frog, and a death’s head moth, besides leaves
and shells. Now, these objects coarsely executed
and awkwardly placed by a dull workman,
with no heart in his business, would be
simply detestable. They would be stupid
assertions of natural facts and so many
incongruous and sometimes repelling objects
stuck on a piece of pottery; but they are not
so in Palissy’s work. There, they come like
glimpses of outer-world nature, and we seem
when using his ware to be taking our fruit and
conserves under the sunny green trees of a
Boccaccio garden. The chief objection to using
Palissy is that it is so precious, and so fragile,
and it would be dangerous to entrust it to servants.
We grant this, and we would remove
this danger by mounting the Palissy plates in
copper, and rendering their breakage almost
impossible.

Men of fortune we would advise, when possible,
to return, for dinner and dessert services,
to some of those fine old styles of pottery that
never can become obsolete. For instance, if
Palissy appear to them too quaint, let them
use Majolica. Many of our readers, not versed
in antiquities, may not know the story of Majolica.
It is a ware originally made by the Moors
when they occupied Majorca, and it was exported
into Italy from thence and from the potteries of
the Spanish Arabs. About the middle of the
fifteenth century, the Italians, probably aided
by Italian workmen, began to make this beautiful
ware for themselves, and soon the manufacturies
of Faenza, Urbino, Castel-Durante,
Gubbio, and Pesaro, became eminent for these
iridescent plates—for which it was long supposed,
in England, that Raphael, when young,
had drawn designs. In due course, thanks
to the patronage of the Italian princes, a great
man arose, one Maestro Giorgio, a gentleman of
Pavia, who about 1498 came to Gubbio, and
either bought or succeeded to a manufactory
that had the monopoly of the famed ruby lustre,
the secret of which is now lost. Maestro Giorgio
improved the yellow lustre into the golden,
and purified the ruby from its previous orange
tone. There is no discovering when ware like
this was first made. It was probably one of
the primeval discoveries. Mr. Layard found
white enamelled pottery with lustre designs
ten or twelve feet under the surface of ruins at
Khorsabad.

These Majolica plates and dishes are often
adorned with copies of Raphael’s designs or
fragments from Marc Antonio. Often they are
what is called “amatoria,” or love offerings.
One, before us now, has an Amorino upon it,
holding an eel which is sliding through his
fingers, and the motto is, “Così fugge la vita
nostra”—“So flies our life.” In another
there is a female bust portrait in profile, with a
motto, “Chi a tempo non dorma.” On the
lady’s sleeve is the device of a burning heart
bound round with a cord, the whole executed
entirely in ruby lustre, with blue outline and
shading. Often in the centre of these plates
Andromeda cries to Heaven from her rocky
prison, or Mutius Scævola thrusts his bold hand
into the flames. In the early periods, the yellow
lustre, though dull in colour, has an extraordinary
mother-of-pearl iridescence which is exquisitely
beautiful. On these lovers’ offerings
—costly valentines of the sixteenth century—the
usual emblems are the old common-place hearts
pierced with daggers and darts. The arms of
Urbino often appear upon them (these pieces of
painted clay have survived the lovers and the
princes who caused them to be made), and often
they literally glow with ducal coronets, arabesques,
warring dragons, intertwined serpents,
sphinxes, masks, military and musical trophies,
garlands, and inscribed cartouches, all radiant
with gold and flame colour. After such ware
as this, our common dinner-plates, with blue
and maroon edges and a coat of arms or crest
in the centre, or maybe a bunch of flowers or
a timid landscape, appear very mean and
pitiful.

And now we come to glass, which can never
be too thin or too tasteful. Claret and Burgundy
should be drunk out of air bubbles, if
possible; while, on the contrary, ale should be
brought round in massive silver-lidded jugs of
grey Flemish stoneware. All wealthy men
who are collectors we would advise, if they
have Venetian glass, to use it—if not, at least to
decorate with it safe places round the epergne.
Most of our readers have seen Venetian glass
of the sixteenth century, though some, perhaps,
have not given it much attention. Let us recapitulate
a few of its beauties and its claims
as an art-decoration for the dinner-tables of
men of taste.

It is supposed that old Venetian glass was
partly an imitation of antique examples, and
partly an imitation of the enamelled glass of
the East. They seldom cut it on the wheel,
but obtained its extreme tenacity and beautiful
curves by blowing only. It is generally allowed
that Venetian glass evinces greater originality
and beauty of form than any we can now make.
The skill of the Italian workmen of Henry the
Eighth and Elizabeth’s reign seems little short
of miraculous. No wonder that that old Italian
goblet, “The Luck of Eden Hall,” was supposed
to be the work of fairies! Some old
Venetian glasses have, in the long slender columns
of their transparent stems, cross threads
of an opaque milk-white colour (Latticineo).
These, twine like the roots of hyacinth bulbs
through their transparent prison, as if they were
growing tendrils. Often, this network of white
threads is crossed into a lattice or lace-work
pattern (Vitro di Trino), and between each
lozenge a little shining air bubble has been
artfully left.

Then there is the Millefiori (thousand flowers),
when the glass is richly variegated with stars,
circles, and other geometric fantasies, produced
by mingling small cylindrical pieces of various
coloured filigree glass, cut from thin rods,
with the colourless melted glass of the mass.
The Schmelze, too, is beautiful, with its agate-like
colours, variegated brown, green, or blue,
which, when seen by transmitted light, assume
a deep blood-red tinge. Last, but most beautiful