It is only of late years that the full significance of this emigration of glass-workers from Murano and from L’Altare has been recognised. A distinguished Belgian antiquary, M. Schuermans, President of the Cour d’Appel at Liége, about the year 1880—following in this in the steps of his countryman the late M. Alexandre Pinchart, and in a measure also in those of M. Houdoy (_Verrerie à la façon de Venise_, Paris, 1873)—began a systematic investigation of the subject, and during a period of ten years, from 1883 to 1892, contributed to the pages of a learned periodical published at Brussels (_Bulletin des Commissions Royales de l’Art et de l’Industrie_) a series of letters—for so M. Schuermans modestly called them, though they were in fact so many treatises, extending some of them to more than a hundred pages—packed full with the results of his researches. One of the most curious sources of information M. Schuermans found in the reports sent from the Venetian embassies and agencies in France and elsewhere to the Council of Ten at Venice. It was not the least important duty of the diplomatic agents of the Republic to trace out the fugitive Muranese glass-workers, to endeavour to induce them, by threats or promises, to return to their homes, and if unsuccessful in this, to denounce them to the authorities in Venice, who might then proceed to throw into prison the unhappy families of these recalcitrant workmen. In extreme cases there are hints of more drastic measures in dealing with the traitors themselves—for so they were regarded—but I do not think that any instance of assassination has been definitely made out for the time of which we are now speaking. It is certainly strange that the only known cases of such judicial murders occurred at Vienna as late as the eighteenth century. The story was told long ago by Daru in his _Histoire de Venise_ (_Pièces Justificatives_), and I do not know that it has ever been refuted. Not that these extreme measures were at all times carried out with equal energy. At times, for political or other reasons, little restraint appears to have been put upon the wandering forth of the Muranese glass-workers; while at others the Council of Ten seems to have regarded the question as one of the utmost moment, aroused perhaps by reports that seemed to prove that the glass monopoly of the state was endangered. This was the case at the end of the fifteenth century, again towards the middle of the seventeenth, and more especially at the end of that century, when the Venetians began to find their industry seriously threatened by their German rivals.