Elihu Burritt

“ And all the buildings near and around seem to have assimilated their faces to its aged countenance. You do not see here, as elsewhere frequently, a gray-headed patriarch of eighty in boy's clothes decked with bright buttons of brass or steel. But the old church stands up among many companions of its younger years—among which are several half-timber houses with their black beams carved by the best carpenter's genius two centuries ago.
After an hour's walk about the church and village, we started for that celebrated hiding-place of Charles II, Boscobel. ”

“ And now comes the most touching scene in this bitter experience, and I wonder no painter has made it a subject for his canvas. After the long night walk from Madeley with soaked shoes full of gravel, the Boscobel house was deemed unsafe even for an hour's sleep in a garret bed. So, after his bread and cheese, the King was conducted back into the wood, where William and Richard helped the two wearied and hunted fugitives up into "a thick-leafed oak," and raised up to them some more bread and cheese. ”

“ Here he passes before his eye all that Adam saw and named, and more too—all things that bloom and breathe with sweet odours in Nature's realm: the flowers of every zone; the birds of every land and plumage; every beast from the elephant to the winged mouse; every fish from the whale to the minnow of the thinnest brook; human histories reaching back to the holiest hours of Eden ”

“ Nothing in the working of other metals is like these strange manipulations. That is not the word for them, either, for the mouth seems to have more to do in the matter than the hand. Here are a score of men dipping their pipes into those terrible pots, taking up a ball of the red metal, and then blowing and twirling the bubble until it becomes a cylinder as long as a two-bushel bag of wheat. ”

“ The operations in making the "crown" glass are the most strange and stirring. Whatever else suggested the name, it might well have come from the process itself. To have recourse to very common similes, divested of all technical terms, a mass of the molten metal about the size and form of a gourd is formed, with the rod in the stem. It is then thrust into a blazing oven whose month is terrible to front, and which would serve the men who attempted it as Nebuchadnezzar's furnace mouth did his servants, if they did not wear a shield before their faces. ”

“ To take up to an ounce the exact quantity of metal, then to blow and twirl it into a cylinder that shall not vary a hair's breadth from the requisite thickness and diameter, is a remarkable, almost unparalleled feat of skill. ”

“ On the same Sunday night, therefore, the King, being too footsore to walk, was mounted upon Humphrey's old mill-horse, taken from the pasture, "with a pitiful old saddle and a worse bridle." The stout-hearted honest Penderels—William, John, Richard, Humphrey, and George—and their brother-in-law, Francis Yates, made his bodyguard, each with a wood-bill or pikestaff on his shoulder, and some of them with pistols in their pockets. Two marched before, one on each side of the horse, and two at a little distance behind, determined to do or die in the King's defence should he be waylaid and attacked. ”

“ A working force of 1,700 men, women, and children, employed in one establishment, represents the population of a considerable town. The provision made for the religious and intellectual education of this army of employés is thoughtful, generous, and admirable, and worthy of all imitation. One of the edifices of these twenty-four acres of buildings is the school-house, in which about 500 children are taught the solid, useful branches of English education. ”

“ Thus artisans of most mechanical crafts are employed in the different departments-workers in glass, brass, iron, and wood, and artists who would paint landscapes and portraits on canvas as well as glass of a high order of genius. ”

“ In the case of glass-house boys who have at their disposal a great deal of leisure time, we expect all of them, under eighteen years of age, to attend the day school at least three times each week for the present, and in the case of all other young persons, of both sexes, whose elementary education is defective, we expect the boys to attend the evening school three times in each week, for at least six months in the year ”

“ Still our nature is human in spite of philosophy, and we had to confess to each other a little of the old boyhood feeling about ghosts as we put our faces to the windows and tried to recognize objects within. After making a walk through the village without meeting man, woman, child, or dog, we returned to "The Bell." ”

“ These fields the artist-in-chief hunts up and down with his pencil for sketches which his well-trained corps in the painters' gallery are to reproduce on their glass-canvas. The pictures they produce in a year would make a Fine Arts Exhibition which would compete favourably with the portrait galleries of large cities. The popular taste and demand for these artistic windows are constantly increasing at home and abroad; perhaps more, proportionately, in foreign and even half-civilized countries than in Great Britain or America. ”

“ The Earl pointed to Charles and said to William, "This is the King; thou must have a care of him, and preserve him as thou didst me." For the Earl of Derby had already tested the hospitality and security of Boscobel as a hiding-place, and it was he who recommended it to the King as they rode from St. Martin's Gate, Worcester, on the eve of that fatal battle. The Earl had raised a force in Lancashire in support of the royal cause, but he had been routed in an engagement with the Roundheads at Wigan. ”

“ It is a kind of hollow notch over a buttery or some culinary apartment, with only an entrance on the top through one of the floor-boards, which makes such close joint with the rest that no one would suspect that it was not nailed as fast to the joist as they. Here William Penderel had put the Earl of Derby on his retreat to Worcester. Here doubtless he had concealed many other fugitives before the Earl; for it was built for the express purpose of hiding the hunted. The King found this place of rest and concealment both easier and safer than the oak, and he began to breathe freer from alarm. ”

“ An examination of the boys, girls, and young persons employed in the various departments of our glass works, shows that many of them, of both sexes, do not possess that knowledge of the rudiments of education which every person, at least, in this neighbourhood, who is old enough to work, ought, by this time, to have acquired. ”

“ A field of twenty acres covered with these little conical mounds makes a pleasant sight to man and beast, especially to the latter. We tarried so long at Shiffnal, and sauntered so slowly along the road afterwards, that it was nearly sun-down when we reached the little village of Tong. Finding it was still three miles to Boscobel, and that there was slight prospect of getting lodgings there for the night, we concluded that a bird in hand was worth two in the bush, and were glad to turn into "The Bell," the only inn the pair of Tongs have between them ”

“ There are from 1,500 to 2,000 hands employed in these works, representing such a combination of science, genius, skilled and varied industry as perhaps no other establishment in the world can present. For, although they are called Glass Works, when you enter the light-house department, you have ironworks on a great scale in minute ramification. In the buildings in which a common-sized lumber-yard of boards is made up into boxes for the exportation of glass to America or other foreign countries, you have wood-works of equal extent. ”

“ We soon came to a little white village, at some distance back from the road, and when abreast of it found that it was only a house with seven gables, and of more ells and ends for men, and stables for horses of an indefinite number. It was a large educational establishment for training horses for the turf and chase. We were told that frequently more than twenty boys or pupil-teachers might be seen at once giving these high-bred animals morning lessons to fit them for their course of unproductive life. ”

“ It is our purpose to impose a fine of sixpence per week upon glass-house boys who absent themselves from school without sufficient cause, and not longer to employ any whose conduct is reported by the master to be bad, or whose attendance is not kept up with regularity. ”

“ Here a fanatic, by name Smith, lived invisible for several years, and tested all the romance of a hermit's life in this damp, dark, miserable hole, when he emerged into the broad light of the sun and into the sight and companionship of his fellow-men. ”

“ In no other establishment in the world can one get such a full idea of the infinite uses which glass is made to serve as in these immense works. The artistic department, perhaps, will generally excite the greatest curiosity and admiration. ”

“ If the book is still extant, no better place could be found than Boscobel for reading "Style's Judges." [1] It would show proofs of devotion and self-sacrifice for the outlawed, hunted, hungry Whalley, Goffe, and Dickinson as brave, unswerving, and unselfish as the loyalty of the Penderels to their fugitive sovereign. It would disclose the same expedients for their security; how one stout-hearted woman had a false floor made, or two floors for her garret so deep between the joists that the three men might lie in it by night and day if need were ”

“ The great centre structure is the massive old church, evidently the growth of centuries, standing in a graveyard probably containing more inhabitants than the living population can number. It is truly an impressive old building, wearing its venerable antiquity with hardly a court plaster of modern improvement to cover a wrinkle. ”

“ His hair is black, and face, form, and armour are vividly human in appearance. The imagery, embracing symbols of every device and significance that the artist thought might illustrate the life and virtues of his subject, are exquisitely carved. Indeed, if any mercenary standards may be applied to such works, such a monument would now cost at least £10,000 to produce it On every hand stand these tombs wrought in marble, brass, or alabaster, erected to commemorate the different lords of Tong Castle and Manor. ”

“ The Chances stand in a more than industrial relation to the community at home and abroad. They are great educators of taste and pleasant and beautiful perceptions. They popularize high art, carrying the people on from where Wedgwood left them to more refined ideals of beauty. And one thing they are doing in this department which the community should appreciate. ”

“ Here you see these beautiful structures at every stage of their building Many of them are complete, ready for being mounted upon their sea-beaten pedestals on "a wild and rock-bound coast." An oriental or ancient fancy might take them to be the crystal crowns of huge giants stalking over the earth with their heads in the clouds. ”

“ Chance constitute one of the most remarkable establishments in the world, both for extent and character of their operations and productions. They embrace a small, compact town of edifices difficult to represent in any familiar simile. ”

“ It will be easy for them to see in their minds twenty-four boys standing in a circle, each with a long-stemmed tobacco pipe in a bowl of soapsuds, blowing up bubbles one after the other. Well, they will see that picture to the life in one section of these great works. ”

“ Not one in a hundred men well-read in other sciences can conceive what subtle and delicate principles, laws, and combinations are brought to bear in perfecting the lenses and prisms and in adjusting the focus of each so as to produce the aggregate and required result of the whole. ”

“ If the great governments and nations of Christendom could utilize their standing armies as Rome did, or set them to work upon roads, harbours, drainage, ship channels, and the like, the toiling myriads who have to support them would feel the burden lightened. ”

“ The human breath forced through all those iron pipes, if put in one volume, ought to be enough to propel a ship of the line across the Atlantic Few artisans could have trained the measurement of the eye to such fine precision as these glass-blowers. ”

“ This made walking painful to the King, as his shoes were filled with water and gravel. The night was very dark, and, as he oftentimes pleasantly remarked, he would have lost his guide had it not been for the rustling of Richard's calfskin breeches. They arrived at Woolf's house in Madeley about midnight, and Richard knocked them up from their beds. The daughter came first to the door, and without a moment's hesitation as to her loyalty, he told her the King was there, who was immediately welcomed to their fireside. ”

“ In thus secularising the art, as some may call it, they have elevated it to a higher standard for sacred and religious portraiture; and I am confident that this effect will be discernable in many of the future painted windows which will supersede those now centuries old in English cathedrals and churches. ”

“ Humphrey, the owner, who was walking by his side, defended his faithful beast, it is said, in the smart rejoinder: "My liege! can you blame the horse to go heavily when he has the weight of three kingdoms on his back?" At Penford Mill, about two miles from Moseley, on the advice of his guides, the King dismounted, and they proceeded the rest of the way by a private and safer path, and reached the appointed meeting-place in a little grove near the house. Here the Penderels left their royal charge in the hands of Lord Wilmot and the others waiting to receive him. ”