Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/184

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Walks in the Black Country

business at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Thus a single family of French refugees introduced into England this important manufacture, while others planted the ribbon trade at Coventry and silk-weaving in Spitalfields. From the Hennezels' day to this. Stourbridge has been distinguished for the perfection and extent of its glass manufacture, in which there are about a dozen houses engaged. As a proof of the excellence to which they have raised the art, one of these firms. Messrs. Walker and Son, received and executed an order from the Sultan for a chandelier which cost nearly £10,000. The oriental potentate, who owns and fleeces an immense flock of human sheep, penned in hovels and pastured in cheaply-made wilds, was so pleased with this great work of art and industry, as to order a spiral stairway of glass from the same firm, to ascend from the hall-floor of his palace to its dome. But the Messrs. Walker declined to undertake a job of such dimensions, difficulty, and expense, especially as no inconsiderable part of the work would have been in fitting the stairway to the palace after the glass part had been all cast and cut to the pattern. The cost would not have been less than £100,000, a sum which the holders of Ottoman bonds would have preferred to have seen put to more reproductive use. The French connexion with this manufacture of glass is still continued and even enlarged. The sand most