As I have said, it was above all this facetted ware—‘_l’article Anglais, solide et comfortable mais sans élégance_,’ as a French writer calls it—that spread the renown of English glass through the length and breadth of Europe. At that time the famous English flint-glass was made by mixing three parts of pure sand, well washed and burned (from Alum Bay, Lynn, or Reigate), with two parts of red lead or litharge and one part of carbonate of potash. A small fraction of saltpetre and a little oxide of manganese were subsequently added to cleanse the metal. The potash, up to the middle of the last century, was introduced in the form of pearl-ash imported from Canada or Russia, and the litharge came from the refineries where silver was extracted from the native lead. In fusing the glass, great importance was attached to the quick melting of the materials at the full heat of the furnace, and to the subsequent rapid working of the pot. Our English glass industry was nearly ruined by the enormous excise duties, collected on the most arbitrary and artificial system, to which it was subjected both before and after the close of the great war. When on the repeal of these taxes the industry ‘rose from its ashes,’ it was conducted on a purely commercial basis. I have already called attention to the important part played by Bristol in the manufacture of glass during the eighteenth century. That town obtained at this time a unique distinction in the history of English glass, as the one spot where a distinct kind of ware—a special _genre_—was made. It cannot be precisely stated when the opaque white glass decorated with enamel colours was first made at Bristol; what record we have does not take us further back than the latter half of the eighteenth century. This glass was apparently very brittle, and would not stand heat, a fact which may account for the few examples that have survived. In general character the Bristol _lattimo_ closely resembles the other imitations of porcelain made with glass, which were so much in vogue at the beginning of the century. I have already mentioned the opaque white glass of Orleans, of Barcelona, and of Venice. Mr. Hugh Owen has collected at the end of his excellent work on Bristol porcelain (_Two Centuries of Ceramic Art in Bristol_, 1873) some curious information about this glass, from the account-book of a local enameller, one Edkins. The ledger in question contains entries from 1762 to 1787. According to an analysis made by Professor Church, the opaque Bristol glass contains an exceptionally large quantity of lead—as much as 44 per cent., it would seem—and, what is certainly remarkable, less than one per cent. of tin. It is to this substance, however, seeing that neither phosphate of lime nor arsenic[264] is present, that we must attribute its opacity.