Now that we have unlimited command of knowledge and methods, we find that the treatment of windows as oil-paintings, with rounded figures and apparent prominences, is false in motive and bad in effect, and we are forced to go back to the early masters for hints whenever we wish to succeed. We find that small pieces of glass, or a general treatment of a similar effect to that of small pieces of glass, are necessary to give that repose in mere colour which the old windows present when viewed from a distance. A transparent picture, equally visible far or near, wearies; it also diminishes the apparent size of the building, as a too conspicuous wall-paper does; and drawing the eye from details of sculpture near it, which ought to be just equally visible, no more, no less, destroys the unity of the ensemble. We are driven back to the old manner of trebling pleasure by interesting the eye from three points - distance, in mere colour; propinquity, in colour ranging itself into subjects and devices; close scrutiny, with a field-glass, in minute, unending detail of tender and quaint handwork.

The costly Munich windows in Peter House, Cambridge, are an instance of the worst blunders in window decorating; they create a breach in the wall, and the treatment is too finikin to excuse the faults in style.

Burne Jones's lovely window in Christ Church, Oxford, and some of his in St. Peter's and Jesus Chapels, Cambridge, are instances of modern glass treated in the spirit of the old glass; it is somewhat ' flat,' and the figures conventional, but the colour and the treatment are most poetic and sweet. Much of Cottier's glass is extremely fine both in design and colour; Powell has six windows in St. James's Church, Marylebone, of considerable and quite peculiar beauty; nor must we omit to note as good windows some in Ely Cathedral, by Clayton and Bell, Luchon, and Wales of Newcastle.

At the same time much of the finest sixteenth-century glass is far from ' flat,' without being exactly shaded into roundness like modern Munich glass, than which, generally speaking, nothing can be more tasteless and ill drawn. The broad shadows dear to Renascence artists are brought in by dark masses of colour, but so skilfully that the eye is not annoyed by false appearance, and bold as the treatment is, the mosaic-look and broken colour are present when we gaze from a distance. Probably their recognition of the merits of this distant effect was the cause of their preference, as a rule, for small pictures instead of large and conspicuous figures.

Among the honourable names of glass-painters are those of Albert Durer, Franz Floris, called the Flemish Raphael, Domenico Pecori, Bernard de Palissy, Van Dyck (father of the painter), Gerard Douw, Dardennes de Char-tres, who has left lovely work at Rouen, R. van der Weyde, Dirck and Wouter Crabeth, Henry Gyles of York, Michael Coxcie, Raphael's pupil, Jean Cousin, Lambert Lombard, who painted the beauteous windows in Lichfield Cathedral, which are among the finest existing of the Flemish Italian school, and many more.