In spite of the heroic efforts made by the authorities in the late seventeenth and in the following century to introduce the new methods of working glass at Murano, the Venetians failed to maintain their position. It was only in the more conservative Eastern markets that the demand for their mirrors was kept up; even to-day, in Syria or in Persia, these Italian glasses may not unfrequently be seen in private houses and even in mosques. Another characteristic application of the glass of Murano was to the elaborate chandeliers that formed so important a part in the decoration of the reception-rooms of a Venetian palace in the seventeenth century. In these the metal framework is completely hidden by a thick foliage, as it were, of glass—frequently of the opalescent _calcedonio_—amid which the tall wax candles spring up here and there. M. Gerspach extols the decorative value of these chandeliers:—‘_Le soir, le lustre de Venise allumé est un rayonnement harmonieux sans reflets discordants; le jour, stalactite ciselée, il égaye l’appartement comme une note claire et joyeuse_’ (_La Verrerie_, p. 173). In the eighteenth century the contorted forms, imitating leaves and flowers, were replaced by pendent discs of colourless crystal, cut, polished, and often facetted. Of these later chandeliers there is a splendid series, whether of Venetian origin or not I do not know, at Hertford House. Such chandeliers were known in England in the eighteenth century as ‘lustres.’[158] They are above all numerous in German palaces, and most of the glass is probably of German or Flemish origin. But of the earlier type I cannot find a single example in any of our public museums.[159] The manufacture, however, has been revived at Murano, and chandeliers of this class, with no claims to antiquity, may often be seen in private houses both at home and abroad. The spread of electric lighting has given a stimulus to work of this kind, for the corolla-shaped shades that so often accompany our incandescent lamps have, in most cases, obviously been modelled upon the glass of the old Venetian chandeliers.