Before quitting the subject of iron as applied to stoves, I may add a few words upon its merits in other kinds of decoration. In the last century considerable interest revived in iron as well as bronze for railings, balustrades etc, through Caffieri's and Gallien's talent; in England we find first-rate designs under the Georges, among them the common patterns of halberds erect around the house is not unworthy of mention. But the art of working and casting in iron is of remote antiquity. Sculpture in cast-iron is attributed to Theodore of Samos, 850 B.C. The chronicle of Pharos places the invention of wrought-iron in the year 215 before the Trojan war; but it was not till after that war that the Greeks abandoned weapons of tempered brass for weapons of iron, which must have awakened the genius of many artists since the name of Hippasis, a celebrated chaser in iron, has come down to us. In the middle ages no hing can exceed the elaboration of arms, of locks and keys, of hinges, false and real. In the twelfth century skill was almost in perfection.

In the fourteenth century they mounted the iron lace-work on red cloth for latches, the plates of locks, and to embellish the chests.

The art is so thoroughly English, that the commonness of our name Smith has been attributed to the preponderance of workers in metal; as has the average of health and muscular prowess among families bearing that name, to the fact that a good smith must be a strong man. Germany has been long renowned for her wrought-iron ornaments, and there is exquisite French work in this metal, from the fifteenth century to the sixteenth, as delicate as natural vegetation and refined by advanced art knowledge. Some of the old keys are perfect jewels of iron, containing historic and religious scenes of marvellous minuteness in labyrinths of foliage and tracery; the bolts and locks are often most beautiful; mirror-frames again are as elegant as silver, in repousse and wrought-iron; and how many a lamp in a modern drawing room might humbly emulate the superb lanterns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries!

Fig. 71. - Iron bolt, sixteenth century.

Fig. 72. - Mirror with wrought-iron frame.

Work of this kind, though no doubt at a lower standard than the old, can for the most part only be obtained of German blacksmiths and cutlers. Time seems too valuable in England to encourage any hope of elaborate and loving labour; whilst brain, curiously enough, seems to be at a discount, and to fetch nothing at all. Scamped work, even for high pay, is all we can get. What else we want we must seek abroad where the workmen are not yet spoilt, or better educated in the right sense. It would be a useful work to employ some Nuremberg or Swiss working smith to provide us with lamp and flower-stands, fire-guards and screens, window-blinds and balconies, fenders and stove-sides and fire-dogs, besides gas-brackets, chandeliers, frames - nay, clock-cases and candlesticks innumerable, from old designs, how much more appropriate and well finished than the cast, and moulded, and tricky objects in false gold, and false silver, and even false brass, oh my country! made to break, which now choke the shops called of cutlers, who will not even make dinner-knives in decent hammered metal in these years of grace.