h carvings, others with
frescoes or painted patterns. The window-spaces were-filled with some
manufactured article similar to, but less transparent than, glass. The
interiors were not furnished with the elaborate detail of our modern
dwellings, but the life was highly civilized of its kind.

The temples were huge halls resembling more than anything else the
gigantic piles of Egypt, but built on a still more stupendous scale.
The pillars supporting the roof were generally square, seldom
circular. In the days of the decadence the aisles were surrounded with
innumerable chapels in which were enshrined the statues of the more
important inhabitants. These side shrines indeed were occasionally of
such considerable size as to admit a whole retinue of priests whom
some specially great man might have in his service for the ceremonial
worship of his image. Like the private houses the temples too were
never complete without the dome-capped towers, which of course were of
corresponding size and magnificence. These were used for astronomical
observations and for sun-worship.

The precious metals were largely used in the adornment of the temples,
the interiors being often not merely inlaid but plated with gold. Gold
and silver were highly valued, but as we shall see later on when the
subject of the currency is dealt with, the uses to which they were put
were entirely artistic and had nothing to do with coinage, while the
great quantities that were then produced by the chemists--or as we
should now-a-days call them alchemists--may be said to have taken them
out of the category of the precious metals. This power of
transmutation of metals was not universal, but it was so widely
possessed that enormous quantities were made. In fact the production
of the wished-for metals may be regarded as one of the industrial
enterprises of those days by which these alchemists gained their
living. Gold was admired even more than silver, and was consequently
produced in much greater quantity.

_Education._--A few words on the subject of language will fitly
prelude a consideration of the training in the schools and colleges of
Atlantis. During the first map period Toltec was the universal
language, not only throughout the continent but in the western islands
and that part of the eastern continent which recognized the emperor's
rule. Remains of the Rmoahal and Tlavatli speech survived it is true
in out-of-the-way parts, just as the Keltic and Cymric s