borrow a phrase from
Wordsworth, its days have been joined each to each 'by natural piety.'
The place which it first took through privilege and favour, and could
have taken in no other way, it has kept ever since for nearly two
centuries and a half, and now holds by virtue of skill, energy, and that
eternal vigilance which is both the price and the penalty of free
competition.

The 'Knights of Labour' in our America of to-day put the cart before the
horse when they undertake to make labourers knights. The Middle Ages
knew better, and went to work in a wiser fashion by making knights
labourers. As early as the thirteenth century the glassworkers of France
had great privileges granted them, and an old proverb explains this by
telling us that 'to make a gentleman glassworker--_un gentilhomme
verrier_--you must first get a gentleman.' As soon as it was established
that by going into such a costly and artistic industry as this, a
gentleman did not derogate from his rank, the first important step was
taken towards the emancipation of industry. The glassworkers were
exempted from _tailles, aydes et subsides_, from _ost, giste,
chevaulchier et subventions_, or, in other words, military taxes could
not be levied upon them, nor troops quartered upon them, nor
requisitions made upon them. The _gentilhomme verrier_ had the right to
carry a sword and to wear embroideries, to fish and to hunt, nor could
the lord of a domain refuse to him, in return for a small fee, the right
to cut whatever wood he needed for his furnaces, and to collect and burn
the undergrowth into ashes for his manufacture. It was the richly and
densely wooded country about St.-Gobain which led to the establishment
at this spot in 1665 of the glassworks since developed into the great
establishment of our day. Even now, though gas has long since taken the
place of wood in the manufacture, and towns and farms have grown up in
the neighbourhood, no less than 2,440 hectares of the 2,900 which make
up the territory of St.-Gobain proper are still in woodland; and the
forests extend far beyond the limits of the commune which bears the
name of the Irish Catholic prince St.-Gobain, who came here in the
seventh century, as St. Boniface went to the Rhine, to evangelise the
country, and built himself a cell on the side of the mountain which
overlooks the glassworks. Here he did his appointed work, and here, on
June 2, 670, he was put to death. The mountain was then known as M