[Illustration: FIG. 2.--AN OLD ENGLISH GLASS TANKARD AND COVER.] years ago at the little Hampshire village of Buckholt Wood. Excavations here brought to light fragments of glass, some clear, others with a greenish or bluish tinge, evidently portions of broken vessels of various kinds--drinking glasses, jugs, bottles, and so forth. These were in such quantity that it was evident chance had brought to light one of the old glass-houses, which were founded in well-wooded districts, and kept going as long as sufficient wood remained to burn. We have seen how, in the beginning, English glass-workers were a nomad race. As the woods in one place were exhausted they moved to fresh fields and forests new--much to the annoyance of the populace, who depended upon those woods for their household firing, and of the Government, who sought to preserve them for the maintenance of the fleet. In 1615 a proclamation was made forbidding the use of wood for glass smelting, the furnaces being in future compelled to burn sea-coal or charcoal or other fuel. The same ordinance prohibited the importation of foreign glass or the immigration of foreign glass-workers. In the same year Sir Richard Mansel, a man of considerable standing in the realm, who had been experimenting in glass-making with the aid of Venetian workmen, was granted a licence for making glass with coal, and set up furnaces in London and at Purbeck, Milford Haven and Newcastle. It is a matter for regret that no product of his furnaces is known to exist to-day, a fact the more surprising in that his licence was renewed at various times, and so covers a considerable stretch of the most interesting period of the art. At any rate we find him petitioning in 1641 that he might be protected against persons importing glass from abroad, whereas he was paying a rent of £1000 per annum for his monopoly. His name is mentioned as late as 1653, so that for nearly forty years he controlled, more or less, the business of glass production in England. It is a matter for some congratulation, however, that Mansel employed, in some kind of managerial capacity in his Broad Street works, a certain James Howell, who enjoys the reputation of being one of the liveliest and most pleasing writers of the period. In the famous Howell’s letters, “Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ,” which were published between 1645 and 1655, we have a delightful commentary on the events of his time, and incidentally a number of curious and useful sidelights on the conduct of glass manufacture both in England and on the Continent.