very modern-looking pirouettes; of exercises in wrestling, games of ball, games of chance like chess or checkers, of throwing knives at a mark, of the modern thimblerig, wooden dolls for children, curiously carved wooden boxes, dice, and toy-balls.  There are men and women playing on harps, flutes, pipes, cymbals, trumpets, drums, guitars, and tambourines.  Glass was, till recently, believed to be a modern invention, unknown to the ancients.  But we find it commonly used as early as the age of Osertasen I., more than three thousand eight hundred years ago; and we have pictures of glass-blowing and of glass bottles as far back as the fourth dynasty.  The best Venetian glass-workers are unable to rival some of the old Egyptian work; for the Egyptians could combine all colors in one cup, introduce gold between two surfaces of glass, and finish in glass details of feathers, etc., which it now requires a microscope to make out.  It is evident, therefore, that they understood the use of the magnifying-glass.  The Egyptians also imitated successfully the colors of precious stones, and could even make statues thirteen feet high, closely resembling an emerald.  They also made mosaics in glass, of wonderfully brilliant colors.  They could cut glass, at the most remote periods.  Chinese bottles have also been found in previously unopened tombs of the eighteenth dynasty, indicating commercial intercourse reaching as far back as that epoch.  They were able to spin and weave, and color cloth; and were acquainted with the use of mordants, the wonder in modern calico-printing.  Pliny describes this process as used in Egypt, but evidently without understanding its nature.  Writing-paper made of the papyrus is as old as the Pyramids.  The Egyptians tanned leather and made shoes; and the shoemakers on their benches are represented working exactly like ours.  Their carpenters used axes, saws, chisels, drills, planes, rulers, plummets, squares, hammers, nails, and hones for sharpening.  They also understood the use of glue in cabinet-making, and there are paintings of veneering, in which a piece of thin dark wood is fastened by glue to a coarser piece of light wood.  Their boats were propelled by sails on yards and masts, as well as by oars.  They used the blow-pipe in the manufacture of gold chains and other ornaments.  They had rings of gold and silver for money, and weighed it in scales of a careful construction.  Their hieroglyphics are carved on the hardest granite with a delicacy and accuracy which indicates the use of some metallic cutting instrument, probably harder than our best steel.  The siphon was known in the fifteenth century before Christ.  The most singular part of their costume was the wig, worn by all the higher classes, who constantly shaved their heads, as well as their chins,—­which shaving of the head is supposed by Herodotus to be the reason of the thickness of the Egyptian skull.  They frequently wore false beards.  Sandals, shoes, and low boots,