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The loss at the Allia had been so great that enough men were not left to guard the walls of the city. It was therefore resolved that those in the vigor of their age should withdraw to the Capitol, taking with them all the provisions in the city; that the priests and Vestal Virgins should convey the objects of religious reverence to Caere; and that the rest of the population should disperse among the neighboring towns. But the aged senators, who had been Consuls or Censors, seeing that their lives were no longer of any service to the state, sat down in the forum on their curule thrones awaiting death. When the Gauls entered the city they found it desolate and deathlike. They marched on, without seeing a human being till they came to the forum. Here they beheld the aged senators sitting immovable, like beings of another world. For some time they gazed in awe at this strange sight, till at length one of the Gauls ventured to go up to M. Papirius and stroke his white beard. The old man struck him on the head with his ivory sceptre; whereupon the barbarian slew him, and all the rest were massacred. The Gauls now began plundering the city; fires broke out in several quarters; and with the exception of a few houses on the Palatine, which the chiefs kept for their own residence, the whole city was burnt to the ground.

I have met with no traces of the Virgin during the years between her Presentation in the Temple and her becoming head girl at Temple College. These years, we may be assured, can hardly have been other than eventful; but incidents, or bits of life, are like living forms--it is only here and here, as by rare chance, that one of them gets arrested and fossilised; the greater number disappear like the greater number of antediluvian molluscs, and no one can say why one of these flies, as it were, of life should get preserved in amber more than another. Talk, indeed, about luck and cunning; what a grain of sand as against a hundredweight is cunning's share here as against luck's. What moment could be more humdrum and unworthy of special record than the one chosen by the artist for the chapel we are considering? Why should this one get arrested in its flight and made immortal when so many worthier ones have perished? Yet preserved it assuredly is; it is as though some fairy's wand had struck the medieval Miss Pinkerton, Amelia Sedley, and others who do duty instead of the Hebrew originals. It has locked them up as sleeping beauties, whose charms all may look upon. Surely the hours are like the women grinding at the mill--the one is taken and the other left, and none can give the reason more than he can say why Gallio should have won immortality by caring for none of "these things."

A scorifier is essentially a roasting dish sufficiently thick to resist, for a time, the corrosive action of the fused metallic oxides it is to contain. The essential property of a cupel is, that it is sufficiently porous to allow the fused oxide to drain into it as fast as it is formed. It should be large enough to absorb the whole of the liquid; and of course must be made of a material upon which the liquid has no corrosive action. Cupels do not bear transport well; hence the assayer generally has to make them, or to supervise their making. A quantity of bone ash is carefully mixed with water so that no lumps are formed, and the mixture is then worked up by rubbing between the hands. The bone ash is sufficiently wet when its cohesion is such that it can be pressed into a lump, and yet be easily crumbled into powder. Cupel moulds should be purchased. They are generally made of turned iron or brass. They consist of three parts (1) a hollow cylinder; (2) a disc of metal; and (3) a piston for compressing the bone ash and shaping the top of the cupel. The disc forms a false bottom for the cylinder. This is put in its place, and the cylinder filled (or nearly so) with the moistened bone ash. The bone ash is then pressed into shape with the piston, and the cupel finished with the help of three or four smart blows from a mallet. Before removing the piston, turn it half-way round upon its axis so as to loosen and smooth the face of the cupel. The cupel is got out by pressing up the disc of metal forming the false bottom; the removal is more easily effected if the mould is somewhat conical, instead of cylindrical, in form. The cupels are put in a warm place to dry for two or three days. A conveniently sized cupel is 1-1/4 inches in diameter and about 3/4 inch high. The cavity of the cupel is about 1/4 inch deep, and something of the shape shown in fig. 5.

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