Who, when he saw the first sand or ashes by a casual intenseness of heat melted into a metallic form, rugged with excrescences and crowded with impurities, would have imagined that in this shapeless lump lay concealed so many conveniences of life as would in time constitute a great part of the happiness of the world? Thus was the first artificer in glass occupied, though without his own knowledge or expectation. He was facilitating and prolonging the enjoyment of light, enlarging the avenues of science, and conferring the highest and most lasting pleasures; he was enabling the student to contemplate nature, and the beauty to behold herself."—Johnson's " Rambler." |