Over on the other side of Lincoln Cathedral they then placed some new windows of the {164} modern time. These were made in France, I believe. They were made about the middle of the nineteenth century, when stained-glass making was almost at its lowest ebb. They were considered to be very beautiful, however, and something like £20,000 sterling was paid for them. The contrast between the two sets of windows is very striking. The old windows are so beautiful, the new ones are so commonplace. The visitor, even though he knows nothing about art, notices the contrast and, if he has an eye for color, views with something of a shock this attempt of the nineteenth century to do something that had been so well done by the gild-trained workmen of the technical schools of the Middle Ages. Though they are represented here only by patched fragments of their work he can scarcely repress a smile at the effect of their work in cheapening the modern. Everywhere it is the same way. Mr. F. Rolfe, writing from Venice, where he has been studying thirteenth-century glass, and talking of its wonderful beauty as compared to anything modern, says: "There are also fragments of two windows, pieced together and the missing parts filled in with the best which modern Murano can do. These show the celebrated Beroviero Ruby Glass (secret lost) of marvellous depth and brilliancy in comparison with which the modern work is merely watery. (The ancient is just like a decanter of port wine.)" This is the story, no matter where one goes, {165} throughout Europe. At York they would not surrender the town to the Parliamentary army until a guarantee had been given them that their cathedral would not be devastated as had been the case elsewhere. Besides General Ireton was a friend of the Yorkists and he was ready to agree to the stipulation. The agreement was not fully carried out, fanatic soldiers could not be entirely restrained, but some of the old glass remains. There is probably nothing more beautiful in all the realm of artistic glass-making than the famous Five Sisters window at York. In France the Revolution repeated what the Puritans accomplished of ruin in England. Notre Dame has no trace of its old glass. In some of the cathedrals, however, there has fortunately been preserved for us enough of it to know how wonderfully the makers of it must have been trained, and to let us realize how much of experiment, of investigation, of study that we would now call applied chemistry must have gone to the making of this wonderful old glass. These technical schools were not merely passing on arts and crafts traditions, but each generation was adding to the secrets of the gilds by original research of its own. We are prone to think that such work of original investigation was reserved for our time, but that is only because of the foolish self-complacency which blinds us to what other generations did.