by contraction or subsidence, the fineness of the forms
given to it, no delicate outlines are to be attempted, but only such
fantastic and fickle grace as the mind of the workman can conceive and
execute on the instant. The more wild, extravagant, and grotesque in
their gracefulness the forms are, the better. No material is so adapted
for giving full play to the imagination, but it must not be wrought with
refinement or painfulness, still less with costliness. For as in
gratitude we are to proclaim its virtues, so in all honesty we are to
confess its imperfections; and while we triumphantly set forth its
transparency, we are also frankly to admit its fragility, and therefore
not to waste much time upon it, nor put any real art into it when
intended for daily use. No workman ought ever to spend more than an hour
in the making of any glass vessel.

Next in the case of windows, the points which we have to insist upon
are, the transparency of the glass and its susceptibility of the most
brilliant colors; and therefore the attempt to turn painted windows into
pretty pictures is one of the most gross and ridiculous barbarisms of
this pre-eminently barbarous century. It originated, I suppose, with the
Germans, who seem for the present distinguished among European nations
by the loss of the sense of color; but it appears of late to have
considerable chance of establishing itself in England: and it is a
two-edged error, striking in two directions; first at the healthy
appreciation of painting, and then at the healthy appreciation of glass.
Color, ground with oil, and laid on a solid opaque ground, furnishes to
the human hand the most exquisite means of expression which the human
sight and invention can find or require. By its two opposite qualities,
each naturally and easily attainable, of transparency in shadow and
opacity in light, it complies with the conditions of nature; and by its
perfect governableness it permits the utmost possible fulness and
subtlety in the harmonies of color, as well as the utmost perfection in
the drawing. Glass, considered as a material for a picture, is exactly
as bad as oil paint is good. It sets out by reversing the conditions of
nature, by making the lights transparent and the shadows opaque; and the
ungovernableness of its color (changing in the furnace), and its
violence (being always on a high key, because produced by actual light),
render it so disadvantageous in every way, that the result o