When they began to portray, in panels on their windows, the forms of Our Lord, of His apostles, of saints and angels, sometimes in crude settings of scenes or incidents from Holy Scripture or Church legend, their color principle was still the same; and it was still the same in the elaboration of the merely ornamental borders with forms of leaf or flower or fruit, or of sacred emblems and inscriptions. The brown pigment with which they produced faces and features, hands, feet, outlines and ornamentations, was not a color, nor intended for a color, but simply a means of definition or delineation when this was too minute to be carried out with leads. And the stained glass it was, still, which addressed the eye and compelled attention and admiration. No more than in heraldry did the forms and emblems pretend to be pictures of the actual, realistic representations of men, or of scenes or incidents. The makers of early stained glass were, in one word, simply makers of ornamental windows of rich color and religious symbolism. We have said that their pieces of glass were small. This is but to say that their windows were a network of leads. For there is but one way to hold together such pieces of glass in a window, and that is by leads. These leads are not a misfortune. A square yard of simple red stained glass is artistically more beautiful if composed of a hundred pieces leaded together than if it were in a single sheet. The differences in texture themselves produce a better result, and the black leads, scarcely discernible individually, contribute an additional element of pleasure. And in arranging pieces of different color side by side, intelligent leading design was itself the artist’s drawing, and effected results altogether admirable. So far was this art of leading carried in France, for instance, that windows mainly of white glass were produced, of rare beauty by simple virtue of their structural design. All this was changed by the men who in a later age ground up their enamel pigments, glazed windows in large panes, and daubed upon them their muddy colors, with a sublime contempt for the crude laborious mosaic work of their predecessors. Would they have a representation of the earth for their figure to stand upon? it must be carpeted with grass, with green grass, and they can paint green grass upon a colorless surface; red flowers also, upon the same, with red paint, if such were desired. The Renaissance was coming; Gothic was barbarous anyway; antiquated crudities must give place to refined work worthy of the new enlightenment! Paint a picture on canvas, then paint that picture on your glass. It can be done, certainly, if you will not allow yourself to be bothered with the nuisance of leads, but just get an ample pane of glass, unobstructed, and go at it with your brush and paints!