To pass to the Roman cemeteries of Lyons: in the museum of that town are some curious masses of blue frit taken lately from a tomb on the Fourvière, which call to mind the fritted cobalt or smalt exported in modern times from the Saxon mines. We have in the British Museum many pieces of glass from older explorations at the adjacent suburb of St. Irénée. There is in the Lyons Museum a sepulchral stele of much interest found in this very district; it is to the memory of a certain Julius Alexander, a citizen of Carthage, a craftsman in the art of glass (_opifici artis vitreæ_). This Punic glass-blower left behind him children and grandchildren, who doubtless followed his trade. We must not infer too much from a single instance; we know, however, from other sources,[51] that there was a large influx into Gaul at this time of Semitic people, chiefly of a humble status, craftsmen and small merchants, and that they found their way in above all by the valley of the Rhone. These ubiquitous traders are generally referred to as Syrians, and I think it likely that the glass trade, not only in the south of Gaul but further afield, may have been in great measure in the hands of Orientals of this class. This would be especially true of the manufacture and hawking about of small objects of _verroterie_,[52] and again of glass pastes containing lead. But perhaps also the preparation of the more ambitious and artistic kinds of glass was in the same hands, leaving only the common ware to the native workmen; in that case the distinction so important in later days between the _cristallo_ and the ‘forest-glass’ may have had its prototype in Roman times. It should be borne in mind that these Semitic craftsmen would for the most part speak Greek rather than Latin, an important point that I have not space to develop here. As we pass to Northern Gaul we find examples of a glass of a pronounced greenish tint more and more predominating—bulky urns, square and spherical, and jugs with ‘claw’ handles. All of these forms we are familiar with in England. The museums of Amiens and Boulogne are especially rich in this glass, and in Paris the local finds are well represented in the Musée Carnavalet.