32 ON COLOUR. Part I. 



pawned in 1319, was redeemed for 1200 marks of gold, or 

 about 3000/." Pliny, speaking of false stones, says the 

 emerald was the most easily imitated ; and glass cups, com- 

 bining in their patterns many different hues, were made in 

 Egypt, and afterwards at Kome, without cracking, — an art 

 now lost, and vainly attempted of late at Venice.* Coloured 

 glass was therefore a very old invention ; and if it was not 

 employed at Eome for windows, the mode of making fiat 

 panes of white glass had long been known ; and it is probable 

 that the coloured material was used for the same purpose, at 

 a much earlier time than is generally supposed. Indeed, the 

 figurative allusion by St. Paul to seeing through a glass 

 darkly, shows that the habit of looking through stained glass 

 was sufficiently common to be taken as a metaphor. 



Colourless panes of glass having been once adopted, the 

 use of coloured ones would naturally follow, as soon as the 

 want was felt ; and the art of colouring glass having long been 

 known, we can readily account for their being employed 

 at the comparatively late time of Constantine. Their intro- 

 duction into Western Europe from Byzantium, the repository 

 of all the arts after his age, is therefore only what might be 

 expected. 



22. The art of making glass had first gone from Egypt to 

 Eome, and thence, in after times, to Constantinople ; but it 

 is uncertain whether the Venetians introduced it directly 

 from Egypt, to which country they traded at the beginning of 

 the 800 A.D., or from Constantinople. Their first glass-manu- 

 factories were established on the island of the Eialto ; and 

 afterwards in different parts of Venice, until the numerous 

 fires they caused induced the Senate to confine all glass- 

 blowing operations to the isle of Murano, where they are 



* I observed that at Murano they were obliged to form an interior layer or 

 coating of glass, on which they placeaj the exterior face when this was of many 

 colours. 



