Painted or stained window glass is the glory of our Mediæval churches. The earliest coloured windows were doubtless made from mosaic-like arrangements of different bits of coloured glass. The mosaic window led to the representation of pictorial subjects in stained glass, the latter being formed of pieces of self-coloured glass, or that kind having each piece stained in one colour throughout, cut in the requisite shapes, and fastened together by an arrangement of lead lines which form the main lines of the design; to help out the drawing and expression the stained glass is shaded in hatchings, stippling, and bold lines, usually in a brown colour. Painted glass, as distinguished from stained glass, is that which is painted on clear or tinted grounds with various enamel colours made from metallic oxides. After the painting is finished the piece of glass is fired, and the enamel colours become fused with the glass surface, and really become part of the glass itself. More finish, a wider range of colouring, greater detail, and generally a more pictorial effect is produced by the artist being able to use freely the enamel colours; but a corresponding loss of depth and brilliancy of colour and of bold decorative effect which belonged to older examples of stained glass must be set against any advantages the painted variety may possess from its pictorial point of view. The earliest instance in the use of stained glass for church window’s is supposed to have been in those that were given by Count Arnold to the Abbey of Tegernsee in Bavaria in the year 999. The thirteenth and fourteenth century were the finest periods for the stained-glass windows of the Gothic cathedrals both in England and on the Continent. About the middle of the sixteenth century enamel colours began to be used, and, as before observed, the designs showed a striving after pictorial effects. [Illustration: Fig. 309.—Chinese Glass Bowl. (S.K.M.)] The revival of classic art in the Renaissance period has also a great deal to do with this change in the style and method of execution in painted glass, and we find that the greatest painters—but not always the greatest decorators-of the period supplied cartoons and designs for this class of work. Glass making has been known in China and Japan from very early times, but it appears to be difficult to obtain anything like authentic information as to its history from our present imperfect knowledge or acquaintance with the native records. There are stories of ancient Chinese glass vessels that are said to have been seen by the French missionaries of the last century, one of which vessels was so large that “a mule could have been put into it,” and that the Chinese made a kind of glass called “lieou-li” that was sufficiently elastic as to bend easily.