Page:Tixall Poetry.djvu/406

 "Who, when he saw the first sand or ashes, by a casual intenseness of heat, melted into a metalline form, rugged with excrescences, and clouded with impurities, would have imagined, that, in this shapeless lump, lay concealed so many conveniencies of life, as would in time constitute a great part of the happiness of the world? Yet by some such fortuitous liquefaction, was mankind taught to procure a body, at once in a high degree solid and transparent, which might admit the light of the sun, and exclude the violence of the wind; which might extend the sight of the philosopher to new ranges of existence, and charm him at one time, with the unbounded extent of the material creation, and at another, with the endless subordination of animal life; and what is yet of more importance, might supply the decays of nature, and succour old age with subsidiary sight. Thus was the first artificer in glass employed, though without his own knowledge or expectation. He was facilitating and prolonging the enjoyment of light, enlarging the avenues of science, and conferring the highest and most lasting pleasures; he was enabling the student to contemplate nature, and the beauty to behold herself."

This, I suppose, is an allusion to some fabulous tree in India, which, like the bread-tree in the South Sea Islands, and the tallow-tree, might unite in itself meate, drinke, and light; while its leaves or fibres would furnish cloth. But of this, and of the "Faire Indian of Amersford" herself, I have no further illustration to offer.

Progne and Philomela were sisters, and the daughters of Pandion, king of