Flowers can easily be taken from nature in the following manner: A A, D D, is a frame of deal, made light, and about two feet long, and eight or ten inches in width. The part D D is made to slide in a groove in A A, so that the frame may be lengthened or shortened at pleasure. A vertical frame, C, is fixed to the part D, and two grooved upright pieces, B B, fixed to the other part. These uprights should be about nine inches high, and C half that height. There is also a piece of wood at the end A of the frame, marked D, with a small hole for the eye, and there is a hole in the top C opposite to it. S is a piece of glass, sliding in the grooves in B B. In the hole H is placed the flower or flowers to be copied. If a group is wished, more holes should be made, and the flowers carefully arranged. The eye being directed to this through the hole in E, it can be sketched on the glass by means of a pencil of lithographic chalk. It is afterwards copied through by slipping the glass out, laying it on a table, and placing over it a piece of tracing-paper. When traced on the paper, proceed as before to make the formulas.
Of course, so delicate a thing as white velvet will be found at length to soil. When this is the case, it can be dyed without in any way injuring the painting. Dye in this manner: Get an old slate-frame, or make a wire frame; add to it a handle, thus; then tie over it a network of pack-thread; next, cut a piece of cardboard the exact size of your group, so as completely to cover it, the edges of the cardboard being cut into all the ins and outs of the outer line of the group; then placing it carefully over the painting, so as to fit exactly, lay a weight on it to keep it in place. Then dip a large brush into the dye, hold the frame over the velvet (which should be stretched out flat—to nail the corners to a drawing-board is best), and by brushing across the network, a rain of dye will fall on the velvet beneath. Do not let the frame touch the velvet; it should be held some little way up. Then just brush the velvet itself with the brush of dye, to make all smooth, and leave the velvet nailed to the board till it is dry. Groups, whether freshly done, or dyed, are greatly improved, when perfectly dry, by being brushed all over with a clean and rather soft hat-brush, as it renders any little roughness, caused by putting on the paint too wet, completely smooth and even as before. Music-stools, the front of pianos, ottomans, banner-screens, pole-screens, and borders for table-cloths, look very handsome when done in this manner.
INTERESTING DISCOVERY AT JERUSALEM.
THE following, from a letter dated Jerusalem, May 16, 1853, has been sent by Mr. James Cook Richmond, for publication. "I was spending a couple of days in Artas, the hortus clusus of the monks, and probably the 'garden inclosed' of the Canticles, when I was told there was a kind of tunnel under the Pool of Solomon. I went and found one of the most interesting things that I have seen in my travels, and of which no one in Jerusalem appears to have heard. I mentioned it to the British Consul, and to the Rev. Mr. Nicolayson, who has been here more than twenty years, and they have never heard of it. At the centre of the eastern side of the lowest of the three pools, there is an entrance nearly closed up; then follows a vaulted passage some 50 feet long, leading to a chamber about 15 feet square and 8 feet high, also vaulted; and from this there is a passage, also arched, under the pool, and intended to convey the water of a spring, or of the pool itself, into the aqueduct which leads to Jerusalem, and is now commonly attributed to Pontius Pilate. This arched passage is six feet high, and three or four feet wide. Each of the two other pools has a similar arched way, which has not been blocked up, and one of which I saw by descending first into the rectangular well. The great point of interest in this discovery is this: It has now been thought for some years that the opinion of the invention of the arch by the Romans has been too hastily adopted. The usual period assigned to the arch is about B. C. 600. We thought we discovered a contradiction of this idea in Egypt, but the present case is far more satisfactory. The whole of the long passage of 50 feet, the chamber 15 feet square, the two doors, and the passage under the pools in each case, are true 'Roman' arches, with a perfect keystone. Now, as it has never been seriously doubted that Solomon built the pools ascribed to him, and to which he probably refers in Ecclesiastes ii. 6, the arch must of course have been well known about or before the time of the building of the first temple, B. C. 1012. The 'sealed fountain,' which is near, has the same arch in several places; but this might have been Roman. But here the arched ways pass probably the whole distance under the pools, and are therefore at least coeval with them, or were rather built before them, in order to convey the water down the valley. What I saw convinced me that the perfect keystone Roman arch was in familiar use in the time of Solomon, or 1,000 years before the Christian era."
A BLOOMER AMONG US.
BY PAULINE FORSYTH.