picturesque houses.

There are two classes of persons engaged, on a large scale, in the exportation of Bohemian glass-the fabricant and the collector. Generally speaking, however, the latter is the direct exporter, and he also superintends the cutting, painting, and packing. The fabricant is more frequently engaged in furnishing the collector, and to a great extent, with the glass in its original and more simple forms as it comes from the furnace, and it is then cut and painted by the cottagers who surround the dwelling of the collector, so that many of these villages are entirely formed by the collector and his people. Others, however, employed in the same way, cluster round the

fabrique; but even their productions for the most part go to the collectors, who have their correspondents in America, Spain, Turkey, Greece, England, &c.

The glass villages are scattered all through the mountainous districts, whose ridges, and summits, and upper ranges are covered with a forest, which extends forty or fifty miles in length, by thirty broad; the fabriquants maintain that the finer glass cannot be brought to perfection but by wood-heat, and hence the glass fabriques are only to be found in these vast forests. One of the most interesting natural formations within this circle is the volcanic rock, called " Spirlingstein," which shoots up out of a little valley on the right bank of the Elbe, crowned with a shattered mass of natural towers and turrets which it is difficult to believe, till closely examined, are not the ruins of one of those feudal holds crowning the summits of so many of the hills in Bohemia. We walked up the valley to visit a fabrique of Chichorie; in the way I remarked a little cottage, like the rest, with its fruit-trees and garden,

BOHEMIAN GLASS-PAINTER.

but which had, in addition to its projecting roof and windows filled with flowers, both in pots and Bohemian glass vases, verandahs in carved oak, the scroll-work of which was quite classic, and the execution admirable. While I stopped to examine this, the fabriquant who accompanied me remarked that the owners were makers of musical instruments. On inquiring of what kind, he replied a variety-violins, accordions, and others. I was met at the door by a man whose appearance was that of a simple cottager, and his manners indicated all the simplicity of rural life. He was told that I wished to see some of his instruments, upon which he bowed, slightly elevated his shoulders, and replied that he had nothing worth seeing, but would be happy to receive us, and showed us the way with that natural kindness and politeness which distinguish the peasants of this country. We followed him up a little carved-wood staircase, and he ushered us into a small, yet clean apartment, where, to my surprise, I found two rather large organs, sufficiently large for a moderate church. One was a peculiar instrument, a pan-harmonicon, invented by himself, with improvements and great facility and simplicity in tuning; it formed a concert of the single organ, brass horns, and kettledrums, having a double row of keys behind, so that the performer was masked by the instrument, which had a handsome front; the face of it could be removed, to show the whole interior of the mechanical arrangement.

The little chapels in the glass districts are beautifully decorated with colored glass, the rich ruby lamps suspended before the altars, with their ever-burning lamps, the clusters of prisms in the great central chandelier reflecting the ruby lights, and gold, and flowers from the altar, are always-independent of any other feeling-subjects worthy the contemplation of the artist. All the vases for flowers which richly decorate the country churches are of native manufacture-ruby, emerald, topaz, chrysopras; turquoise, and crystal chalices, full of the rarest of those flowers which form so much the delight and pastime of the inhabitants to cultivate, shed their delicious perfume through their chapels, mingled with the incense which, renewed dayly, at morning and evening service, fills the buildings with perpetual fragrance.