These last know nothing of glazing, why should glaziers know
anything of art? It is perfectly just reasoning; they do their very
best, and what they do is this. They take out the old, tender glass,
with the colour hardly clinging to it, and they put it into fresh leads,
and then they solder up the joints. And, by way of a triumphant wind-up
to a good, solid, English, common-sense job, with no art-nonsense or
fads about it, they proceed to scrub the whole on both sides with stiff
grass-brushes (ordinarily sold at the oil-shops for keeping back-kitchen
sinks clean), using with them a composition mainly consisting of exactly
the same materials with which a housemaid polishes the fender and
fire-irons. That is a plain, simple, unvarnished statement of facts. You
may find it difficult of belief, but this is what actually happens. This
is what you are having done everywhere, guardians of our ancient
buildings. You'll soon have all your old windows "quite as good as new."
It's a merry world, isn't it?

APPENDIX III

Hints for the Curriculum of a Technical School for
Stained-Glass--Examples for Painting--Examples of Drapery--Drawing
from Nature--Ornamental Design.

_Examples for Painting._--I have already recommended for outline work
the splendid reproductions of the Garter Plates at Windsor. It is more
difficult to find equally good examples for _painting_; for if one had
what one wished it would be photographed from ideal painted-glass or
else from cartoons wisely prepared for glass-work. But, in the first
case, if the photographs were from the best ancient glass--even
supposing one could get them--they would be unsatisfactory for two
reasons. First, because ancient glass, however well preserved, has lost
or gained something by age which no skill can reproduce; and secondly,
because however beautiful it is, all but the very latest (and therefore
not the best) is immature in drawing. It is not wise to reproduce those
errors. The things themselves look beautiful and sincere because the old
worker drew as well as he could; but if we, to imitate them, draw less
well than we can, we are imitating the _accidents_ of his production,
and not the _method_ and _principle_ of it: the principle was to draw as
well as he could, and we, if we wish to emulate old glass, must draw as
well as _we_ can. For examples of Heads nothing can be better than
photographs from Botticelli and other early Tuscan, and from the ea