acquaintance on so slight grounds, I fell to admiring him as a work of art, and from admiring him as a work of art, I went on to wonder how he was made. The result was a determination to visit, as soon as I recovered, some large works in the neighbourhood, where, as I had been informed, my young friend first received his being. My recovery is now complete; my determination unaltered. And if the reader is willing, I shall be glad—for I am fond of good company—to take him with me through one of the most extensive glass manufactories in the world. But with this proviso: we must not stay by the way minutely to inspect any process that does not relate strictly to the making of coloured glass windows. And that this condition is reasonable will be evident, when I tell him that that branch of the manufacture alone will fully occupy our attention during one entire article, and that there are several other branches equally interesting.
We shall find the “works” on the borders of the “Black Country;” and, looking down upon them as we approach by train, they have all the appearance of a gigantic store-yard, where samples of chimneys of every size, shape, and description, and specimens of smoke of every hue and degree of density, are kept constantly in stock for the surrounding manufacturers to choose from. There are tall, slender, aristocratic chimneys—“heavy swells,” in their way—pouring out wreath after wreath of jet-black velvety smoke; there are little fat squat chimneys sending up continuous streams of nasty yellow smoke that seems to be afflicted with jaundice. Then, there are square, hard-fisted looking shafts—a sort of artisan chimneys—red-hot at the mouth, and labouring forth fierce flames that flash the thin blue smoke high up into the air; and there are little infant chimneys—steam outlets—that hilariously pant out an innocent-looking silvery white smoke all day long, and here and there and everywhere. And over the whole community of chimneys there hangs a great cloud of writhing smoke in which many shades of colour seem to be wildly struggling for individual mastery. The works are more like a town in Pluto’s regions than a manufactory upon earth. And their size is immense. They occupy many acres of land, and they are inhabited daily by nearly two thousand workmen. A railway runs into them to whisk away their products to all parts of the world, and a canal rolls sluggishly through them, under the pretence of helping the railway at its work.
We enter the “works” through an enormous gateway, and, tapping at the door of the porter’s lodge, bring out an old man whose duty it is, provided we are furnished with the proper credentials, to hand us over to a guide. This done, on we go: over a canal bridge, across the railway, by long ranges of workshops, until we come to a large shed where several workmen are engaged in treading out clay and fashioning it into immense “pots,” or pans, as big as brewers’ vats of moderate dimensions. On asking what these are for, we are requested to follow two or three of them; then, being taken out at the other end of the shed, and doing as we are bid, we come to a sudden halt at the mouth of a red-hot kiln. From this kiln several similar pots, baked hard, are withdrawn, and the soft ones deposited in their places. The baked pots are then trundled off, and we follow them to a large building, lighted only by the glare of a score of roaring furnaces. Hundreds of grimy workmen, with what appear to be long red-hot drum-sticks in their hands, are flitting about amongst the strange lights and shadows in every direction, and some twenty or thirty are engaged in blowing gigantic bubbles of all the colours of the rainbow. But for our guide we should assuredly be bewildered. At his request we again turn our attention to the “pots,” and have the satisfaction of seeing them thrust, burning hot, into furnaces ten times hotter than themselves. That done, we are told that they are filled with due proportions of sand, lime, soda, and whatsoever colouring matter is necessary, and that as the mass, which weighs about two tons, melts, it is stirred until it reaches the consistency at which it is workable. After some twenty or thirty hours of melting and stirring, that point is reached, and the “metal,” as it is now called, is ready to be fashioned into glass. Passing on to another furnace and peeping through a hole in a screen or breastwork in front of it—for the heat is too intense to allow a nearer approach—we get a glimpse of one of these pots of metal ready for use. But, before we have well had time to peer into the blinding mass, we are warned off by a swart workman, who, advancing, thrusts into it a long tube, which he twirls round until he has gathered upon the end of it a glowing ball of metal, with which he rushes off to a flat iron table or “marver.” Arrived there, he cools the tube with water, and, applying his mouth to the end of it, blows down into the metal at the bottom, and, as the ball increases in bulk, rolls it over and over upon the table to preserve its rotundity. Before the bubble has attained its proper size it cools considerably. So, as soon as it has from this cause lost its elasticity the operator carries it off to another furnace, where he re-heats it, and blows it larger and larger, until it is ready for the next process. As soon as it is thus prepared, another workman advances with a kind of pole tipped with molten glass, which he affixes to that part of the bubble immediately opposite the blow-pipe. Workman number one then releases the blow-pipe, and the bubble becomes the property of workman number two, who at once carries it off to another furnace, whose flames roar far out into the workshop. Thrusting the bubble into the midst of the flames, and resting the pole, or “ponty,” as it is termed, upon a breastwork, the operator twirls it as one would twirl a mop. The result is almost magical, for, before we can well see what is being done, the heat has softened the glass, the centrifugal force has flung open the bubble, and a large flat wheel of “crown glass” is rolling away before us ready for our every day use. This our guide tells us is the old-fashioned method of making glass, and he explains that it is an objectionable one, because a large lump called the “bull’s-eye” is left behind in the centre of the sheet by the ponty. The reason it is objectionable, as he puts it, is this: that a large square, taken out of a circular piece of glass fifty-four