A mirror of black glass, reflecting objects only when it is moistened, has been recently found in a newly-excavated house at Pompeii; therefore we now know that the ancients were not ignorant of something beside polished metal for mirrors. But the secret was no doubt afterwards lost, and for a great while, and it was only gradually rediscovered. Mediaeval mirrors were first made of glass at Venice, but though as early as 1507 two Murano glassworkers, Andrea and Domcnico, declared before the Council of Ten that they had discovered a method of making 'good and perfect mirrors of crystal glass,' plates larger than 4 or 5 feet were never made until one hundred years ago, and they were always cast square or oblong until the end of the seventeenth century.

The Venetian glassworkers established at Lambeth by the Duke of Buckingham, whose mirrors Evelyn praised, gave their plates a gently bevelled edge, an inch in width, which adds to the value and beauty of the glass considerably; it is of extreme difficulty in execution, the plate being held by the workman above his head, and the edge ground at a slight angle. Modern bevelling is too acute, and the ancient feats of skill in the form of interrupted curves, and short lines and angles, are beyond our workmen. Presently figures were sunk in the style of intaglio, or gem-cutting, on the back of the glass and left dead, so that the silver surface of the mercury shows in white ornaments at front, or the hollows were burnished in jewel-like patterns.

Glass was no doubt made in England long before the seventeenth century, but we have no record of the workers. As early as 1447 John Prudde, of Westminster, engaged to execute the windows of the Beauchamp chapel at Warwick, and to use 'no glasse of England' (which sounds condemnatory). Stowe and Richard Hakluyt speak of 'glasses of English making' in and about 1580, but these were for domestic purposes, not mirrors, and doubtless Italian glass was superior.

Buckingham's glass-factory must have achieved a tremendous success. We hear that 'Sir Samuel Mor-land built a fine room at Vauxhali in 1667, the inside all of looking-glass and fountains, very pleasant to behold.' Pennant writes that the house of Nell Gwynne, 'the first good one as we enter St. James's Square from Pall Mall, had the back room on the ground floor entirely lined with looking-glass within memory, as was said to have been the ceiling.' Mme. D'Aulnoy places her Princess in such a room, as it was impossible to reflect too often her charming countenance; and a room, so panelled in small pieces, with beautifully wrought and gilded seams, must have been beautiful. Mr. Tyssen Amherst possesses two especially pretty old mirrors, temp. Louis XIV. and Louis XV., in which the joins are made a perfect ornament.