become matters necessary to us. It would be difficult to enumerate all the articles here manufactured of clay. There are tea and coffee services of all imaginable sizes and kinds, ornamented in the most varied manner, and yet always with good taste. Then there are endless varieties of vessels, large and small, pitchers, jugs, dishes, bowls, basins, and every kind of apparatus for washing, and for bathing the feet and the different parts of the body articles with which an English sleeping-room is usually so richly furnished, and of which the uninitiated stranger is often at a loss to divine the use. All these things in England are not only handsomely ornamented, but are also made large. The English complain, and not without reason, of the diminutive size of most of the apparatus of our bedrooms." Mr. Kohl might have added that the supply of fresh water in such rooms is equally diminutive.

In pursuance of his comparison, he says: "If we compare the common earthenware of England with that of the French and Germans, or of any other nation, it appears not only excellent in quality, but also highly ornamental and unsurpassingly beautiful. The common French and German earthenware is comparatively ugly, coarse, and misshapen. On the other hand, English porcelain, particularly those articles in which beauty and elegance are the main points aimed at, are far behind those of the continent. I believe there is something characteristic of the English in this. In articles of ordinary use, the English seem, better than we, to know how to combine excellence of quality with outward grace and beauty; whereas, in those articles wherein grace and beauty alone are to be kept in view, the English are never equally successful. Their tools, their furniture, their machines, their knives and scissors, their bread, and their joints of meat, are not only excellent, vigorous, and nutritious, but also beautifully formed, and not to be at all surpassed; whereas, their pictures, their sculptures, their pasties, and their cakes, and, in short, everything in which fancy takes precedence of usefulness, are far behind ours in excellence. Look, not merely at the earthenware of the French, but at their tools, at their implements of gardening and agriculture. They are all strikingly rude and little suited to the purposes they are intended for. Even the common bread in France is much inferior to that used in England."

Staffordshire is trying to wash away the stain of being behind-hand with the continent in elegant porcelain. Perhaps she may one day succeed. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive that this inferiority exists at all, when we glance around any of the show-rooms of the greater manufacturers. The articles of beauty and grace are now most wonderfully diversified. Besides the usual dinner and tea-services, the decorative productions embrace a wide range. The fittings for chimney-pieces, for doors, for the toilet-table, for the writing-desk, are most varied; and the highly-finished miniature paintings on some of the pieces show that if painters can produce the designs, the manufacturers can do what is requisite to work out those designs in

a practical way. Many of the statuettes and small busts which are now to be seen so plentifully in the London shops are exquisite specimens of biscuit-ware; and though the lace-coverings of some of the Cupids and Venuses may be prettinesses rather than artistic merits, yet their manufacture is a curious specimen of ingenuity. This lace is to real lace what coral is to coral-fishes, the outer crust of something which has once been withinside. A piece of lace is dipped into liquid slip, of which it imbibes a certain quantity; the lace is dried; and the subsequent baking burns away the lace from within its delicate porcelain envelope.

While speaking of the show-rooms of our porcelain makers, and of the dazzling display there made, it may not be amiss to say a few words concerning the magnificent museum belonging to the Royal Porcelain Manufactory at Sèvres, in France. It was begun to be formed about the year 1804: it consisted, in the first instance, of a collection of Greek vases, which had been acquired by Louis XVI. To these were added specimens of German porcelain, from the chief establishments of Dresden, Berlin, Brunswick, Wurtemburg, and Vienna, selected and given for this purpose. Next were collected from every part of France specimens of the kinds of earth supposed to be fit for one or other of the various kinds of pottery or porcelain, together with specimens of articles manufactured from such clays. All these collections, made by about 1812, formed the nucleus of the museum. Brongniart, the scientific and talented director of the Sèvres manufactory, then devised a mode of classification and arrangement for the specimens. He adopted a three-fold system: first, that of fabrication, from coarse brick to fine porcelain; then that of topography, according to the places where the specimens were made; and, lastly, that of chronology, according to the age of the specimen. This system has been found to answer admirably; and for thirty years there have been constant additions made to the museum, chiefly by gifts Officers of the navy, travellers, ambassadors in foreign countries, naturalists, artists, potters,-all have sent interesting specimens; and the result is a most beautiful collection, illustrating every imaginable branch of the art. Some of the specimens were presented by the manufacturers of Burslem, Longport, and Stoke.

Alexander Brongniart, who has been the director of the Sèvres works for nearly half a century, has not spared time or energy in bringing them to perfection. He made tournées ceramiques,' as he somewhat fancifully calls them, or pottery tours, in 1812, 1820 1824, 1835, and 1836; during which he visited the potteries and porcelain works at Wurtemburg, Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Englandbringing home specimens to adorn the Sèvres Museum, and observing the modes of manufacture at the different places. The catalogue of that Museum, prepared by Brongniart and Riocreux, is an example of the munificent mode in which the French treat all details bearing

even indirectly upon the fine arts. The catalogue is an imperial quarto volume, of about 500 pages, printed on fine paper; and in it every specimen is not only mentioned, but described. Then follows a collection of 80 quarto plates, containing drawings of nearly one thousand of the specimens, all delineated and coloured with as much care as if they were specimens in natural history.

There is one 'observation made by M. Brongniart, in the preface to this catalogue, which we feel tempted to quote, because it illustrates a wish which we have often felt while walking through museums in England. "I have long ago expressed an opinion, perhaps too dogmatically, that a museum in which the specimens are not labelled, presents to the public and even to savans nothing more than an object of vague curiosity. In former times, too, nothing was admitted into museums but specimens which were extraordinary or brilliant in themselves: all that was simple and common was rejected. It is true that these brilliant specimens, in the earlier museums, attracted the eyes of the multitude: this was indeed the object; simple specimens, which are neither rare nor striking, have neither interest and utility. It is very easy to arrange specimens in an agreeable manner in the show-cases; but to give any interest to a vessel of common ware, a pipe, a brick, a fragment of clay or of felspar, it is necessary to indicate what it is, whence it comes, and what purpose it subserves. Some research is required for this purpose, often long and difficult; but by its means, specimens which would only deserve to be rejected if not labelled or described, have a value imparted to them by such labelling in some instances the interest and the value become really great." Speaking of the Sèvres collection, he says: "Without this care a great number of specimens in this rich collection would have been rejected; our collection of clays, sands, and marls, would present itself only as a confused mass of earth and stone. For this reason I have acted on the plan, that no specimen shall be admitted without a label attached to it conspicuously. Numerals, placed not only upon the label, but painted on the specimen itself, refer to a register, in which the history of this specimen is given in detail."

INTERCOMMUNICATION OF THE POTTERY TOWNS.

We have now given a tolerably full account-an account quite as ample, perhaps, as the nature of this work permits of the Pottery towns, their banks, their show-rooms, their people, and the past history and gradual development of their manufacture. But we cannot leave the district without speaking of the beautiful railway-station at Stoke; and we can as little think of this station without comparing the singular changes which time has produced in the mode of intercommunication between the several towns of the Pottery district, and between the district as a whole and the other parts of England. About the year 1750, one of the chief manufacturers at Burslem was

in the habit of sending five or six times every day to the nearest collieries for coals to burn in his kilns; each horse made two or three journeys a day, bringing about two and a half hundred-weights of coal on his back each time. The coal was neither weighed nor measured; but a price of sevenpence was paid for this quantity or horse-load, roughly guessed. Ground flint, for the pottery, was at the same time carried in square tubs, on horses' backs; each horse carrying two tubs, and each tub containing four pecks. The same kind of horse-carriage was employed in other ways. For instance, five horses were engaged by the same potter to carry crates of finished ware to a neighbouring town, and to bring back clay from thence; each horse carried a crate of ware on a pack-saddle, and brought back two or three hundred pounds of clay, in panniers slung on either side of him. The roads were narrow and bad, and each horse was muzzled, to prevent him from biting the hedges as he went along. It was a grand thing when a cart with four horses was employed instead of the pack-saddles: the cart used to convey crates of goods to the larger towns of Staffordshire and Shropshire, and bring back goods for the shopkeepers of the Potteries, as well as clay and other materials for the potters.

Sometimes travellers were employed to traverse different parts of England, to find a sale for the goods: their accounts seem to have been kept in a rough sort of way; for they simply emptied their pockets of all the money received on the journey, after deducting travelling expenses, and then received a certain weekly sum as salary. As late as 1780, the southern end of the Pottery district, near Lane Delph, was not traversed by a single vehicle; horses with panniers brought the materials and carried away the goods, and a horse-post brought the letters.

But when Josiah Wedgwood commenced his career, or rather, when he was advancing in prosperity, such a state of things was not likely to continue. He cut with his own hands the first sod of the Grand Trunk or Trent and Mersey Canal, and witnessed the completion of that great undertaking in 1777. This canal forms so many junctions with others, that it is not easy to determine where it begins or where it ends. It is sufficient to say, however, that it places the pottery district in communication with every part of England. One line of canal, beginning near Stoke, extends through Etruria, Burslem, and Tunstall, to Congleton, Macclesfield, and Manchester. Another winds round Shelton and Hanley, to Leek and Uttoxeter. Another goes by way of Stone to near Stafford ; from whence one branch extends to Wolverhampton and Birmingham; and another past Rugeley to the navigable part of the Trent, near Alrewas. Except when the winter's frost puts an end to all navigation, these canals carry an immense tonnage of goods to and from the Pottery district. The Pottery railways have only just been opened: it remains to be seen how far they will occasion a diversion in the goods' traffic. The Harecastle tunnel, in the Macclesfield canal, a