and, for the benefit of
those who do know, it will examine and discuss the right principles on
which windows should be made, and the rules of good taste and of
imagination, which make such a difference between beautiful and vulgar
art; for you may know intimately all the processes I have spoken of, and
be skilful in them, and yet misapply them, so that your window had
better never have been made.

Skill is good if you use it wisely and for good end; but craft of hand
employed foolishly is no more use to you tan swiftness of foot would be
upon the broad road leading downwards--the cripple is happier.

A clear and calculating brain may be used for statesmanship or science,
or merely for gambling. You, we will say, have a true eye and a cunning
hand; will you use them on the passing fashion of the hour--the morbid,
the trivial, the insincere--or in illustrating the eternal truths and
dignities, the heroisms and sanctities of life, and its innocencies and
gaieties?

This book, then, is divided into two parts, of which the intention of
one is to promote and produce skilfulness of hand, and of the other to
direct it to worthy ends.

The making of glass itself--of the raw material--the coloured glasses
used in stained-glass windows, cannot be treated of here. What are
called "Antiques" are chiefly used, and there are also special glasses
representing the ideals and experiments of enthusiasts--Prior's "Early
English" glass, and the somewhat similar "Norman" glass. These glasses,
however, are for craftsmen of experience to use: they require mature
skill and judgment in the using; to the beginner, "Antiques" are enough
for many a day to come.

_How to know the Right and Wrong Sides of a Piece of "Antique"
Glass._--Take up a sheet of one of these and look at it. You will notice
that the two sides look different; one side has certain little
depressions as if it had been pricked with a pin, sometimes also some
wavy streaks. Turn it round, and, looking at the other side, you still
see these things, but blurred, as if seen through water, while the
surface itself on this side looks smooth; what inequalities there are
being projections rather than depressions. Now the side you first looked
at is the side to cut on, and the side to paint on, and it is the side
placed inwards when the window is put up.

The reason is this. Glass is made into sheets by being blown into
bubbles, just as a child blows soap-bubbles. If you blow a soap-