Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/300

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286
Walks in the Black Country

fields the artist-in-chief hunts up and down with his pencil for sketches which his well-trained corps in the painters' gallery are to reproduce on their glass-canvas. The pictures they produce in a year would make a Fine Arts Exhibition which would compete favourably with the portrait galleries of large cities. The popular taste and demand for these artistic windows are constantly increasing at home and abroad; perhaps more, proportionately, in foreign and even half-civilized countries than in Great Britain or America. Oriental princes and nabobs delight in this kind of ornamentation, especially in the hottest countries, where the glare of the sun most needs tempering. The windows for the salon cabin of the state barge of the Pacha of Egypt, especially, were perhaps as fine specimens of glass painting as the establishment ever produced.

A full and minute description of all the operations and productions of these great works would fill a volume; I can only notice a few salient facts and features. The Chances stand in a more than industrial relation to the community at home and abroad. They are great educators of taste and pleasant and beautiful perceptions. They popularize high art, carrying the people on from where Wedgwood left them to more refined ideals of beauty. And one thing they are doing in this department which the community should appre-