A _metal gilder_, or _water gilder_, is a different workman from the _carver and gilder_, who gilds various articles of wood or composition. The former lays a thin coating of gold on articles of metal, by means of mercury and of heat, an employment of an extremely unhealthy character. The carver and gilder lays a surface of leaf-gold on ornaments, frames, or mouldings, made of wood, plaster of Paris, papier-maché, or composition. If the gold were laid on the bare material by any sort of gum or cement, it would not adhere permanently, nor would it have that brilliancy of appearance which the natural lustre of the metal is calculated to produce; above all, that dazzling surface, known as _burnished gold_, could not be so produced. The gilder, therefore, lays on a certain thickness of such substances as experience has taught him will answer the proposed end. There are, doubtless, many substances which would answer for this purpose; but the course which is actually adopted we proceed to describe. The Process of Burnish-Gilding. We will take, as an instance, a long piece of the moulding which the paper-hanger applies in the way to which we have alluded. This is cut out to the proper hollow or reeded form by a carpenter, who employs planes suited for the purpose. The wood which he uses is of a kind tolerably free from knots and holes: and when the moulding is ready, it passes into the hands of the gilder. The first thing done is to wash it with a mixture of whiting and parchment-size, made quite hot, and almost as limpid as water. The size used for this and for other purposes required by the gilder, is obtained by boiling cuttings of parchment in water until a stiff jelly is produced. When the moulding is dry from the application of this preparatory wash, any small holes that may exist are stopped up with putty, and the moulding is ready to receive five or six coatings of a very thick mixture of whiting and size. Those coatings are laid on moderately warm, by means of a brush, each coat being thoroughly dried before the next is applied. By this means the moulding is coated to the thickness of a sixteenth or twelfth of an inch, by which the fine squares and hollows produced by the plane (if there happened to be such in the moulding) would be liable to be stopped up: to prevent this, modelling tools of various forms are drawn along the wet whiting, so as to preserve the original pattern in tolerable condition. The whole surface is then smoothed by small pieces of pumice-stone worked to fit the various parts of the moulding. The stones and the whiting being kept constantly wetted, and the former worked steadily over the latter, a smooth and even surface is attained.