The glass villages are scattered all through the mountainous districts, whose ridges, and summits, and upper ranges are covered with a forest, which extends forty or fifty miles in length, by thirty broad; the fabriquants maintain that the finer glass cannot be brought to perfection but by wood heat, and hence, the glass fabriques are only to be found in these vast forests. One of the most interesting natural formations within this circle is the volcanic rock, called "Spirlingstein," which shoots up out of a little valley on the right bank of the Elbe crowned with a shattered mass of natural towers and turrets which it is difficult to believe, till closely examined, are not the ruins of one of those feudal holds crowning the summits of so many of the hills in Bohemia. Every village has its school, in which are to be found all the children too old for the nursery, and too young to be employed. Several I visited contained as many as three hundred; the specimens of their writing are beautiful, some quite like engraving; the eldest child, whose specimen I saw, was only thirteen; they sing most sweetly, and many accompanying themselves on the guitar, the schoolmaster being almost always a musician, and capable of playing two or three instruments. There is a church and good organ in each village, and a very good choir entirely composed of these villagers, all of whom play some instrument, and form the choir by turns, generally directed by the schoolmaster. Some of these amateur bands play exquisitely, as an idea may be formed by the families or communities who occasionally visit England, and who are often from a district such as I have described, and whose sole instruction has been that which they could pick up from each other in their hours of recreation. At the fabrique of A. Kittls-Erben of Kreibitz, while at dinner in the garden, and which was provided by the hospitality of the fabriquant, and in great profusion, with a variety of Hungarian and Bohemian wines, I observed a little girl of twelve years of age, who came into the bower with a guitar, and while I was looking round for the performer, the master of the fabrique lifted the little girl on a chair, and laid a music book before her, from which she played and sang a number of Bohemian songs with much taste and execution. All the instruction she ever had was from the schoolmaster, who taught her during the leisure hours of the scholars. She was an orphan, and brought up by the fabriquant. After dinner we walked up the valley to visit a fabrique of Chichorie; in the way I remarked a little cottage, like the rest, with its fruit-trees and garden, but which had, in addition to its projecting roof and windows filled with flowers, both in pots and _Bohemian glass_ vases, verandahs in carved oak, the scroll-work of which was quite classic, and the execution admirable. While I stopped to examine this, the fabriquant who accompanied me remarked that the owners were makers of musical instruments. On