come back upon my memory, revive and cheer
me. Of course if the conventional idea that
there is a higher musical law, up to which anybody
who is capable of deriving pleasure from
sweet sounds at all, can be educated, be correct,
I am worthy of blame rather than compassion.
This remonstrance is put forward in the belief
that myriads of people who enjoy pretty airs
could never, with any amount of practice, learn
to like classical music; to them The Last Rose
of Summer would always be delightful, and Thalberg’s
variations upon it unmeaning noise. I
contend that a man can no more give himself
a fine ear, than a long sight. But he can do
this: he can believe in the tyrants who would
raise his taste, and can learn to despise and
relinquish what gave him real delight; he can
drop the substance of sweet sound and pursue
a musical shadow, and be bored by concerts
for the rest of his life. And thousands do it.
Let us have classical music, and sweetnoiseical
entertainments, and live in harmony.

LEAVES FROM THE MAHOGANY TREE.
TABLE FURNITURE (CHINA, GLASS, &c.).

WE have before us while we write, two things:
a portfolio of photographs: and that simple, useful,
but not very beautiful object, a balanced
ivory-handled Sheffield dinner-knife. The steel
is good, the blade is constructed on sensible
principles, being capable of receiving a fine edge,
and being thicker on the back than on the front,
and thicker at the bottom than the top; but in
point of beauty of form, the implement might
be made by a Bosjesman. Nor is this Sheffield
dinner-knife altogether framed after even the
severest common sense, for it is rounded at the
top as if it were intended for a lunatic asylum,
and, moreover, the binding of the handle is put
on in such a way that it harbours cleaning sand
and dust: while the letters of the maker’s name,
stamped unwisely at the bottom of the blade,
also receive their share of the grit and blackness
of the knife-board.

Now, this knife in the eyes of a jury of æsthetic
epicureans stands arraigned as grossly
deficient in several essential points, and its
deficiencies represent the great wants of our
modem commercial art productions.

The prisoner at the bar—the table-knife
of Sheffield—as part of the furniture of our
dinner-tables, does not satisfy our craving for
the beautiful, nor does it meet the requirement
of our less exacting common sense. At
the table of a man of taste, everything, even
the simplest, should be sensibly adapted to its
purpose, and should also be beautiful to the eye.
It is no reason, because knives are cheap, and
are thrown out by thousands from Sheffield
warehouses, that they should be senseless in
shape, and ugly in form. It is not impossible
to unite the useful and the beautiful. The
modest vases of Etruria were beautiful, and the
penny lamps of Pompeii were as exquisite in shape
as they were judicious in structure. The Sheffield
manufacturer may be indifferent himself to
beauty of form or ornament; but that is no
reason why he should refuse to meet the demands
of the people of taste. He might at
least make his knives useful; yet to be useful,
a dinner knife should be sharp at the point,
because it is not merely the carver who has
to sever drumsticks, and penetrate between the
interstices of joints.

“But when were such things as dinner-knives
beautiful?” asks Mr. Sheffield. What can a
dinner-knife be, but a steel blade thrust into
a square or a round handle? Our answers
are ready filed and docketted at our elbow.
They are here in our portfolio of photographs
from the antiquarian collection of that very
practical virtuoso, the great shipbuilder, Robert
Napier, Esq. We see before us, photographs
of knives, forks, and spoons of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (that is
from the reigns of Henry the Eighth to that of
Charles the Second), of many countries, but
chiefly Italy, France, Germany, and England.
They are all beautiful, and are all works of art,
though some of them are of such rude materials
as box-wood and maple wood. Our first
photograph is of a rich crystal fork-spoon, mounted
in silver gilt. It perhaps indicates the origin
of the fork: a spoon sawn into long teeth, so
as in some degree to unite the two purposes
of the flesh fork and the spoon. By-the-by
there can be no doubt that the rounded top
of the dinner knife is a convention dating
back to the Queen Anne times, and earlier,
when even well-bred people ate with their
knives. A page or two further on we find a fork
(date 1552, but there is no doubt that forks
were used in Italy even at the beginning of the
sixteenth century) with an exquisite steel handle
embellished with busts of negroes and floriated
scrolls. It is contained in an elaborately carved
boxwood case, mounted with silver. People
carried about their knives and forks then; and
at London ordinaries in Fleet-street or near St.
Paul’s, gallants like Gratiano and Mercutio,
fresh from their Venetian tour, would produce
such forks from their perfumed doublets, to
the wonder, disgust, and amusement of
untravelled men. The next example we take up
is still more admirable and it comes, indeed,
from a skilful hand. It is a Flemish knife handle
of the seventeenth century, surmounted by
groups of Amorini (the Amorini are pretty
allegorical creatures of the Cupid family). It is
not only delightful to look at, but it furnishes an
excellent grip, and is with reasonable care imperishable.
Then we come to a Dutch knife-handle,
in boxwood, of the seventeenth century,
carved with scriptural subjects in oval
medallions; next, to a knife and fork (seventeenth
century) with handles of tulips, leaves,
and Cupids; next, to a German one with animals
gnawing and tearing each other; next, to a
Cinque-Cento spoon, with masks, cornucopias,
and acanthus leaves; next, to a fine silver
knife-handle with niello flowers; lastly, to
ivory spoons used by poor mendicant friars of
taste, who were forbidden silver. The handles
are beautifully carved with little crisp quaint