from the ground, is nine feet. Charcoalburners have a predilection for the wood which would not meet with approval in Japan; and it is much used for anchors and tool-helves, being very close and finegrained. It is too heavy to float when green, but dried it is not particularly weighty. The sap may be collected at all times, except when the fruit is on the trees, from Pyatho to Taboung - the first three months of the English year. Then it is thin, and does not produce such a brilliant polish. The collection is simple enough. Incisions are made in the stem, and the sap trickles into bamboos placed to catch it; when it is to be kept any time there must be a depth of two or three inches of water on the top, otherwise it would dry up and become solid. The water, however, does not improve it. The best varnish- -thit-see a-young_tin· is that which has been just drawn from the tree; second quality contains twenty-five per cent. of water, and inferior as much as fifty. FOR a long time it was assumed that Japanese and Chinese lacquered goods were simply papier-mâché. A popular fancy for the ware has brought to the knowledge of all who care for the information that it is really wood of different kinds painted over with the juice of the urushi-tree. Should fashion ever inspire a similar enthusiasm for Burmese productions of the same kind, it is probable that it may be supposed that these also are composed of solid wood, and people will wonder at the extreme thinness and flexibility of the finer specimens. But it is only the coarsest ware which is thus produced. All the better boxes and cups are made of a woven basket-work of slips of The articles made are chiefly drinkingbamboo. The varnish used on them is, cups and betel-boxes, consisting of a cyl like the Japanese lacquer, the sap obtained indrical inner case, in which are fitted two from the stem of a tree, and has nothing or three trays for holding the lime, betelwhatever to do with the insect-produced vine leaves, cutch, nuts, and other ingredi lac, such as English varnishers employ in ents for betel-chewing, the whole covered solution with alcohol. I am not botanist by an outer lid reaching to the bottom of enough to know whether the urushi the inner case. Ordinary kohn-itt betel(Rhus vernicefera), the Japanese tree, is boxes are three or four inches high and identical with the Burman thit-see (Mela- two and a half to three in diameter. Arnorrhæa usitatissima), or even whether it ticles of the same shape are made of is of the same genus or order. Thit-see all sizes up to a couple of feet or more in (literally tree-oil) is dark in color from the height, these last being used for holding moment it is gathered, whereas the urushi clothes and women's working materials. sap is described as being light yellow The bee-itt, ladies' toilet-boxes, are often when first extracted, and only turning the most delicate and carefully worked. black after considerable exposure to the The actresses always carry splendid specair. The urushi has been cultivated by imens about with them to contain their royal order for hundreds of years in Ja- combs, oils, scent, the white lead and pan; but in Burma no one troubles him- thana'kha for the complexion, and a few self much about national manufactures, tresses of false hair. Other articles are and the thit-see bin grows wild in the jun- the pyramidal tamin-sa oht, used for gle; and not even near Nyoung Oo, where carrying food to the monasteries and the nearly every household in the town is pagodas, fashioned somewhat in the style occupied in the trade, not even there do I of the sacred spires of five or seven roofs, remember seeing a regular plantation of and of all sizes, from eighteen inches to the trees. Nevertheless it is plentiful the huge things, the height of a man, enough, and affords a magnificent specta- which the king sends under the royal umcle when it is in flower a huge forest brellas to the Arrakan Pagoda in Mandatree covered so thickly with creamy-white lay. Byat, platters of all sizes, up to the blossoms that the leaves cannot be seen. gigantic article as big as a small table used The flowers have a fragrant scent not un- for dishing up the family dinner, are always like that of apples, and the needy and prac- made of wood, like the Japan ware. The tical Burman often makes a very accepta- Burmans do not think much of them, and ble curry of the buds. In full-grown trees they are therefore almost always quite the average height to the first branch is plain- either black or red. There is no thirty feet, and the ordinary girth, six feet | inferiority to the Japanese in capacity for making fantastic designs; and the future may see great developments in this branch of the art. most ingenious way. The black box is put on the lathe again and turned round, while the lines and spots, and the form of The process of manufacture is as fol- the black pattern generally, is sketched on lows. Little basket-like boxes of the with a soht, or split style, charged with required size and shape are woven of fine thit-see. The drawer has no guide but bamboo wicker-work, upon round pieces his eye. There is no preliminary mapping of wood prepared and firmly fixed for the out, yet a practised hand will never make purpose. The bamboos used, which are a mistake and spoil a box. The fresh usually split and cleaned by the women thit-see thus put on stands up above the and children, are of different kinds, that general level of the surface. The whole called myin wah being the most highly box is now covered with red paint; and esteemed. Similarly the yet, or woven when this is dry the box is put on the basket-work, is of different degrees of ex- lathe again, and the operator turns it cellence, the kyoung lehn yet being the round and rubs it steadily with ashes. finest. Some of the Shan and the better By this means the red paint is removed workmen at Nyoung Oo are celebrated for where the lines of thit-see rise above the the delicacy of their work. On this is general surface, and the black pattern then evenly applied with the hand (so that stands out clearly on the red ground. A the slightest particle of sand or dirt may be quaint chequer-work is also always proat once detected) a coat of the pure wood-duced, where the slightly projecting edges oil. This is then put away to dry-not in of the bamboo wicker-work raise the black the sun, which is apt to pucker and blister wood-oil through the vermilion layer. it, but in a cool, airy place. Some careful Still, however, we are not finished. No workmen have often an underground room box is complete without three colors; and prepared specially for the purpose. After this last shade is applied in an equally sim-· three days it is quite dry, and is then lib-ple and effective way. The desired pattern erally and evenly covered over with a paste is incised with a graving-tool called a kouk called thahyoh. This is made in a variety often nothing more elaborate than a of ways; the commonest being a mixture of finely sifted teak sawdust, thit-see, and rice-water. But instead of the sawdust, or often mixed with it, finely ground boneash, or paddy-husk burnt and strained through a cloth, is kneaded in. In the coarse common articles for every-day use, tempered clay and some other materials When the design is complete a clear are often used; but this, being thicker varnish of another vegetable oil, called and less putty-like, is apt to scale and shan-shee, with a little thit-see in it, is apcome off in flakes, especially if at all plied, and, if necessary, a high polish is roughly used. This thahyoh is allowed to effected by rubbing with the powdered dry quite hard, and the box is then fas- petrified wood found so useful in imparttened to a rude lathe, which is turned with ing a gloss to the alabaster images. The one hand while the other is employed in patterns are none of them very intricate, polishing the box. This smoothing-down and are handed down as heirlooms from is effected with sifted ashes, or some- father to son, so that the same family will times with a piece of silicious bamboo, have all its ware made on a few clearly which is as good as fine sand-paper. defined models, and there is no fear of When this is done the box is ready for a "spoiling a set." The invention does fresh coat, which almost invariably con- not as yet soar beyond scroll-work and sists of a mixture of finely powdered bone-line-figures of infinite variety; but should ashes and thit-see. This, after drying, is a foreign demand spring up there would polished in the same way as before. We be no lack of skill to meet it; just as the have now a box of a brilliant glossy black, Rangoon tattooers have taken to copying in itself very pretty, and fit for use any pictures out of the Graphic on English where. But this is only the end of the sailors' breasts. The supreme test of exfirst stage: none but the byat and com-cellence in the manufacture is when the mon wooden platters are left in this state. The ground-color of almost all the cups and boxes is red; but some of the black wood-oil is required to rise through it and define the pattern. This is effected in a pin firmly tied to a piece of stick. Then the whole box is coated over with the new color, and this is in its turn polished off on the lathe till nothing remains but the lines of the engraved pattern. If another color is required, a similar process is gone through. sides will bend in till they touch without cracking the varnish or breaking the wicker-work. Connoisseurs can discriminate between Shan, Nyoung Oo, and the ware of other places by the shadow thrown Thit-see is a witness on the inside (which is varnished plain sion that it acts as a preventive. The red or black) when the cup or box is held capriciousness with which the varnish at an angle of forty-five. Three colors acts, leaving some men quite unharmed only are used besides the black ground- and punishing others severely, has given work; but variety is produced by varying rise to a proverb in Nyoung Oo: their intensity of shade. They are red, green, and yellow. Red is prepared from finely ground vermilion mixed with shanshee. The Nyoung Oo people prefer a vermilion called hinthapadee yuè, prepared by themselves, to that procured from China and used elsewhere. The home made stuff seems to be much brighter in tint. Myay-nee-red ochre is used only with the coarsest work. For yellow, yellow orpiment is ground down and washed several times until a THE Giustiniani are one of the few nopure, impalpable powder remains. This ble Venetian houses which still survive. is mixed with a pellucid gum, and when They belong to the twenty-four original required for use worked up with shan- families who ruled as tribunes over the see. Green is obtained by adding finely Venetian islands, and can prove a progenground indigo to the yellow orpiment un-itor in the middle of the eighth century. til the required tint is obtained. Red and yellow are, however, always the predominating colors. The thit-see is turned to a variety of other uses besides the manufacture of lacquer-work. Applied to wood, or to marble and clay images, it enables them readily to take on gilding. It is used to varnish all the umbrellas in the country, and makes them as impervious to rain as if they were made of wood, while it protects the palm-leaf against the rays of the sun, which otherwise would burn it as brittle as an egg-shell. All the racing and war boats in the country are painted with it, and the best caulking in the world could not make them more water-tight. Finally, boiled down thick it furnishes the material for delineating the square, heavy characters of the sacred Kamma-WahSah, the ritual for admission to the Sacred Order. From The Pall Mall Gazette. THE GIUSTINIANI. But not content with this respectable antiquity, they have sought a mythic pedigree, and trace their descent through eleven emperors of Constantinople back to Justinian, from whom they claim their name, and, further still, to the founders of Athens. This is certainly ancient enough, and surpasses the descent of the Gordons, who are said to have come "from Greece to Gaul and thence into Scotland," or the pedigree of a famous Sir James Stewart of Kirkfield (temp. 1600) who claimed to be "fifty-fourth in descent from Fergus I. of Scotland, contemporary of Alexander the Great and Darius the Mede." To have gone much further back would have been dangerous, for it would have brought these noble families within a measurable distance of Adam. The consecutive history of the Giustiniani begins in the year 1170, and begins with a story which at once gives them The oil is usually put in the sun for a a distinction, for it has not fallen to the short time before being used, and is at lot of many noble houses to possess the first of a light-brown color, soon darken-blood of a beato in their veins. ing into a brilliant black. It seems to be of a particularly mordant character, and raises huge blisters on the hands of some people, leaving marks of the ashy-white color suggestive of leprosy. Hence strangers suspected of being afflicted with the terrible malady always declare they are thit-see workers; and many people avoid these latter, in case they might find they had been holding communication with an outcast. A lotion composed of fine teakwood sawdust, mixed with a little water, is used as a cure for the blains. Many of the workmen periodically swallow small doses of the wood-oil, under the impres The Venetians were at war with the emperor Manuel I., and the whole family of Giustiniani followed their doge to the Levant except one lad Nicolò, who was a monk in a monastery on the Lido. The Venetians took the island of Chios; but while wintering there a fierce plague broke out among the fleet, so that the doge returned to Venice the following year with only sixteen ships out of a hundred and twenty. In this expedition the whole stock of the Giustiniani had been killed either by plague or in battle, and the family seemed doomed to extinction. But the loss of such a vigorous race was deemed a public that which connects them with two noble English houses, Clifford and Radcliffe, and makes the Giustiniani-Bandini of Rome holders of the earldom of Newburgh. This branch of the family left Venice very early. They are descended from Piero, grandson of the Blessed Nicolò, the savior of his house. Piero was lord of Chios, but his family were driven out by the Turks, and sought refuge in Rome. The earldom of Newburgh passed by a succession of heiresses into the family of Charles, titular Earl of Derwentwater, and brother to James, the ill-starred calamity; the government therefore petitioned the pope to release Nicolò from his vows and to allow him to marry. The pope assented. Nicolò was formally made a layman once more, and married the doge's daughter. They had a family of nine sons and three daughters. After thus re-establishing his house upon this solid basis, Nicolo retired again to his cloister, where he won such a reputation for holiness that after his death the Church bestowed on him the title of "Blessed Confessor." His wife founded a nunnery on one of the islands near Torcello, where she died. The people gave her the rank of her hus-earl who lost his head in 1716 on Towerband; she was afterwards known as the "Blessed Ann." hill-where Charles also shared the same fate in 1746-through the families of Clifford of Chudleigh and Mahony into that of Giustiniani-Bandini where it now rests. A far cry for a Scotch earldom! Marc The family thus strangely preserved continued to flourish, and to such good purpose that in the sixteenth century there were as many as fifty different The family had its share of soldiers, branches of the Giustiniani, and two hun- men of letters, and doubtful characters; dred nobles of Venice bore that name. all of them noted with equal impartiality They counted among their illustrious two in the family tree. They broke into conmore beati and a saint, Lorenzo, first vents, brawled, stabbed, fought, and patriarch of Venice. Lorenzo lived in a wrote; they served their country in many palace of his family well known to most capacities, but only one of them reached visitors to Venice, for it is now the Al- the highest dignity in the State. bergo Europa; and here the company of antonio was doge in the year 1687, when "the hose," in the days of its greatest Morosini took the Morea the last splendor, gave many celebrated entertain- achievement of Venetian arms - and ments. The Giustiniani were prominent when a Venetian bomb destroyed the members of this famous club, called "of Parthenon. There is a curious and rare the hose" from the tight-fitting breeches medal of this doge, struck to commemowhich the companions wore. The uni-rate the alliance of the emperor, the king form of a certain Francesco Giustiniani of Poland, and the Venetians against the is recorded by the chroniclers; he wore Turk. On the obverse stand the three hose of which the left leg was crimson contracting parties holding a chain in a and the right divided lengthwise in azure circle between them. On the reverse the and violet, and embroidered with a cy-eagle of Poland is picking out the eyes of press bough. The family owned many a hound, while the lion of St. Mark tears other palaces in various quarters of the its forequarters; the Imperial eagle flutcity; but the two most notable are those ters its wings over the whole. The meanwhich stand at the corner of the Grand ing is explained by this legend, which Canal where it turns towards the Rialto. would surely satisfy the most bitter and One of them now goes by the name of the modern hater of the Turk: Palazzo Foscari, because it was bought by that unfortunate doge; but it was really built by members of the Giustiniani house. On the strength of their alleged descent from Theodora, sister of Justinian, the family placed their arms on the front of their palace thus: on an eagle displayed or, a shield azure, a fesse or; much as the Earls of Denbigh bear their arms, only the eagle of the Austrian Empire is black, while the imperial bird of Constantinople is golden. The Council of Ten, however, called the family to order, and forbade any Venetian nobleman for the future to display either lilies or eagles. Not the least remarkable point in the history of the Giustiniani is Durch diesem Bund The seventeenth century proved disastrous to the Gustiniani; and out of the fifty branches of this noble house only four remain. They were characteristically represented in the last act of the republic by a hero and a traitor. Angelo Giustiniani withstood Napoleon to his face at Treviso, and armed the citizens against him, while his kinsman Leonardo was urging the Senate to surrender to the conqueror and to abolish that aristocratic government of which his own family had been such famous members. From Modern Thought. off in respect to health than a rich man, who is fighting to amass and to hold his MENTAL work can, as a rule, only be riches. There is nothing like it as a carried out for lengths of time and suc- means of retirement from the hurry-scurry cessfully by persons who are originally of of life. Harriet Martineau, it will be revery sound constitution. There are very membered by many, tells in her autobiogfew exceptions to this rule, and in mak-raphy how she would sometimes sit down ing this observation I am speaking from to literature, and looking up at the clock, an experience which few possess, inas- would discover that several hours had much as for a long part of my professional passed away, as if they had been minutes life I have been brought specially into rather than hours, and I can for my own contact with those who are engaged in part fully bear out this kind of experience. almost all the departments of literature. I do not say that this degree of absorption My experience is that those who are not is in itself intrinsically good; I am sure habitually strong and have fair health that by the interruption of physical activ. pass out of the work of literature alto-ity which it induces, it is a source of gether, some by death, but far more by injury, but it is safety compared with the transition into other spheres of labor. I bustle, strain, expectation, and hazard am quite aware, of course, that there are connected with other forms of human exceptions to this rule, and that some labor. A third explanation is that mental very bright and great characters in letters work, except when carried to extremes, have not been of the healthiest type. favors nutritive changes, and at the same Pope has often been adduced in illustra- time prevents the worker from indulging tion of this fact, and Johnson, and Cow-in hurtful luxuries and modes of life that per, and Keats. But these must really be interfere with the performance of successtaken as exceptions, and in regard to ful work. The successful mental laborer Johnson I should infer that, although he is soon made conscious of the truth that was of a nervous lymphatic temperament, if he indulges heavily at the table, that if and of strenuous diathesis, yet that he he partakes freely of wine or other strong was very strong, that he had the facility drink, that if he reduces his hours of of acquiring rest and strength through sleep below the natural requirement, he prolonged lethargy, and was capable of cannot perform his necessary amount of sustaining periods of excessive fatigue; labor, and that what is done under such that he wrote "Rasselas" in three weeks circumstances fails to come up to the is perhaps a sufficient proof of this sup- mark, and had better have been let alone position. Putting aside the exceptions, altogether. So it occurs that our best the evidence of the general rule is ex men, those who leave behind them the traordinarily clear. Defoe must have records that live in history, pursue more been a model of strength and endurance; even lives than their fellows, and in that Scott could hardly have been less favored; way attain a greater length of days. A Newton, though delicate, was always further explanation of the advantages of healthily active when he could get his mental work is supplied in the circumeight to nine hours of sleep; Christopher stance that mental workers are not exWren must have been a marvel of posed to physical shocks and vicissitudes strength, and in a word all in the main of weather like persons engaged in less who have lived to influence the world by protracted occupations. They may travel, their thought have originally had the and many of them do travel far and wide sound mind based on the sound body.it is a propensity with them to see the Here, then, alone we have a basic reason world but travel, in their case, partakes why mental workers should, on the whole, of refined pleasure, in which they are purpresent a good range of longevity. A suing their avocation with variety of second explanation of the advantages of thought and observation, and by which mental work is that such work, by the the weariness of travel is greatly alle love of it, by the absorption in it which it viated; while in their own homes they are brings to the worker, relieves the mind protected from extremes of heat and cold, from the corroding influence of the pas- and are enabled to live a methodical life, sions, and saves thereby the wear and with regularity of meals, and regularity of tear of life in the most extreme degree. times for recreation, rest, and sleep. A poor man of letters is, in fact, far better |