Here you see the bead, and the funny little pictures on it.  The pictures mean this:  “The good Queen Ramaka, the loved of Athor, protectress of Thebes.”  This Queen Ramaka was the wife of a king who reigned in Thebes more than three thousand years ago, which is certainly a very long time for a little glass bead to remain unbroken!  The great city of Thebes, where it was made, has been in ruins for hundreds of years.  No doubt this bead was part of a necklace that Queen Ramaka wore, and esteemed as highly as ladies now value their rubies.  It was found in the ruins of Thebes by an Englishman.

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It may be thought that this bead contradicts what has been said about there being a time when glass was unknown, and that time only a few centuries ago.  But it is a singular fact that a nation will perfectly understand some art or manufacture that seems absolutely necessary to men’s comfort and convenience, and yet this art in time will be completely lost, and things that were in common use will pass as completely out of existence as if they had never been, until, in after ages, some of them will be found among the ruins of cities and in old tombs.  In this way we have found out that ancient nations knew how to make a great many things that enabled them to live as comfortably and luxuriously as we do now.  But these things seem to have perished with the nations who used them, and for centuries people lived comfortlessly without them, until, in comparatively modern times, they have all been revived.

Glass-making is one of these arts.  It was known in the early ages of the world’s history.  There are pictures that were painted on tombs two thousand years before Christ’s birth which represent men blowing glass, pretty much as it is done now, while others are taking pots of it out of the furnaces in a melted state.  But in those days it was probably costly, and not in common use; but the rich had glass until the first century after Christ, when it disappeared, and the art of making it was lost.

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The city of Venice was founded in the fifth century, and here we find that glass-making had been revived.  You will see by this picture of a Venetian bottle how well they succeeded in the manufacture of glass articles.

Venice soon became celebrated for this manufacture, and was for a long time the only place where glass was made.  The manufacturers took great pains to keep their art a secret from other nations, and so did the government, because they were all growing rich from the money it brought into the city.

In almost any part of the world to which you may chance to go you will find Silica.  You may not know it by that name, but it is that shining, flinty substance you see in sand and rock-crystal.  It is found in a very great number of things besides these two, but these are the most common.

Lime is also found everywhere—­in earth, in stones, in vegetables and bones, and hundreds of other substances.