gles on the roof, and a chimney one hundred and five feet high, built wholly of glass bricks, each a foot square. Several patents for roofing-glass have been taken out during the last few years, the best perhaps being that in which, during manufacture, the glass is moulded upon steel-wire netting. which greatly increases its strength without appreciably lessening its transparency, and allows of its being used in much larger sheets. A Paris firm of glassmakers, MM. Apert Frères, now produce some porous glass to be used for window-panes. The pores are too fine to admit of draught, but cause a pleasant and healthy ventilation in a room. By means of the toughening process, glass railway-sleepers, tramrails floor-plates, grindstones, etc., have been produced.

Last year some remarkable experiments were carried out by the Berlin fire brigade upon a patent fire-resisting glass, suitable for skylights, windows, and partitions, exhibited by Messrs. Siemens of Dresden. It was proved to be capable of resisting a temperature of 1300° C. for over half an hour.

Articles of dress are now being extensively made of this material. A Venetian manufacturer is turning out bonnets by the thousand, the glass cloth of which they are composed having the same shimmer and brilliancy of color as silk, and, what is a great advantage, being impervious to water. In Russia there has for a long time existed a tissue manufactured from the fibre of a peculiar filamentous stone from the Siberian mines, which by some secret process is shredded and spun into a fabric which, although soft to the touch and pliable in the extreme, is of so durable a nature that it never wears out. This is probably what has given an enterprising firm the idea of producing spun-glass dress lengths. The Muscovite stuff is thrown into the fire when dirty, like asbestos, by which it is made absolutely clean again; but the spun-glass silk is simply brushed with a hard brush and soap and water, and is none the worse for being either stained or soiled. The material is to be

yellow, and bids fair to become very fashionable for evening dresses. An Austrian is the inventor of this novel fabric, which is rather costly. Tablecloths, napkins, and window-curtains are also made of it. It has also been discovered that glass is capable of being turned into a fine cloth, which

can be worn next the skin without the slightest discomfort.

The Infanta Eulalie of Spain was a short time ago presented with a wonderful gown by the Libbey Cut Glass Company, of Toledo. "Its foundation," writes a lady correspondent of the Daily News, "is a silk warp, woven with fine strands of glass. In each strand there are two hundred and fifty almost invisible threads, and to make threequarters of a yard of this material employs four women one whole day. This curious fabric of mingled silk and glass is arranged as a gored skirt over one of white silk. It is bordered with a flounce of chiffon, partially veiled with a glittering fringe of glass. Above it is a twist of chiffon and plaited glass. The bodice is in silver cloth, woven in with threads of glass, and glass epaulets glimmer above the chiffon sleeves. The price of this ball dress is five hundred dollars. The infanta's is pure white, but the glass can be made in a variety of colors, and can be so woven through the silk as to produce a shot effect. The seams have to be glued together instead of being sewn. The silvery sheen produced by the fine threads of glass is remarkably pretty, especially under the rays of artificial light."

And while on the subject of dress, we may mention a most dangerous fashion that obtained a few years back, fortunately not to a very wide extent, and only for a short time-namely, sprinkling the hair, dresses, and flowers at balls, parties, and theatres with powdered glass. The inhalation of these minute particles of glass, one of the deadliest forms of slow poison, and perfectly insoluble, sets up serious inflammation in the pulmonary organs, stomach, throat, and other membranes

A church bell of green glass, fourteen inches high and thirteen in diameter, was placed in the turret of the chapel at the Grange, Borrowdale, in October, 1859; and now we are told that glass is to be used as a filling for teeth, especially the front ones, where it will be less conspicuous than gold, and, in fact, indistinguishable from the tooth surface.

From time to time, glass has furnished the material for scientific toys. At the old-time fairs, "Rupert's drops" formed a staple commodity, long pearshaped drops, on breaking off the tiniest morsel of the surface of which the whole mass shattered itself into a thousand atoms. Charles II. was so delighted with them that he brought them to the notice of the Royal Society, who formed a committee to inquire into their nature. They also provided Hudibras with a simile:

Honor is like that glassy bubble
That finds philosophers such trouble;
Whose least part cracked, the whole does
fly,

And wits are cracked to find out why.

Hooke, in his "Micrographia," tells of candle-bombs, small glasses hermetically sealed and containing a drop of water, which, when placed on hot coals, burst with a loud report. Another curious article was the "Bologna phial," a hollow cup of annealed glass, capable, as are also the Rupert's drops before mentioned, of resisting hard strokes from without, but which shivers to pieces on certain light minute bodies being dropped into it. In some glasshouses the workmen show glass which has been cooled in the open air, on which they let fall leaden bullets without breaking it. They then desire you to drop a few grains of sand upon the glass, which break it into a thousand pieces. The lead does not scratch the surface, but the sharp and angular sand

One of the most curious inventions of this inventive age is platinized glass. A piece of glass is coated with an exceedingly thin layer of a liquid charged with platinum, and is then raised to a red heat. The platinum becomes united to the glass in such a way as to form a very odd kind of mirror. The glass has not lost its transparency, yet if one places it against a wall and looks at it, he sees his image as in an ordinary looking-glass. But when light is allowed to pass through from the other side, as in a window-pane, it appears perfectly transparent like ordinary glass. By constructing a window of this material, one could stand close behind the panes, in an illuminated room, and see clearly everything going on outside, while passers-by looking at the window would behold only a fine mirror, or set of mirrors, in which their own figures would be reflected and the person inside remain invisible. In France various tricks have been played. In one, a person, seeing what appears to be an ordinary mirror, approaches to look at himself. A sudden change in the mechanism sends light through the glass from the back, whereupon it instantly becomes transparent, and the startled spectator finds himself confronted by some grotesque figure which has been hidden behind the magic glass. What wonders might not a magician of the dark ages have wrought with a piece of platinized glass?

From Public Opinion.

MR. ZANGWILL ON THE CARLYLES. Mr. Zangwill, discoursing in the Pall Mall Magazine on the loves of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle, says: "The real truth about this immortal couple is, I have reason to believe, that the wife had too little capacity for passion. And, whatever she had to suffer from Carlyle's careless tyranny and gloomy humors. still it ought to have been a satisfaction to a woman of such brilliant parts to live in daily contact with such an

intellect. She seems to have found Carlyle's company stimulating enough before marriage; could she not, I wonder, have taken more interest in the books he was writing, so that, instead of silently perpending, he should talk his points over with her? But, as a matter of fact, except during the Lady Ashburton period, the marriage was such a companionship-witness her literally killing anxiety as to the success of his Lord Rector speech. The selfishness of Carlyle was not wilful, even though it be inexcusable. It was blindness; his soul was rapt away from the real world around him, and lived amid great men and picturesque mobs. And it must not be forgotten that the artist, inasmuch as he lives a double life, comes under two sets of standards, and it is something if he satisfies one. Egoistic as Carlyle may have been as a husband, as an artist he was impeccable. He yielded neither to the temptations of gold nor of shoddy work. His energy was herculean, his labor supremely conscientious, his perseverance equalled his genius. Verily he could "toil terribly," this man who could re-write "The French Revolution" after the first manuscript had been destroyed. That men of letters and painters and musicians are not immaculate the world knows well enough; but ere it points the Pharisaic finger of scorn, let it remember to make the distinction between the conscienceless in both life and art, and those whose artistic conscience is at least clear. And let it remember that the artistic part of him is to the artist his own inmost reality,

and that, as was the case with Carlyle, he may in the service of his art be even unconscious of his lapses from common morality. The prophet was a weak and sinful creature-perhaps. But did he prophesy from the heart of him, or was he a charlatan posing for money in the market-place? That is the question to be considered in the matter of great men. Owing to the double nature of the artist, four logical possibilities arise. He may be a good man and a dishonest artist, or a bad man and an honest artist, or a bad man and a dishonest artist, or a good man and an honest artist. While there can be no question as to the supreme greatness of the fourth variety, or as to the turpitude of the third, casuists might wrangle eternally over the alternative of the first two. Should a painter turn out pot-boilers to support his family, or should he neglect his domestic duties to follow his artistic ideals? Whatever you may feel about Carlyle's character, pray bear in mind the terrible amount of morality that went to make those wonderful books, and which is stored up in them like force in nitro-glycerine; and if you are an ordinary humdrum person, who contributes nothing to the world's treasury, it will become you better to say grace than to pronounce judgment. And, whatever you may think of the rights and wrongs of the Carlyle household, remember the shrewd thing that Tennyson said about it-the shrewdest thing any one has said about it-that it was a blessing they had married each other, for otherwise there would have been four unhappy people instead of two."

A Glowworm Cavern.-The greatest wonder of the antipodes is the celebrated glowworm cavern, discovered in 1891, in the heart of the Tasmanian wilderness. The cavern, or caverns (there appears to be a series of such caverns in the vicinity, each separate and distinct), are situated near the town of Southport, Tasmania, in a limestone bluff, about four miles from Ida Bay. The appearance of the main

cavern is that of an underground river, the entire floor of the subterranean passage being covered with water about a foot and a half in depth. These wonderful Tasmanian caves are similar to all caverns found in limestone formation, with the exception that their roofs and sides literally shine with the light emitted by the millions of glowworms which inhabit them.