something must be said of
such great general principles as those of colour, of light, of
architectural fitness, of limitations, of thought and imagination and
allegory; for all these things belong to stained-glass work, and it is
the right or wrong use of these high things that makes windows to be
good or to be bad.

Let us, dear student, take the simplest things first, not because they
are the easiest (though they perhaps are so), but because they will
gradually, I hope, warm up our wits to the point of considering these
matters, and so prepare the way for what is hardest of all.

And I think a good subject to begin with is that of Economy generally,
taking into consideration both time and materials.

CHAPTER XIII

Of Economy--The Englishman's Wastefulness--Its Good Side--Its
Excess--Difficulties--A Calculation--Remedies.

Those who know work in various countries must surely have arrived at the
conclusion that the Englishman is the most wasteful being on the face of
the globe! He only thinks of getting through the work, or whatever it
may be, that he has purposed to himself, attaining the end immediately
in view in the speediest manner possible without regard to anything
else, lavish of himself and of the stuff he works with. The picture
drawn by Robert Louis Stevenson in "Treasure Island" of John Silver and
his pirates, when about to start on their expedition, throwing the
remainder of their breakfast on the bivouac fire, careless whence fresh
supplies might come, is "English all over." This is the character of the
race. It has its good side, this grand disdain--it wins Battles,
Victoria Crosses, Humane Society's medals, and other things well worth
the winning; brings into port many a ship that would else be lost or
abandoned, and, year in, year out, sends to sea the lifeboats on our
restless line of coast. It would be something precious indeed that would
be worth the loss of it; but there is a medium in all things, and when a
master sees--as one now at rest once told me he often had seen--a cutter
draw his diamond down a bit of the margin out of which he had just cut
his piece, in order to make it small enough to throw away, without being
ashamed, under the bench, he must sometimes, I should think, wish the
man were employed on some warlike or adventurous trade, and that he had
a Hollander or Italian in his place, who would make a whole window out
of what the other casts away.

At the same t