Chats on Old Miniatures

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laze. As in the case of illuminated manuscripts, we find the earliest instances of the use of enamel in Egypt, and Dr. Birch is our authority for believing that there was a method of inlaying glass, jasper, and lapis lazuli, which resembled enamel in effect, employed as far back as the Fourth Egyptian Dynasty-that is to say, some four thousand years before

he covers of missals, chalices, crosses, and objects of a like nature abound. On many of these there are what may, in a sense, be termed portraits of saints and ecclesiastical dignitaries; but it is obvious that no attempt at likeness, as we moderns understand it, can have been made in this work of the fourth to the eleventh centuries. This Byzantine style and influence, which have left suc

ts were then fixed upright upon the plate. The metal outline being thus arranged, the intervening spaces were filled with the different enamels, reduced to a fine powder and moistened into a paste. The piece was then placed in the furnace, and when the fusion was complete, was withdrawn, with certain precautions that the cooling migh

J. H