282 THE STORIES OF NOTED PAINTINGS. 



them, and were only beaten in the end by national treaties. It 

 was at the very commencement of this patriotic outburst that 

 the young son of Speckbacher, one of the prominent leaders, 

 joined a company of sharpshooters against his father's will. He 

 seems very soon to have had the rare fortune to shoot an eagle 

 on the wing, which, by an old custom of these mountaineers, 

 made him the " king of the shooters," and gave him a right to 

 promotion which even his father could not gainsay. With the 

 eagle's plumes as the trophies of the exploit, he is conducted by 

 his company into the presence of his father and the other leaders, 

 at the Boar's Inn of St. Johann. We know that the brave 

 pleading face of that boy obtained the pardon he sought, for his 

 name is on many pages of the stirring history of the great up- 

 rising of the Tyrol. 



PROCESS OF PORCELAIN PAINTING. 



The plates of Porcelain are made of the finest and purest 

 clays and materials of stoneware, and are burned for one or two 

 days in the highest white heat. To fill the pores and to form 

 a glaze on the surface, a paste made chiefly of powdered quartz 

 and feldspar is fused or melted on them by a heat a little less 

 than that originally used. The paints are made of a paste of 

 powdered glass, variously colored by metallic oxides, which fuses 

 at a still lower heat. The picture is then painted on the plates 

 (if a large one, in successive parts), and subjected to a heat suffi- 

 cient to melt the glass of the paints. If a porcelain plate passes 

 all these ordeals without fracture or imperfection, it is the most 

 valuable and enduring, as well as the most beautiful of paintings. 



