ef all round the shop, and the reply was, "Well,
so we all thought!"

Just so; therefore the figure remained, and so was erected in its place.
Now suppose I had had men who did what they were told, instead of being
encouraged to think and feel and suggest?

A serious word to you about this question of staining. It is a resource
very easily open to abuse--to excess. Be careful of the danger, and
never stain without first trying the effect on the back of the
easel-plate with pure gamboge, and if you wish for a very clear
orange-stain, mix with the gamboge a little ordinary red ink. It is too
much the custom to "pick out" every bit of silver "canopy" work with
dottings and stripings of yellow. A _little_ sometimes warms up
pleasantly what would be too cold--and the old men used it with effect:
but the modern tendency, as is the case in all things merely imitative,
is to overdo it. For the old men used it very differently from those who
copy them in the way I am speaking of, and, to begin with, used it
chiefly on _pure white glass_. Much modern canopy work is done on
greenish-white, upon which the stain immediately becomes that
greenish-yellow that I have called "brassy." A little of this can be
borne, when side by side with it is placed stain upon pure white. The
reader will easily find, if he looks for them, plenty of examples in old
glass, where the stain upon the white glass has taken even a _rosy_
tinge exactly like that of a yellow crocus seen through its white
sheath. It is perhaps owing partly to patina on the old glass, which
"scumbles" it; but I have myself sometimes succeeded in getting the same
effect by using yellow-stain on pure white glass. A whole window, where
the highest light is a greenish white, is to me very unpleasant, and
when in addition yellow-stain is used, unbearable. This became a fashion
in stained-glass when red-lead-coloured pigments, started by Barff's
formula, came into general use. They could not be used on pure white
glass, and therefore pure white glass was discarded and greenish-white
used instead. I can only say that if the practice of stained-glass were
presented to me with this condition--of abstaining from the use of pure
white--I would try to learn some useful trade.

There is another question of ideals in the treatment of colour in
stained-glass about which a word must be said.

Those who are enthusiastic about the material of stained-glass and its
improvement are apt to condem