Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/254

242 Strange as it may appear, this provision was very wise, as it placed public utility above personal interest and prevented monopoly. They had a chapel of their own, where, besides religious affairs, all the business concerning the brotherhood was transacted. There the apprentice aspiring to mastership underwent the practical and theoretical examination on which his fate depended; the work executed by him on the occasion was consecrated to the patron saint of the community.

In connection with the bridge-makers there are some details that we can not afford to omit. These carpenters, during the middle ages, were a kind of nomad tribe, who traveled in companies and pitched their tents wherever their work was required; bridges were built at their risk, and they had no claim to payment until their work had withstood the test of the winter floods. Originally they came from northern Italy, but in the twelthtwelfth [sic] century a similar association was formed in Germany, which shortly monopolized the trade in northern Europe.

During the thirteenth century, masonry and blacksmithing continued to invade the sphere that carpentry had previously appropriated to itself; the reign of carpenters was over, yet the share of work remaining in their hands was sufficient to enable them to keep step with the artistic and industrial movement of the time. Gunpowder being invented, carpentry, for some time, enlarged its province. The first guns were made of wood, strengthened by bands of iron; new engines were also invented; the reader can imagine who were the first gunners, the first pyrotechnists, and the managers of the Griète, as well as of all similar new contrivances.

People acquainted with history will readily understand that a great change must have been operated in carpentry by the civilization of the fourteenth century. In obedience to the laws of evolution and progress that rule the moral as well as the physical world, some provinces of this art were absorbed by superior arts and sciences: some passed under the control of sister arts, others expanded themselves and gained new ground. The carpenter whose bodily strength was overbalanced by the power of his mind was hailed as an engineer or as an architect; the average carpenter remained workman and carried out the ideas of his superiors. This was apparently a fall; yet carpenters made another step forward in the path of progress. The frequent festivals afforded them opportunity to display new talents and skill; descriptions of the festivals of the time may be found in any historical book, which resemble more the tales of the "Arabian Nights" than accounts of real events. During the reign of Louis XIV., a new building—the theatre—was erected; it was made almost entirely of wood, and though in a wholly different order of ideas, carpenters seemed to be inspired in working out the new construction, according to the lofty conceptions by which church-building had been formerly distinguished. Stage carpenters too, accomplished wonders; the illusion was so complete as to make some one say that "stage-carpenters lived an ideal life."