The Romans made excellent looking-glasses of our English
tin, howbeit our workmen were not then so exquisite in that feat as
the Brundusians, wherefore the wrought metal was carried over unto
them by way of merchandise, and very highly were those glasses
esteemed of till silver came generally in place, which in the end
brought the tin into such contempt that in manner every dishwasher
refused to look in other than silver glasses for the attiring of her
head. Howbeit the making of silver glasses had been in use before
Britain was known unto the Romans, for I read that one Praxiteles
devised them in the young time of Pompey, which was before the coming
of Caesar into this island.
There were mines of lead sometimes also in Wales, which endured so
long till the people had consumed all their wood by melting of the
same (as they did also at Comeriswith, six miles from Stradfleur),
and I suppose that in Pliny's time the abundance of lead (whereof he
speaketh) was to be found in those parts, in the seventeenth of his
thirty-fourth book; also he affirmeth that it lay in the very sward
of the earth, and daily gotten in such plenty that the Romans made a
restraint of the carriage thereof to Rome, limiting how much should
yearly be wrought and transported over the sea.
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