among the potters, and learned all that could be gathered of their work from them.  But he was bound to home and its cares and duties, and so, alone, unaided, and without sympathy, must he work.  Nothing daunted, however, by these drawbacks, his resolve was taken—to complete his invention, or perish in the attempt.

Before retiring to rest that night, Palissy, as his custom was, devoutly opened the sacred volume; and turning to the thirty-fifth chapter of Exodus, he read how God called by name Bezaleel, the son of Uri, and filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, and to devise curious works, in gold, in silver, in brass, and in cutting of stones, and in carving of wood, in all manner of cunning work.  “Then I reflected,” said he, “that God had gifted me with some knowledge of drawing, and I took courage in my heart, and besought him to give me wisdom and skill.”

Palissy lost no time in setting to work.  He began by making a furnace which he thought most likely to suit his purpose, and having bought a quantity of earthen pots, and broken them into fragments, he covered these with various chemical compounds which he had pounded and ground, and which he proposed to melt at furnace heat.  His hope was, that of all these mixtures, some one or other might run over the pottery in such a way as to afford him at least a hint towards the composition of white enamel, which he had been told was the basis of all others.  Alas! his first experiment was but the beginning of an endless series of disappointments and losses, while, for many long months and years he wrought with fruitless labor.  But we must not anticipate.  Happily the ardent spirit of our artist suffered him not easily to succumb under difficulties; nay, it even seemed to gather new energy from the struggle, as, with all the fire of love and all the strength of will, he, every day, renewed his experiments, and blundered on with cheerful hope.  It has well been said, “Ideas become passions in the breasts of poets and artists.”

Many months have now passed in this way; and the little family gathering around Palissy’s humble hearth begin to show symptoms that all is not so flourishing as when we first saw them.  Lisette looks thin and worn, and there is a shadow upon her brow.  As she goes down the garden walk to call her husband to his mid-day meal, you see her garments are poor and scanty, and she has no longer the trim look of conscious comeliness about her.  By her side, and clinging to her gown, is a delicate creature, whose pale face tells a sorrowful tale of childish suffering, and the infant she is carrying looks sallow and feeble.  The furnace and shed where Palissy is at work are built at the end of the garden, as far as possible from the house.  Close by, is the road, and beyond it the fields and waste lands; there was no sheltering wall or enclosure near, and when the storm and winds of winter blew, nothing could be more bleak and comfortless.  Palissy has drawn a doleful picture of this scene of his labors.  “I was every night,” he says, “at the mercy of the rains and winds, without help or companionship, except from the owls that screeched on one side, and the dogs that howled upon the other; and oftentimes I had nothing dry upon me, because of the rains that fell.”  At the present time, however, it is looking cozy and picturesque, for the season is spring, and a bright sun is shining overhead.  There is a glad sound, too, proceeding from the shed, over which its owner has trained a cluster-rose, whose tendrils have interwoven themselves among the reeds, and are putting forth their blossoms.  It is the voice of Palissy, chanting in clear sonorous tones, the Psalm which Luther loved so well, and which we sing in the tuneful strains of our unequalled psalmodist—

“God is the refuge of his saints,
When storms of sharp distress invade.”

And the little Nicole, who is busily occupied in mimic pottery-work at the door of the shed, chimes in with his small voice, and beats the time with his wooden spade.  Lisette’s face brightened as she listened, and with cheerful tones, she summoned Bernard indoors, and bade the little boy lead his sister back.

Notwithstanding Palissy’s psalmody and the cheerful face he wore, matters were far from satisfactory at this peculiar juncture.  In fact, he had just undergone a heavy disappointment, and was secretly making up his mind to a step which it cost him a grievous heartache to have recourse to.  Seeing that all his experiments with his own furnace had proved failures, he determined to adopt a new scheme, and send the compositions to be tested in the kiln of some potter.  For this purpose he bought a large stock of crockery, which according to custom, he broke into small fragments; three or four hundreds of which he covered with various mixtures, and sent to a pottery some league and a half off, requesting the workmen to bake this strange batch with their own vessels.  They consented readily to let the amateur potter try his experiments; but alas! when the operation was complete, and the trial pieces were drawn out, they proved absolutely worthless.  Not the smallest appearance of the longed-for enamel was to be seen on any of them.  The cause of the failure was a secret, at the time, to the grievously disappointed Bernard, and he returned home heavily discouraged, for he knew that his wife and children were deprived of many comforts they might have enjoyed, had he continued steadily at his occupation of glass-working and surveying.  What was to be done?  “Begin afresh.”  And so, again he fell to work, compounding and grinding, and sending more batches to the same potters to be baked as before.  This he had continued to do time after time, “with great cost, loss of time, confusion, and sorrow.”

At length a more than usually trying failure had occurred, and many things combined to warn our artist that he must desist for a season and procure some remunerative work.  His home resources were completely exhausted; while the home wants had greatly multiplied, and he could not be blind to the sorrowful looks of the woman he loved, nor indifferent to the necessities of his babes.

Three years had been spent about this work, and, for the present, he was no wiser than when he began, and he resolved now to try his hand at the old trades.  His poor wife urged that food and medicine must be thought of, and she lowered her voice as she added that the doctor had yet to be paid for her confinement, and for physicking their lost darling, whom he said he would soon cure, notwithstanding, she pined and languished like a frost-nipped flower, that fades away and dies.  Poor mother! the tears trickled down her cheeks at the thought; and for all there were still three hungry little mouths to feed, she could not be reconciled to the loss of one of her treasures.  But Palissy would not let her dwell upon this sorrow; he wiped away the tears, and smilingly said, he had