be a master of that profession is reputed a gentleman ipsa arte for the art's sake; and it is not without reason, it being a rare kind of knowledge in chymistry to transmute the dull bodies of dust and

sand, for they are the only main ingredients, to such a diaphanous, pellucid, dainty body as we see cristall glasse is."

But, like other eulogies of olden times, this must now be understood comparatively. The Venetian glass was very clear and crystalline to those who had never seen better; but Mr. Pellatt goes on to say that "it is far inferior in pellucid refractibility to modern English crystal glass." The finest pieces of old Venetian glassware are rather admirable for lightness than crystalline beauty: but its clearness is great, considering that lead forms no part of its composition.

As with other objects of rarity, its admirers were not content without ascribing to it even marvellous properties. Howell declares, not only that it was preferable to other materials, inasmuch as it lost none of its substance by wear,-which to us seems no wonder at all; but he affirms, further, that it "hath this property above gold and silver, or any other mineral, to endure no poyson." It was supposed that if poisonous liquid was poured into a Venetian glass it would immediately break. Sir Thomas Browne, without venturing absolutely to contradict this, says, yet have we not met any of that nature."

66

With the Venetians, also, originated the art of ornamenting glass by engraving. This was at first effected with a diamond, or broken steel file; but the engravings produced by copper or lead wheels at the lathe are far superior. With few exceptions the design was a roughed surface intaglio, which, contrasted with its transparent background, had a lace-like delicacy of effect, especially if improved by polished lines, introduced to give the relief of light and shade. Another mode of ornamentation which the Venetians extensively practised is called filigree, formed of white or coloured enamelled lines cased in the transparent stems of their wine-glasses, goblets, &c. By placing alternate cofours side by side they also manufactured variegated tazzas, vases, and other ornamental articles. As a whim,

they made what are called the Venetian balls, which consist of fragments of filigree cane, placed within a case of transparent glass, and fused together into a solid mass. An imitation of this, called the Mille fiore, has recently found its way into most of our fancystationers' shops as a paper-weight; and as many of our readers may have wondered how it is produced, we have the pleasure to gratify their curiosity :

"The Mille-fiore, or Star-work of the Venetians, is more regular in design than the Ball, but of the same character. It is formed by placing lozenges of glass cut from the ends of coloured filigree canes, ranging them in regular or irregular devices, and incasing them in flint transparent glass. The double transparent glass

A

cane A receives the lozenges between the two surfaces. The whole is reheated; a hol

low disk, communicating with the blowingiron, adheres to the neck B, and the air is exhausted or sucked out of the double case. After being reheated it becomes one homogeneous mass, and may be shaped into a tazza, paper-weight, &c. at pleasure."

The first English glasshouses for the manufacture of fine glass were those of the Savoy and Crutched Friars, established about the middle of the sixteenth century. They were, however, for long after inferior to the Venetian, for in 1635, nearly a hundred years later, Sir Robert Mansel obtained a monopoly for importing fine Venetian drinking-glasses. Considerable improvement was made in the reign of William III. from which period our glass-manufacture has made rapid progress, and the white crystal glassworks of England, at this moment, indisputably excel those of any other country. The essential and distinguishing qualities of good glass are, its freedom from specks or striæ, and its near resemblance to real crystal in its

brilliant, pellucid, refractive, and colourless transparency: in all which respects the products of the British glass-houses are at present unrivalled. It only remains for them to emulate the works of Venice or Bohemia in elegance of design, and in the various ornamental branches of the art. This they have already in some measure accomplished, instigated by the competition of foreign manufacturers, which has produced an improved taste and consequent demand on the part of the public and we may hope that the Schools of Design promoted by Government will have a beneficial effect in this as in every other department of ornamental manufacture, whilst the abrogation of the very vexatious Excise regulations has removed difficulties that were formerly insuperable.*

In the preceding extracts and remarks we have dealt rather with the historical portions of the subject than with the wonders of its manufacturing

* "During the Excise reign, no pot could be moved from the spot where it was dried to be placed in the annealing arch, without a notice in writing to the supervisor; a second notice was required for gauging; a third for setting it in the furnace, again for filling the pot, and another for ladling it out; whilst the maker was forced to comply strictly with the act of parliament, by giving the officer six hours' notice for each of these intricate and vexatious requirements." (p. 52.) Again, "If a link forming part of the endless chain running under the lear (in which every article is annealed or case. hardened, after its manufacture), accidentally broke in the night, and the officer should happen to be absent (which was rather the rule than the exception), either the whole works must be stopped, or some mode adopted for the learman to repair the mischief not strictly in keeping with the act of parliament; so that, while the principal was quietly reposing in his bed in imaginary security, his servant, unknown to him, had almost necessarily in

curred ruinous Excise penalties." (p. 67.) "To throw into the pots ever so small a piece of metal, during the working, incurred a penalty of fifty pounds for every offence. It is a matter of astonishment how flint-glass works existed at all under such a concentration of commercial and manufacturing hindrances as were imposed by the Excise regulations. Happily the incubus exists only in reminiscence.' (p. 68.)

processes. For those we may best refer to Mr. Pellatt's own pages, where they are made clear by numerous illustrative woodcuts. They will render a visit to the walls of the Glasshouse itself doubly interesting.

"A stranger need never feel nervous on entering a glasshouse in full work, although he might suppose that hot glass swinging about would often lead to accidents. Visitors are much more likely to receive a blow or a burn by moving about to avoid the men than if they stood still and allowed the blowers to swing the glass in their usual way.

In the

"To an observant eye the working movements of the flint-glass blower are performed with ease and elegance perfectly natural. In modern glasshouses, which convey the smoke instantly upward, without its descending into the houses to affect blowers' lungs, the employment is by no means injurious to health. exercise of walking, swinging, and shaping, and in almost all the manipulations of the factory, every limb and muscle is brought into healthful movement, and it is found that even the exertion of the lungs in blowing is by no means unfavourable to longevity.

"Many visitors have been struck by the beauty of outline so frequently developed in blowing and forming glass vessels in their onward progress, which, although it cannot be arrested in its rapid transition from one form to another, often suggests new ideas or the invention of new designs. Occasionally, in flashing,† or in modificaof form seem tions of the flashing process, the changes almost miraculous, and than that of manipulation. rather to be deserving of the term creation

Perhaps there is no employment so much dependent upon steadiness of nerve, self-possession, and skilful manipulation, as glass-making. It requires adroit adaptations of the simplest tools, for the rapid production of manifold forms and designs, retains its heat; and perfection depends upon the most pliant of material, while it not altogether upon long-continued practice, but upon a certain innate tact, without which no workman can ever rise to eminence. There can scarcely be, chemi

cally, and in reference to the preparation

of the crude materials, a manufacture of greater simplicity, or of easier manage

Flashing is the technical term given to the operation of expanding a vessel by means of a rotatory motion, after reheating it at the furnace. The air within, rarified by the heat, expands the form by the action of centrifugal force.

ment than flint glass ;* but, like the delicate machinery of the watch, or the skilful management of a musical instrument, no small practical experience is needed to keep everything in time and tune, and in its place, for working out the harmonious arrangements of the whole, and for bring ing to perfection a manufacture, which, in the aggregate, produces employment for a large number of workmen at a compara

tive small cost of crude material.

"Who, (as Dr. Johnson has asked,) when he first saw the sand or ashes by a casual intenseness of heat melted into a metalline form, rugged with excrescences and clouded with impurities, would have imagined that, in this shapeless lump, lay concealed so many conveniences of life as would in time constitute a great part of the happiness of the world? Yet, by some such fortuitous liquefaction, was mankind

taught to procure a body at once in a high degree solid and transparent, which might admit the light of the sun and exclude the violence of the wind; which might extend the sight of the philosopher to new ranges of existence, and charm him at one time with the unbounded extent of material creation, and at another with the endless subordination of animal life, and, what is of yet more importance, might supply the decays of nature, and succour old age with subsidiary sight. Thus was the first artificer in glass employed, though without his knowledge or expectation. facilitating and prolonging the enjoyment of light, enlarging the avenues of science, and conferring the highest and most lasting pleasures; he was enabling the student to

He was

* Mr. Pellatt, in unfolding, with a liberality unknown in former days, all the "mysteries" of his art, has given in pp. 34, 35, the various materials and proportions used in composing glass. He says, "The base of all glasses is sand ;" and he afterwards adds, that formerly flints were calcined and ground for glass-making, but for many years past sands, brought from the Isle of Wight, Lynn, or Reigate, have been substituted, as being more free from iron, and less expensive than flints, which required burning and cleansing. explains fully the origin of the name of Flint Glass. In a report of the recent visit of the body calling itself The Archæological Association to the town of Flint, we saw it was gravely advanced, and advanced without contradiction, that Flint glass derived its name from that town. This must have been said to support the theory of those cockney harchaeologists who suppose that 'ackney coaches were hinwented at 'Ackney,

This

contemplate nature, and the beauty to behold herself."

MR. URBAN, 3rd Sept. 1849.

I HAVE just read, to my amazement, in your excellent report of the proceedings of the Archæological Institute at Salisbury, that the Bishop address, in which he supplied the omisof Oxford, in the course of an eloquent sions of the president, reminded his Wiltshire audience, "that on these downs the judicious Hooker, immortalized by his Ecclesiastical Polity, was seen watching his sheepfold." (Mag. for September, 1849, p. 289.) One cannot suspect a bishop of being ignorant of the duties of a shepherd, and I will therefore make no remark upon the task here assigned to poor Hooker, that of "watching a sheepfold!"but I must beg of you to assure his lordship that he is quite mistaken in supposing that there was any connection between the celebrated incident to which he alludes and the Wiltshire downs. It occurred in a locality with which the bishop is no doubt far more familiar. The circumstance is thus related in Walton's Life of Hooker :

"By this marriage the good man was drawn from the tranquillity of his college

...

into the thorny wilderness of a busy world; into those corroding cares that attend a married priest, and a country parsonage; which was Drayton Beauchamp, in Buckinghamshire, not far from Aylesbury, and in the diocese of Lincoln [since transferred to his lordship's diocese of Oxford]; to which he was presented by John Cheney, esq. then patron of it, the 9th of December, 1584; where he behaved himself so as to give no occasion of evil, but as St. Paul adviseth a minister of God, in much patience, &c.

And in this condition he continued about a year; in which time his two pupils, Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer, took a journey to see their tutor, where they found him with a book in his hand-it was the Odes of Horace-he being then, like humble and innocent Abel, tending his small allotment of sheep in a common field; which he told his pupils he was forced to do then, for that his servant was gone home to dine, and assist his wife to do some necessary household business."

What nonsense the very best of us occasionally talk when we extemporise history and antiquities! Yours, &c.

ВЕТА.

IT is occasionally rather dangerous to review the books of our friends. Between the unpleasantness of giving offence by censure, and the fear of being thought to bestow praise which is undeserved, we are, in such cases, too often obliged to hover, as it were, in a dull mid-air, a heavy, spiritless, lukewarm atmosphere, in which neither author nor critic, neither reviewer nor reader, can inhale anything which is either stimulating or invigorating. Nothing of the kind need be feared on the present occasion. Our worthy friend the author of the volume before us is an honest workman, and therefore needs not fear criticism. He is also a skilful workman-where in his own walk shall we find one more so?and may therefore dare criticism. He is moreover a lover of truth, one who assiduously works for truth, and would therefore rejoice if criticism could add anything to what he has stated, or could rectify anything in which he has erred. In treating of this book we shall endeavour therefore to throw out of sight that it is the work of our dear friend and fellow-labourer. We shall strive to speak of it as freely as if the pen from which it has proceeded had never adorned our pages, or instructed our readers, or ourselves.

In an age when to go on a pilgrimage was a customary mode of making a summer excursion, Erasmus paid his vows at Walsingham and Canterbury, the two most celebrated places of devotion in England. Some years afterwards he introduced accounts of various things which he saw at those places into his well-known book of Colloquies, but he did so, not by way of relating his travels, but in order to expose the GENT. MAG. VOL. XXXII.

folly of pilgrimage-making, and the trickery and falsehood connected with the respect paid to relics. These were his objects in writing, and they must be borne in mind when considering his portion of the present book. His design was not to write a book of description, but to laugh pilgrimage-going out of fashion by exercising his powerful gift of irony against its most prominent absurdities. Although what he wrote is, therefore, as might be expected, somewhat incomplete, it is extremely valuable as far as it goes-a sketch dashed off by the hand of a master, full of spirit and fire. It shews what was seen on such occasions, and how the business portion of the attractive show was managed, with no less truthfulness, and with ten times more vivacity, than if the account had been penned with the most prosaic minuteness. Viewed in this light Erasmus's remarks are a valuable authority for topographers, and Camden and Somner have not neglected to make use of them. Fosbroke, on the contrary, did not enter into their spirit. Forgetting that it is quite possible dicere verum ridendo, he put aside the facts stated by Erasmus, as if the pleasant way in which they were told converted them into fiction, and thus omitted what, if properly used, would have cheered and illuminated his pages with a certainly not unneeded light. Probably other writers have erred in the same way. No translation of the book has been published since that by Nicholas Bailey the lexicographer, and although neither that translation nor another made sixty years before by Sir Roger L'Estrange is difficult to be met with amongst booksellers, both the translations and the original have unaccountably slipped out of use as authorities. As regards the translations this may be accounted for by the repulsive inelegance of their style. A new translation was evidently required, and will of itself go a great way towards restoring the book to its proper position in our literature; but Mr.

3 D