repeats until a few threads are cut near the point, which serve as guides for the next, and so on till the screw is finished. This operation requires very great care. The tool must be In the operation of turning a circular saw is very frequently used. This is especially the case with ivory turners. The saw is placed upon a spindle against a projecting collar, and held in its place by a washer and nut; the spindle is held between the mandril and front puppet, and over it is a small table, with a slit to allow the upper part of the saw to pass through; this table is mounted upon a frame fitted to the bed of the lathe in the same manner as the rest, and can be raised or lowered according to the depth that the saw is wanted to cut. But one of the most important adjuncts to a lathe is the slide rest. When the tool is held in the hand it is subject to THE next best thing to a country trip in this bright summer weather, is a stroll through the rooms of the Royal Academy. Outside, the hot sun is shining down upon the shadeless flagstones of Trafalgar-square; but follow the stream of ladies and gentlemen into the hall of the Academy, and you experience a change of climate immediately. In the streets you were oppressed with the heat; here, there is a delightful and refreshing coolness in the atmosphere, which is only equalled by the wellbred coolness of the gentleman who takes your two shillings for admission and catalogue. And so, feeling entirely a different kind of personage to him who, just now, stood and wearied on the pavé outside, you pass at once into the great west room; and, assuming the air of a nonchalant, quiet connoisseur, begin to examine the pictures. Beautiful, exquisite, refreshing! Sea pieces by Stanfield, in which the water is positively cool to look upon; landscapes by Cooper and Danby, with dark depths in the shady avenues that seem to invite repose and contemplation; forest scenes by Landseer, with "Children of the Mist"-as the painter chooses to call a herd of deer-flying over brake and brook; village scenes and domestic incidents by Frith and Webster; portraits, of fine ladies and gentlemen in drawingroom costume, by Mr. Secretary Knight; figures by Eastlake and Mulready, and flowers and fruit by Lance. These last,-in a greater degree, perhaps, than any of the others have a cool and pleasant look. How tempting the round ripe apples; how inviting the luscious grapes, both black and green; how exquisitely toothsome the rough mottled skin of the green fig! And then with what art the painter has introduced rich silver tankards and brightly painted porcelain ware, and dark carved woodwork into his picture; and how well the great green and red-dappled vineleaf contrasts with the crimson velvet of the table-cover, and the hangings at the back; surely, Mr. Lance must be a great lover of fruit and flowers! For ourself, we say unblushingly, that we have quite a child's love for both-the only remnant of youth that, with most people, remains with them after thirty. Mr. Lance is a little before the season, though; the flowers blossom in June, the fruits come in autumn. But no matter, we may enjoy the picture without anticipating the time when the grapes and the apples become ripe; and certainly without it suggesting to us that autumn is the afternoon of life as well as of the year,-for, thanks to the skill of scientific gardeners, and the properly regulated temperature of hot-houses, we can obtain fruit all the year round! Not always do the delicious fruits which form the painter's models replace the faded flowers, for they exist while yet the yellow buttercups and pink-eyed daisies dot the fields. In Mr. Lance's pictures, as in an old orchard, "the mellow apple, whose golden brilliancy is heightened by rich streaks of purple, weighs down the branch that bears it; and the luscious pears and grapes, display their beauties and invite us to pluck them." Who, gazing at the picture, does not wander, in fancy, far away into the green fields, and lie down lazily beneath brown old trees, humming over to himself that fine old ballad of Shakspeare's, which begins "Under the greenwood tree Who loves to lie with me ?" or, curbing his imagination, and trusting to his less fickle memory, recall some incident of his youth, associated with flowers and fruit? Some orchard frolic, in which fair girls and brown hearty boys-who are staid men and women now with girls and boys of their own, perhaps, took joyous part? some happy winter meetings, in which those who shall meet no more on earth, sang songs together and made a merry noise, and gathered factitious fruit and artificial flowers from Christmas trees of green and gold? In the exquisite design which the courtesy of the painter FRUIT PIECE BY G. LANCE. DRAWN BY J. GILBERT, AND ENGRAVED BY H. LINTON. stands unrivalled. He possesses the rare faculty of embodying the real with the poetical, and blending with representations of the products of the orchard and the hot-house, such ornamental and architectural adjuncts as serve to raise his compositions from the rank of mere copies of nature to real tious art-specimens which hang upon the same walls. His flowers, indeed, have no perfume, and his fruits no flavour; but considered as works of art, they possess a higher value and more enduring interest than belongs to many pictures of greater pretensions. THE DEAD BRIDAL. A VENETIAN TALE OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BY JONATHAN FREKE SLINGSBY. CHAPTER VI. Amongst many other things that doe famouse this citie, the mountebankes are not the least; for although there are mountebankes also in other cities of Italie, yet because there is a greater concourse of them in Venice than elsewhere, and that of the better sort and the most eloquente fellowes; and also for that there is larger toleration of them here than in other cities, therefore they use to name a Venetian mountebanke for the Coryphæus and principall mountebanke of all Italie. I have observed marvelous strange matters done by some of these mountebankes; moreover, I have scen some of them doe such strange iugling trickes as would be almost incredible to be reported."—Coryat's Crudities. THE cheery sun of a spring morning was shining down upon the waters that flowed around and through Venice-not as he shines upon us here in Britain on an April day, now blotched and blotted out from the face of heaven by a mass of clouds, now struggling through lighter vapours, now laughing them away with his brightness or mocking their tears with his smiles-no, but looking down through a cloudless sky, in which there was not one fleck of white to chequer the universal blue, and scarce a breeze to temper a warmth that would be to us at home as the heat of summer. The hour was, judging from the sun's elevation, midway between dawn and noon; and the gondolas were skimming to and fro along lagunes and canals, just as hackney-coaches in the days that are now gone by, and Hansoms and cabs at present, ply through our metropolis, only in a manner far more easy to the half-recumbent body, and more picturesque to the half-closed eyes. As one of these aquatic coaches sped along through the Canale Grande, close by the water's edge, it was encountered by a similar vehicle, which shot suddenly from under one of the low narrow bridges that span the smaller canals which everywhere open into the principal one, as the smaller arteries into the great ones. Accidents of this sort will even still sometimes happen in Venice now-a-days, notwithstanding the marvellous skill and dexterity of the gondoliers; and, of course, there is no reason why the oars and men of five hundred years ago should be exempt from a casualty which their modern successors cannot always avoid. The boatmen of the respective gondolas commenced forthwith to indulge in that species of vituperation which, in all times, seems to have been a favourite mode of warfare with the propellers of conveyances when impeded in their motion, from the days of Juvenal, who commemorates the "stantis convicia mandra," to those of our own days, when our ears have been edified with the maledictory slang in which London cabmen apostrophise each other's eyes when they meet and obstruct each other in a narrow thoroughfare. The gentleman, for such he was, who sat within the first-mentioned gondola started up and drew back the curtains, with the intention, very probably, of personally resenting the insolence of the other gondolier, in case he found that his fare was of a sex and constitution with whom he could quarrel; and, indeed, such results were not very uncommon amongst a people where the blood was as quick as the pride was sensitive. How the matter might have ended it would be difficult to say, nor indeed would it, as will appear, be very important to speculate, had it not so happened that at the same moment the occupant of the assailing gondola-for such we consider the one which came from the smaller canal was-also pulled aside the curtain which screened him, and they both were face to face. An exclamation of surprise was uttered at the same moment by each of the gentlemen. "Jacques!" cried the one. "Giulio!" cried the other. "Pardieu!" replied the stranger in an accent that had something of the farther side of the Alps in it. "Pardieu, my dear Polani, it may be so, yet, nevertheless, here I am, and I assure you I count myself fortunate that almost the first respectable face I have seen since my arrival in your bella Venetzia should be that of so dear a friend. Ben trovato, ben trovato!" "Well, and whither are you going now, Jacques ?” 66 Faith, nowhere in particular, Giulio; I was about to kill an hour or two at this unfashionable time of day, and for that purpose I put myself into the care of this worthy, ce monsieur le gondolier, who has, as you perceive, made so excellent an attempt just now to kill your humble servant instead of his enemy, Time. Ma foi, I should not much like to make much acquaintance with the bottom of your canals; and as to the surface, we have been shooting this half hour through all sorts of dykes that look like over-grown sewers, and under little, low bridges that make one involuntarily take off his bonnet and bow his head in token of respect for such stupendous creations." "Or out of regard for your own aigrette and feather, and your exquisite chevelure, Jacques," added Giulio, laughing. "But come, my friend, you shall put yourself under my guidance. Let your gondolier put round," said he, making a sign to the boatman; "I was just going to the Palazzo Polani, which is close at hand here, when those fellows knocked the heads of their boats together." The men obeyed the signal, and both gondolas skimmed side by side along the water for a short distance, till they stopped beside a flight of marble steps that, rising from the water, led up to the portico of the Palazzo Polani. The two gentlemen left their gondolas, and ascending the steps passed into the mansion. "Well, Taddeo," said the gondolier of Count Giulio to him' who had rowed the stranger, "what hast thou got there," lad? Thou lookest as if thou wert bitten by a tarantola? Has the stranger, with all his bravery, given thee base coin or a paltry zecchino ?" "Proprio il diavolo! no such thing, Christophero," replied the man addressed, who was intently regarding something in his hand. 'The eccelenza is a true noble, a lord or a prince, or an emperor mayhap. Look you, 'tis a real yellow golden piece," and he held it up between his finger and thumb admiringly. "A golden florin, by St. Nicholas !" cried the other. "Thou art in good luck to-day, Taddeo mio. But thou knowest one half of that is a 'buonmano,' and thou art bound to drink the health of his excellency. So come, lad, thou shalt take me with thee to aid in doing him honour. Besides, thou owest me something for running foul of me just now." "Cospetto, no, Christophero; 'twas thine own fault entirely; thou knowest very well thou shouldst not have kept so close to the riva; 'tis against the ordinances. Faith, if I were to have thee up before the Signori alle acque,' I trow they would lay upon thee smartly in the shape of fine." "Well, well," said the other, "whoever was in the wrong, thou hast got the best fare and I the most damage. See you how the side of your boat has bent the iron of my prow and well-nigh broken it in two; but I bear thee no malice, Taddeo." "Nay, for the matter of that," said the other, "I will keep K |