at Beni Hassan, dating from the reign of
Osortasen the First, who lived three thousand years before Christ,
represents Theban glassblowers at work. I told Enrico of this one day
when we were on our way to a glass-factory.

"That's nothing," said Enrico; "it was the glassblowers of Venice who
taught them how," and not a ghost of a smile came across his fine,
burnt-umber face.

There is a story by Pliny about certain Phenician mariners landing on the
shores of a small river in Palestine and making a fire to cook their
food, and afterward discovering that the soda and sand under their pots
had fused into glass. No one now seriously considers that the first
discovery of glass, and for all I know Enrico may be right in his flat
statement that the first glass was made at Venice, "for Venice always
was."

The art of glassmaking surely goes back to the morning of the world. The
glassblower is a classic, like the sower who goes forth to sow, the
potter at his wheel, and the grinding of grain with mortar and pestle.
Thus, too, the art of the mosaicist--who places bright bits of stone and
glass in certain positions so as to form a picture--goes back to the
dawn. The exquisite work in mosaic at Pompeii is the first thing that
impresses the visitor to that silent city. Much of the work there was
done long before the Christian era, and must have then been practised
many centuries to bring it to such perfection.

Young Tiziano from Cadore did not like the mere following of a set
pattern--he introduced variations of his own, and got his nose tweaked
for trying to improve on a good thing. Altogether he seemed to have had a
hard time of it there at Messer Zuccato's mosaic-shop.

The painter's art, then as now, preceded the art of the mosaicist, for
the picture or design to be made in mosaic is first carefully drawn on
paper, and then colored, and the worker in mosaic is supposed simply to
follow copy. When you visit the glass-factories of Venice today, you see
the painted picture tacked up on the wall before the workmen, who with
deft fingers stick the bits of glass into their beds of putty. This
scheme of painting a pattern is in order that cheap help can be employed;
when it began we do not know, but we do know there was a time when the
great artist in mosaic had his design in his head, and materialized it by
rightly placing the bits of glass with his own hands, experimenting,
selecting and rejecting until the thing was right. Bu