bright." He speaks of the use of ormolu as an
artistic aid but not technical excellence; and one
not used by English potters, who always
conscientiously meet their difficulties.

Another worker in clay, Mr. Beadmore, is
also opposed to the introduction of metal with
porcelain as to the imitation of malachite.
He, too, is strongly for Minton, and says
that his ware is real pottery, but that in
foreign ware you find "wings without feathers,
snakes without scales." In encaustic tiles,
Mr. Cooper, an encaustic tile-maker, says
the English are superior to the foreigner.
He advises highly vitrified surfaces for
pavements, as less liable to abrade by wear and
tear. Michael Angelo Pulham has his word
on terra-cotta. The English are first, and next
to them the Prussians, who have a good warm
colour in their work; the French make theirs
too light in tint, unless painted; and painting
takes away the character, while the bloom or
tint of colour gives richness. The Italian terracotta
has not been burnt long enough; the
Algerian is poor. The best terra-cotta workmen
can make twelve shillings a day— a moderate
worker can make eight shillings a day;
this is for piece-work of ten hours' duration.
Women get one and threepence a day, and
some men only half-a-crown. About five
hundred hands are employed in the fifty or sixty
pottery and terra-cotta works in Paris; that is,
four hundred and twenty men, forty women,
and forty boys. Only four manufactories have
steam-engines to mix and grind the stuff; by
which, consequently, a large amount of labour
that could be prevented is expended to no good
and to great pecuniary loss. " ' Iron,' " says
Mr. Randall, quoting Francis Horner, " ' is the
soul of every other manufacture, and the
mainspring of civilised society.' It forms the greatest
gun, the heaviest shot, the longest rope, the
sharpest lancet, the most powerful and the most
delicate machinery." The French, once so far
behind us, are now making rapid strides
towards the same point of perfection that we have
attained. It is about sixty or seventy years
since William and John Wilkinson first introduced
coal into France for the purpose of iron-making,
and now there are such works as those
of Creusot, which alone employ ten thousand
men, and turn out one hundred and ten thousand
tons of metal annually. A new steel from
the works at Charente was exhibited in the
Exposition, and got the gold medal; and the
Sheffield Atlas Works had also a new steel
highly spoken of. Austria and Sweden have
adopted the Bessemer process; and in our last
exhibition in '62 there was some Taranaki steel
of first-rate quality. Some of the French mining
and manufacturing proprietors exhibited plans
and models of their works and schools, but
there were no such things from England. But
this is wandering from the special subject, which
was pottery.

Shropshire clays and English earthenware are
both as good of their kind as can be. Wedgwood
puts good figures on inferior substance,
but the painting of birds and foliage on the
French jars and jardinières is excellent. The
superiority of French art in high-class ornamentation
is very obvious. As long as we confine
ourselves to geometrical forms in hammering,
pressing, turning at the lathes, or painting
on the surface, we have no difficulty m holding
our own; but when any originality of
thought is wanted, or the free educated hand
in decoration, our deficiency becomes apparent.
The Sèvres process of producing white
subjects in relief on celadon grounds is kept a
profound secret; and though our workmen
went over the Imperial Manufactory, and were
courteously shown everything else, they were
not allowed to see this part of the works. It
is kept a secret from even M. Gilles' men. The
difference between pâte tendre and pâte dur—
it is Mr. Randall who is still speaking— consists
in the glaze: "on one the glaze is incorporated
with the body of the paste, and allows the
colours to sink during the firing, so that they
appear soft and mellow, on the other the glaze
is so hard that the colours remain upon the
surface and have a dusky look. The quantity
and quality of the glaze on all china
manufactured here (in France) prior to the great
revolution was such that the whole surface,
including the colours, might be denuded, yet
upon putting the piece through the kiln, it
would come out reglazed." This writer's
opinion is that the true pâte tendre has not been
made since the times of Louis the Fifteenth and
Sixteenth, and that the nearest approach to it
was that made at Nantgarw, about forty years
ago, and which now fetches old Sèvres prices.
From what he saw he believes that both were
fritt bodies— that is, bodies, the materials of
which are first mixed, then fired, and, lastly,
ground up into clay. The result of which is
that they have a vitrified appearance throughout.
It was, therefore, a paste, and had
absorbed a considerable quantity of glaze which
became fully incorporated with it, and which it
again gave out in the enamelling kiln. Old
Sèvres and Nantgarw china have a yellow waxy
tint and texture, unlike anything found in the
present day. The expense of making it ruined
the Nantgarw proprietors, and the cost and
risk arising from its liability to crack in the
kiln, have deterred others from making it in
England. Old pieces of Sèvres slightly painted
are greedily bought by certain of the
enterprising sort; the slight sprigs are taken off by
fluoric acid, and the piece is elaborately painted
and regilt, the sharp touch of the chaser being
taken off by the hand, and made to look old
and worn by being rubbed with a greasy rag.
Plates bought for half a guinea when treated
in this manner are sold from five to ten guineas.
Mr. Randall says that he has seen his own
paintings on old Sèvres at noblemen's houses,
which have been bought for the real thing;
and Mr. Rose, of the Coalport Works, once
bought for old Sèvres a pair of his own vases,
which had been taken from the works when
white, and painted up for the Sèvres market.