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You may remember, perhaps, that when the Mohammedans invaded Constantinople and found how important a part the glass-makers played in decorating the churches, they at once handed the artisans over to the caliphs, that they might be set to work adorning their mosques. Now the Mohammedans believed it a crime to make a copy of either man or woman in a picture, a carving, or a statue.
For further security the Senate had declared severest penalties against any betrayal of the secrets of the trade a form of protection not quite needless, since the Ambassador of His Most Christian Majesty had formed a species of secret police with no other object than to bribe the glass-makers and extract from them the lucrative secret which formed no part of the courtesies that were interchanged between France and the Republic.
It contains about 500 Jews, some of them scholars of the Talmud, at their head being R. Ephraim of Tyre, the Dayan, R. Meir from Carcassonne, and R. Abraham, head of the congregation. The Jews own sea-going vessels, and there are glass-makers amongst them who make that fine Tyrian glass-ware which is prized in all countries.
Much of the work done by the earliest glass-makers was specked in this way, and in fact the genuineness of old glass is sometimes determined from these very imperfections." "I see," Mr. Cabot nodded. "After the melt is in a fluid state it throws to the top, provided the heat is sufficient, many impurities such as bubbles and scum. These are, of course, skimmed off a process called plaining.
"I, Giovanni Beroviero, the son of Angelo, of Murano, the glass-maker, being in my father's absence and in his stead the Master of our honourable Guild of Glass-makers, do entreat your Magnificence to interfere and act for the preservation of our ancient rights and privileges and for the maintenance of the just laws of Venice, and for the honour of the Republic, and for the public good of Murano.
The idea that a woman should be looked upon as anything more than a slave or an object of prey had never occurred to him. But Venier did not smile. "Since we speak of glass-makers," he said, "Jacopo is doing his best to get that unlucky Dalmatian imprisoned and banished.
Yet if Plato could visit us now, he would learn that while our glass-makers proceed by rigorous and confident processes to exact results, our statesmen, like the glass-makers of ancient Athens, still trust to empirical maxims and personal skill. Why is it, he would ask us, that valid reasoning has proved to be so much more difficult in politics than in the physical sciences?
"And has no one ever been able to discover the name of any one of the original architects, sculptors, or glass-makers of this Cathedral?" "It has been the subject of much research, and I, personally, may say that I have grudged neither time nor trouble, but all in vain.
The Zeiss glassworks at Jena have now become the centre of the optical-glass industry of the world. Carl Zeiss, the founder, tried hard at one time to get the English glass-makers to turn out a special glass for his purpose, with very high refractive index. They would not trouble about it.
"Mosaic makers, you know, Jean, began crude attempts at making pictures in glass thousands of years ago, for glass-making was familiar to the Egyptians as well as to the Phoenicans and Syrians. The Greeks and Romans, too, were great glass-makers. So glass-making came down through the ages. The Byzantine churches usually were lighted by a row of tiny glass windows round the base of the dome.
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