"A secret!" cried Mr. Bossle. "Every body, I thought, knew—at least every body in the drysaltery line understands—what glass is made of. Why, I can repeat the recipe given by Dr. Ure, from memory: To every hundred parts of materials, there are of pure sand forty-three parts; soda twenty-five and a half (by-the-by, we have some capital carbonate coming forward ex Mary Anne, that we could let you have at a low figure); quick-lime, four; nitre, one and a half; broken glass, twenty-six. The doctor calculates, if I remember rightly, that of the whole, thirty parts of this compound run to waste in fusing so that seventy per cent. becomes, on an average, glass."
"That is all very true," was the answer; "but our glass is, we flatter ourselves, of a much better color, and stands annealing better, than that made from the ordinary admixture: from which, however, ours differs but little—only, I think, in the relative quantities. In that lies the secret."
Mr. Bossle expressed great anxiety to behold an individual who was possessed of a secret worth several hundreds a year, paid weekly. Romance invariably associates itself with mystery; and we are not quite sure from the awful way in which Mr. Bossle dropped his voice to a soft whisper, that he did not expect, on entering the chamber of pre-vitrified chemicals, to find an individual clothed like the hermit in "Rasselas," or mingling his "elements" with the wand of Hermes Trismegistus. He looked as if he could hardly believe his spectacles, when he saw a plain, respectable-looking, indifferent-tempered man, not a whit more awe-inspiring—or more dusty—than a miller on a market-day.
We do not insinuate that Mr. Bossle endeavored to "pluck out the heart of the mystery," though nothing seemed to escape the focus of his spectacles. But, although here lay, in separate heaps, the sand and soda and saltpetre and lime and cullet, or broken glass; while there, in a huge trough, those ingredients were mixed up (like "broken" in a confectioner's shop) ready to be pushed through a trap to fill the crucible or stomach of the furnace; yet, despite Mr. Bossle's sly investigations, and sonorous inquiries, he left the hall of "elements" as wise as he had entered.
Passing through a variety of places in which the trituration, purification, and cleaning of the materials were going on, we mounted to an upper story that reminded us of the yard in which the cunning captain of the Forty Thieves, when he was disguised as an Oil Merchant, stored his pretended merchandise. It was filled with rows and rows of great clay jars, something like barrels with their heads knocked out. Each had, instead of a hoop, an indented band round the middle, for the insertion of the iron gear by which they were, in due time, to be lifted into and out of the raging furnaces. There were two sizes; one about four feet deep, and three feet six inches in diameter, technically called "pots," and destined to receive the materials for their first sweltering. The smaller vessels (cuvettes) were of the same shape, but only two feet six inches deep, and two feet in diameter. These were the crucibles in which the vitreous compound was to be fired a second time, ready for casting. These vessels are built—for that is really the process; and it requires a twelvemonth to build one, so gradually must it settle and harden, and so slowly must it be pieced together, or the furnace would immediately destroy it—of Stourbridge clay, which is the purest and least silicious yet discovered.
"We have now," said Mr. Bossle, wiping his spectacles, and gathering himself up for a loud Johnsonian period, "seen the raw materials ready to be submitted to the action of the fire, and we have also beheld the vessels in which the vitrification is to take place. Let us therefore witness the actual liquefaction."
In obedience to this grandiloquent wish, we were shown into the hall of furnaces.
It was a sight indeed. A lofty and enormous hall, with windows in the high walls open to the rainy night. Down the centre, a fearful row of roaring furnaces, white-hot: to look at which, even through the chinks in the iron screens before them, and masked, seemed to scorch and splinter the very breath within one. At right angles with this hall, another, an immense building in itself, with unearthly-looking instruments hanging on the walls, and strewn about, as if for some diabolical cookery. In dark corners, where the furnaces redly glimmered on them, from time to time, knots of swarthy muscular men, with nets drawn over their faces, or hanging from their hats: confusedly grouped, wildly dressed, scarcely heard to mutter amid the roaring of the fires, and mysteriously coming and going, like picturesque shadows, cast by the terrific glare. Such figures there must have been, once upon a time, in some such scene, ministering to the worship of fire, and feeding the altars of the cruel god with victims. Figures not dissimilar, alas! there have been, torturing and burning, even in our Saviour's name. But, happily those bitter days are gone. The senseless world is tortured for the good of man, and made to take new forms in his service. Upon the rack, we stretch the ores and metals of the earth, and not the image of the Creator of all. These fires and figures are the agents of civilization, and not of deadly persecution and black murder. Burn fires and welcome! making a light in England that shall not be quenched by all the monkish dreamers in the world!
We were aroused by a sensation like the sudden application of a hot mask to the countenance. As we instinctively placed a hand over our face to ascertain how much of the skin was peeling off, our cool informant announced that the furnace over against us had been opened to perform the tréjetage, or ladling of the liquid pot à feu from the large pots into the smaller ones. "I must premise," he said, "that one-third of the raw materials, as put together by our secret friend, are first thrown in; and when that is melted, one-third more; on that being fused, the last third is added. The mouth of the furnace is then closed, and an enormous heat kept up by the tiseur or stoker (all our terms are taken from the French), during sixteen hours. That time having now elapsed, in the case of the flaming pot before you, the furnace is opened. The man with the long ladle thrusts it, you perceive, into the pot, takes out a ladleful, and, by the assistance of two companions, throws the vitrified dough upon an iron anvil. The other two men turn it over and over, spread it upon the inverted flat-iron, and twitch out, with pliers, any speck or impurity; it is tossed again into the ladle, and thrown into a cuvette in another furnace. When the cuvettes are full, that furnace is stopped up to maintain a roaring heat for another eight hours; and, in the language of the men, 'the ceremony is performed.'"
At this moment, the noise burst forth from the middle of the enormous shed, of several beats of a gong: so loud, that they even drowned the thundering inquiries with which Mr. Bossle was teasing one of the "teasers." In an instant the men hastened to a focus, like giants in a Christmas pantomime about to perform some wonderful conjuration; and not a whisper was heard.