Up: Glassmaking
Reminiscences
26 of 123
|
|
| |
allowed nobles to marry their daughters; whereas, if a nobleman marries the
daughter of any other tradesman, the issue is not reputed noble."
From this statement a valuable lesson can be drawn,
viz., that a strict parallel is constantly observable between the progress
of this art and the intellectual and social elevation of its possessors.
Those engaged in it now do not indeed occupy the
same social position; still it is probable that in foreign lands the blood
of noble ancestors still runs in their veins; and even in our own
democratic land, with all the tendencies of its institutions, workers in
glass claim a distinctive rank and character among the trades; and in the
prices of labor, and the estimate of the comparative skill involved, are
not controlled by those laws of labor and compensation which govern most
other mechanical professions; and similarly of taste and habit is in a degree
characteristic of the modern artisan in this department, as in the case of
those who, for their accomplishment in the art, were ennobled in the more
remote period of its progress. The same writer says:--
"It must be owned those great and continual heats,
which those gentlemen are exposed to from their furnaces, are prejudicial
to their health; for,
|
|