at his goodwill if she failed to do him pleasure,
and who held her as sent into existence
simply and solely for his pleasure. She
was his wife, the care-taker of his house,
and the mother of his children; yet she was
nothing for or in herself, and her whole
duty lay in administering to him, as all
her honour came from him. Now, she is
individual, and an independent worker
almost the same as man himself. She makes
her own living and she hews out her own
fortune; she lives for fame, and builds up
her artistic and literary reputation with as
much toil and pains as man. But though
the laws which once pressed so heavily on
her are considerably lightened, and her
disabilities much modified, yet she has griefs
of which she complains to the public loudly,
and which she is making desperate efforts
to induce a masculine and perverse generation
to redress. Whether she will succeed
or no, rests, with other mysteries of the
future, in the lap of time. The great danger
in the woman question now, is, that the
women and their partisans will go too far,
and create a reaction towards injustice by
the exaggeration of their demands.

POTTERY FOR FLOWERS.

THE lady of taste, as she arranges her freshly
gathered flowers, little considers the pains
which have been bestowed in fabricating the
vessels she adorns. The vase, or cup, or tazza,
be it of Dresden, Bow, Chelsea, or Derby porcelain,
or of Wedgwood ware, has passed through
many workmen's hands; and its form, if beautiful,
and its decoration, if in keeping and good
taste, have sprung necessarily from the conception
of some true artist.

Much as Wedgwood did for art in this direction,
and many beautiful vessels as he perfected
for bulbous roots, plants, and flowers, he left
open a wide and comparatively exhaustless field
to future artists, and one to which, as yet, they
have contributed little that is good. Were a
few fine forms perfected by some potter of high
ability, and then reproduced in a cheaper
manner and material—so cheap as to become
popularised, even to the extent of being hawked
about, or set along the kerbstones in the cheap
markets—a practical lesson in taste would be
given to that wide class which so much needs an
indirect culture of this character.

It is to the workers in terra-cotta that we
must look for so much that is needed in the
improvement of floral pottery. The beautiful
unglazed wares they produce are just those
which befit natural forms that derive their
exquisite effects from gloss and colour. Black,
a blue-black, several shades of buff, and a rich
tawny red, are, without much chemical art,
easily produced by the mere processes of the
kiln, and were the colours used in endless variation
and intermixture by the ancient potters.
Some of their finest work was in a blue-black
body; they favoured buff in its many shades,
and that dark red, which is not only a primary
colour, but one of the most exquisite in nature.
It relieves every other colour, and is an effect
in itself. The ancients loved and used it thus;
often without a single relief or addition, and,
with nothing but some fine geometrical outline
in view, threw off productions which have
never been excelled, or even approached, in
modern times. Still more largely they used
this colour as a pigment; and the greatest
number of the finest antique vases which have
descended to our time are black, painted with
figures in this tawny red.

The observations of travellers, the analyses
of chemists, and geological surveys, have elicited
no facts which show that the ancients possessed
other or better clays than those existing in this
country in unrivalled abundance. Mr. Blackfield,
a high authority on these points, says distinctly
in a paper read before the Northamptonshire
and Lincoln Architectural Societies,
"There is no country in the world in which
there are finer materials for pottery than exist
in England;" our modellers have the same
geometrical principles to refer to as had the
Greeks, whose finest forms were but sections of
the cone; and they have open to them the
best examples of oriental colour and unconventional
ornament. Every chemical, scientific,
and mechanical process has made immense
advance, and all that is wanted for this great and
very much needed education of the popular
taste is, that some few master potters, of superior
judgment and skill, should supply the market
with cheap, yet good, copies of a few fine examples
in such sections of floral pottery as suspending
vases for plants of the orchideæ species, pots
for bulbs, and baskets and vases for ordinary
plants and flowers. At first it might be
that people so long accustomed to see nothing
but the barbarisms begot by cupidity and
ignorance combined, would prefer to
purchase what was hideous for fourpence rather
than what was beautiful for sixpence; but,
happily, the human eye has a natural aptitude
to seek out and select what is beautiful, and
hence the process of initiation and culture would
not be tedious. A real beginning would be
thus made, and the taste for floriculture, which
is spreading in London and the large cities,
would be aided by culture of another kind.

The articles prepared by the modern potter,
for the floral science of the wealthier classes, sin
in the same direction of inappropriateness and
inelegance. The shop windows of the dealers
are filled with highly glazed, gaudy coloured,
tub-like pots and square boxes; and, as choicer
specimens for cut flowers, with ill-designed
figures bearing cornucopias, or the semblance
of a lady's ringed hand and wrist, holding a
cup in the shape of a Scotchman's mull! This
last is an excrescence which sins alike against
good taste and feeling; for who would cut off
a lady's hand even for the sake of holding the
flowers of Proserpine? This is imitating nature