ANCIENT AND MODERN GLASS OE MURANO. 235 
SO eclipsed all other Italian cities that none other ever acquired any reputation 
for glass. There were sufficient reasons for this success. Its secret processes 
were jealously guarded, and the -skill of the workmen in various departments 
kept, as it were, in certain families, and transmitted from generation to genera- 
tion. « 
Among the most distinguished were the Berovieri, the Miotti, Briati, and 
Ballerini, some of whose descendants are still engaged in the same occupation in 
the new establishments of Salviati and the Venezia Murano companies, reproduc- 
ing and even rivalling the artistic dexterity of their ancestors. Their chief aim 
was to make artistic glass exclusively for beauty; and, secondly, to ornament and 
shape even the articles of common use so that they should, as Sabellico happily 
expresses it, " attract the eyes of mortals" and "delight mankind." This vital 
aesthetic principle of work was the real secret of the fame and success of Venetian 
glass, as of its painting. In making beauty, not utihty, its governing rule, it 
demonstrated by its commercial success and enrichment of the State that the 
higher the aim of industrial art, the surer the road to fortune, as well as mental 
delight. It "paid" Venice amazingly well to give beauty its rightful place in 
manufactures, and be satisfied with nothing short of its fullest development. 
Besides seeking the best materials, and aiming at strength, delicacy, and light- 
ness, which were promoted by not using lead, as is the general modern practice 
in glass, each manufactory so well kept its secrets that we now know very little of 
their modes of manufacture. The State lent its aid also in a series of Draconian 
enactments, which, if they did not wholly preclude competition in other places, 
mainly prevented it. Workmen who took their craft to foreign countries and 
refused to return were condemned to death, and secret emissaries were sent 
to execute the sentence. In 1549 it was enacted that workmen caught leaving 
the country should be fined and sent to the galleys, and that no foreigners be 
employed in the glass houses. If it were a cherished and lucrative business at 
home, under the eyes of the "Ten," it was equally made a most dangerous call- 
ing to be exercised by any Venetian abroad. 
As early as 1500, there were twenty-four glass-houses at work at Murano, 
each having more or less its specialty The furnaces in general were small. Dur- 
ing the period of its greatest prosperity— the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth 
centuries — Murano counted thirty thousand inhabitants — now reduced to about 
five thousand. Each owner of a factory was obliged to contribute annually a 
certain sum to a common fund for the succor of the unfortunate of their own 
class — poor and infirm artisans, or those out of employment, and for the main- 
tenance of the schools of inventive design. No apprentice could be admitted as 
a master-workman before passing a strict examination in his art, and proving his 
skill in the manufacture of certain objects. The candidate was elected into the 
body of masters by their secret ballots. Each factory was subject to inspection 
night or day by certain officers, whose duty it was to see that the work was regular 
according to the statutes, to note the quantity and quality of the objects, and 
that no glass in fragments, or cullet, be exported. Proprietors, and master-work. 
