drowned the thundering inquiries with which
Mr. Bossle was teasing one of the "teasers."
In an instant the men hastened to a focus, like
giants in a Christmas pantomime about to
perform some wonderful conjuration; and not
a whisper was heard.

"Aha! exclaimed the director, "they are
going to cast. This way, gentlemen!"

The kitchen in which the Ogre threatened
to cook Jack and his seven brothers could
not have been half so formidable an apartment
as the enormous cuisine into which we were
led. One end was occupied with a row of
awful ovens; in the midst, stood a stupendous
iron table; and upon it lay a rolling-
pin, so big, that it could only be likened to
half-a-dozen garden-rollers joined together at
their ends. Above, was an iron crane or
gallows to lift the enormous messes of red-
hot gruel, thick and slab, which were now to
be brought from the furnaces.

"Stand clear!" A huge basin, white with
heat, approaches, on a sort of iron hurley; at
one end of which sits, triumphant, a
salamander, in human form, to balance the
Plutonian mass, as it approaches on its wheeled
car—playing with it—a game of see-saw. It
stops at the foot of the iron gallows. Mr.
Bossle approaches to see what it is, and
discovers it to be a cuvette filled with molten
glass, glowing from the fiery furnace. What
is that man doing with a glazed mask before
his face? "Why, if you will believe me,"
exclaims Mr. Bossle, in the tones of a speaking-
trumpet, (we are at a prudent distance,) "he
is ladling off the scum, as composedly as if
it were turtle-soup!" Mr. Bossle grows bold,
and ventures a little nearer. Rash man!
His nose is assuredly scorched; he darts
back, and takes off his spectacles, to ascertain
how much of the frames are melted.
The dreadful pot is lifted by the crane. It
is poised immediately over the table; a
workman tilts it; and out pours a cataract of
molten opal which spreads itself, deliberately,
like infernal sweet-stuff, over the iron table;
which is spilled and slopped about, in a crowd of
men, and touches nobody. "And has touched
nobody since last year, when one poor fellow
got the large shoes he wore, filled with white-
hot glass." Then the great rolling-pin begins
to "roll it out."

But, those two men, narrowly inspecting
every inch of the red hot sheet as the roller
approaches it—is their skin salamandrine?
—are their eyes fire-proof?

"They are looking," we are told, "for any
accidental impurity that may be still
intruding in the vitrifaction, and, if they can
tear it out with their long pincers before the
roller has passed over it, they are rewarded.
From the shape these specks assume in being
torn away, they are called 'tears.'"

When the roller has passed over the table,
it leaves a sheet of red-hot glass, measuring
some twelve feet by seven.

This translucent confection is pushed upon
a flat wooden platform on wheels—sparkling,
as it touches the wood, like innumerable
diamonds and is then run rapidly to an
oven, there to be baked or annealed. The
bed or "sole" of this carquèse is heated to a
temperature exactly equal to that of the glass;
which is now so much cooled that you can
stand within a yard or so of it without fear
of scorching off your eyelashes. The pot out
of the furnace is cooled too, out in the rain,
and lies there, burst into a hundred pieces.
It has been a good one: for it has withstood
the fire, seventy days.

So rapidly are all these casting operations
performed, that, from the moment when Mr.
Bossle thought his spectacles were melting off
his nose, to the moment when the sheet of
glass is shut up in the oven, about five
minutes have elapsed. The operations are
repeated, until the oven is full of glass plates.

When eight plates are put into the
carquèse it is closed up hermetically; for the
tiniest current of cold air would crack the
glass. The fire is allowed to go out of its own
accord, and the cooling takes place so gradually,
that it is not completed until eight days
are over. When drawn forth, the glass is
that "rough plate " which we see let into the
doors of railway stations, and forming half-
transparent floors in manufactories. To make
it completely transparent for windows and
looking-glasses, elaborate processes of grinding
and polishing are requisite. They are
three in number:—roughing down, smoothing
and polishing.

"I perceive," said Mr. Bossle, when he got
to the roughing down room, where steam
machinery was violently agitating numerous
plates of glass, one upon the other, "that the
diamond cut diamond principle is adopted."

"Exactly: the under plate is fastened to a
table by plaster of Paris, and the upper one
—quite rough—is violently rubbed by
machinery upon it, with water, sand, and other
grinding powders between. The top plate is
then fastened to a table, to rough down another
first plate; for the under one is always the
smoother."

Then comes the "smoothing." Emery, of
graduated degrees of fineness, is used for that
purpose. "Until within the last month or so,
smoothing could only be done by human labour.
The human hand alone was capable of the
requisite tenacity, to rub the slippery surfaces
over each other; nay, so fine a sense of touch
was requisite, that even a man's hand had
scarcely sensitiveness enough for the work;
hence females were, and still are, employed."

As our pains-taking informant spoke, he
pushed open a door, and we beheld a sight
that made Mr. Bossle wipe his spectacles, and
ourselves imagine for a moment that a scene
from an Oriental Story-Book was magically
revealed to us; so elegant and graceful were
the attitudes into which a bevy of some fifty
females many of them of fine forms and
handsome features were unceasingly