inches thick, and the sides nearly as much;
and five or six months are required for the
drying of a pot—passing, as it does, through
various degrees of heat, from that of the room
in which it is built (seventy degrees when we
were there) to that which is to cause its destruction.
Inquiring when this catastrophe
was likely to happen, we found that a pot
may last any time between one day and three
months. Few last so long as three months.
It must be a grief to see a pot fall to pieces
in one day, after having been watched in
the drying for half-a-year; but there may
be some little consolation in its not being
wholly lost. The fragments are ground down
to powder, and mixed with four times the
amount of fresh clay, to make new pots. The
clay is from Stourbridge. The pots hold thirty-five
hundred-weights each of molten metal.

And now we must go and look at the
molten metal in the pots, and see how it is
treated. We find ourselves on a sort of platform,
in front of six furnace mouths, which
disclose such a fire within as throws us
into a secret despair; despair for ourselves,
lest we should lose our senses, and for the
men, because it seems impossible to live
through the day in such a heat. Looking into
one of the openings, as well as we can from
behind a screen, we see that the spectacle is
one of exquisite beauty. There are the great
pots, transparent with heat, and of the palest
salmon colour, just distinguishable by their
rims from the fire which surrounds them.
Rising on tiptoe, we can see the metal—a
calm surface, somewhat whiter than the pots.
Turning to the men, we observe that they
work over a row of troughs of water. We
should like to plunge our head in, if the
water were not so dirty. It is for cooling the
pipes. The workman dips one end of his
pipe into the metal, taking up a portion which
Is of the consistence of honey. He lays his
pipe across the trough, and laves it with
water, while a boy blows into the end, swelling
the metal into a small globe. The effect
of the breath is seen in a paler central bubble,
spreading itself through the red mass, and
expanding it. When more metal has been
taken up, enough for a sheet of glass, it is
to be carried to the next shed, where there
are more furnaces, and the globe is to become
a cylinder. Before we follow it there, we are
offered the privilege of blowing through a
pipe. We empty our lungs into it, again and
again, but without producing the slightest
effect. Our breath goes away easily enough,
but no bubble ensues; we look rather foolish;
so we hasten away, to see what becomes of the
globe we have seen created.

We pass a man who is hewing out, with
a small hatchet, a hollow in a block of wood,
large enough for the globe to be rolled about
in. In the next shed, each workman has one
of these blocks to himself. It contains some
water; and as he rolls his red-hot globe
in it, a boy sprinkles more water upon it.
The water seethes and bubbles, but does not
reek. The heat is actually too great to permit
evaporation. The globe is tossed about, and
blown into again. If the pipe is raised in the
air while blown into, the metal becomes
cheese-shaped: if held horizontally, the form
produced is a globe: if pointed downwards,
the globe is elongated. This particular mass
is elongated. In a moment it must be heated
again. Between the range of blocks and the
furnace, there are bridges across a deep
chasm; a bridge to each furnace mouth.
The workman runs along his particular
bridge, holds his metal into the furnace,
withdraws it for another toss, heats it again,
with another puff through the pipe, and at
last has blown a hole through the further end.
The whole expands, the edges retreat, and
we now see the cylinder form arranging
itself. There he stands on his bridge—as
half-a-dozen more men are standing on their
respective bridges, swinging the cylinder at
arm's length, even swinging it completely
round in the maddest way; the scarlet colour
at the further end shading off beautifully into
soberer reds up to the point of the pipe, where
the central knot is still scarlet. When it is
of the right length (that is, for the Crystal
Palace panes, somewhat above forty-nine
inches), the cylinder must be detached from
the pipe. For this purpose it is laid upon
a wooden rest; a touch of cool iron breaks
off the pipe; with pincers, a strip of red-hot
glass is drawn off from the end of the pipe,
and laid like a ribbon round the cylinder,
near its closed end. After this, a gentle tap
severs the closed end, and we have the cylinder
complete.

While it lies cooling for a minute or two,
we observe the making of a glass shade, large
enough to cover a time-piece, or a statuette
on its pedestal. Stopping short of blowing
a hole in his cul-de-sac, the workman deposits
his red bubble in a wooden mould which
stands in the chasm below his bridge. The
sides are flattened, while the top and ends
remain round; and thus, amidst a little rush
of sparks, the shade receives its form. The
work done on these bridges is, perhaps, the
most imposing to a novice of any part of the
business. Some of the men have bare feet
and legs; some have no clothing but drawers
and a blue shirt; one or two, indeed, add the
article of gold earrings, being Frenchmen.
All have glistening faces; and all swing their
glowing cylinders as if they were desperate
or demented; a condition which we suspect
we are approaching, under the pressure of the
heat, and the strangeness and the hurry of
incessantly getting out of the way of red-hot
globes, long pipes, and whirling cylinders.

If we are to follow our own particular pane
of glass, we must be off; for the cylinder is
cool enough to be carried in a man's arms to
the annealing, in preparation for the splitting.
How this round thing is ever to grow flat, we
cannot conceive. Supposing it split, the