Fortunately for such, our ancestors in the palmy days of glass manufacture freely availed themselves of the possibilities of this form of advertisement and commemoration, so that a considerable number of memorial pieces are still in existence. Many of these were, of course, merely intended to record some happening of purely local significance: the building of a bridge, the opening of a canal, the launching of a ship; or, narrowing the interest still further, the birth of a son or the marriage of a daughter. Others, however, had a wider appeal: a great national victory on sea or land, the winning of an election, or the passage or defeat of a hotly contested Bill in Parliament. All were suitably inscribed and generally dated--a fact which adds to their importance and value--and frequently decorated, in addition to the usual conventional designs, with a more or less crude pictorial representation of the event or of some important factor connected with it. Thus the battle of Trafalgar would be indicated by a picture of the famous victory or by a portrait of Nelson. Frequently such glasses were dedicated to the glorification of some famous hero, as were the Nelson glasses, Keppel glasses, etc.; or to the furtherance of some great cause, as the Jacobite glasses, with which we shall have presently to deal at length; or, again, to the diffusion of some political principle. The collector must, however, be chary of assuming that a memorial glass was necessarily contemporary with the event it records. The warning is particularly necessary in the case of Jacobite glasses, of which large numbers were made by faithful adherents of the House of Stuart long after the Jacobite cause had been relegated to the limbo of lost hopes. And it is perhaps unnecessary to add the further warning [Illustration: FIG. 17.--JACOBITE TOASTING GLASSES. (From the Rees Price Collection, by permission of the Connoisseur.)] that in connection with old glass, as with other antiques, the supply seems somehow mysteriously to adapt itself to the demand; and it is the easiest and least detectable of frauds to take a veritable old glass of no particular merit, and by inscribing it with a motto and an emblem or two, increase its value twenty-fold. There is, of course, much old glass stored, more or less inaccessibly, in ancient houses up and down the country, and every now and again some such hidden treasure is brought to light. But it may be generally said that, in view of the fierce light the modern craze for antiques has thrown upon such hiding-places, the prospects of the present-day collector of finding, say, a “Fiat” glass are so remote as to be practically negligible.