THE FEMALE SCHOOL OF DESIGN
IN THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD.

MR. JOHN MOTLEY is an extensive
manufacturer of woollen shawls and table-covers.
All British manufacturers of similar articles
are not like Mr. John Motley, we are
extremely happy to say; but both history and
justice compel us to state, that the family of
the Motleys is a very large one, comprising
many members and branches, all following the
same trade, and including the Patchmans and
the Stairings, great manufacturers of chintzes
and printed cottons; and the Squabtons, who
monopolise half the trade in crockery and
hardware.

Mr. John Motley has gone on pretty much
in the same way all his life, i.e., in the same
way as his father before him, who also
followed in the steps of his father and
grandfather. The necessities of change of some
kind, which he called fashion, compelled him
to adopt corresponding changes, which he
called patterns, and sometimes, by way of
irony, designs. Very frequently he adopted
novelties from the continental manufacturers,
but always altered them to his own taste—
the regular old family taste of the Motleys;
so that, in truth, there was no real adoption
of a continental design, but merely a fresh
impulse and enlivenment given to the native
stock. Mr. John Motley, like all the rest of
his family, considered that he thoroughly
understood the English taste; that his own
taste was the model and criterion of public
taste—in fact, that the two things were
identical. He had been successful—had raised a
fortune, and was still accumulating; and what
better proof could anybody have of the
correctness of his judgment and method of
conducting business. Besides, he used to add,
with a knowing wink, they must buy our
goods, because they can't get any others—the
duty on foreign articles giving us a monopoly
of the home market. Very proper it should.
It protects our property, and the family taste.

Year after year, the successful John Motley
sent forth his countless bales of shawls
and table-covers, with great vulgar
patterns, dabbed, sprawling, or conglomerating,
over a gaudy ground—the colours of which
were not only inharmonious with those of the
patterns, but a violent outrage to all harmony.
If he is ever reproached with a want of novelty,
or a want of beauty in his patterns, by some
strange and particular fellow among his wholesale
customers—a thing that does now and
then reach his ears—he merely replies, with
dogged indifference, "You see, there's a want
of invention in the country—we have no
designers; so, we do the best we can. Take 'em
or leave 'em."

In a similar course, and with like success,
have the various branches of the Motley
family proceeded. The Patchmans, and the
Stairings have all most rigorously followed in
the old system of eschewing all real novelties
of any beauty and elegance, and insisting
upon their own taste as the taste of the
public; till at length the public, by the force
of long habit has, in the mass, come to
believe them, and adopted most of the new
patterns—whether of gaudiness, dulness,
heaviness, meanness, vulgarity, or confusion—
which they have sent forth to the world.
The Squabtons, with all their vast producing
power in the shape of hardware articles of
domestic use and necessity, have sedulously
adhered to the family maxim of "stick to the
old models" as long as possible, and by way
of novelties "ring the changes" upon them
only. Hence our dummy jugs, and mugs,
and jars, and candlesticks, and vases, and
other articles of the home produce. If you
see among them any one shape of an elegance
that instantly attracts the eye, you find it is
double the price, even when of the same
material, and not needing more labour in the
workmanship than a dummy article—provided
there has not been a resistance, or a wilful
stupidity in opposition to any real improvement
in taste—for this article is from a
foreign model. Had it been actually a foreign
article for which a duty had been paid, there
would be some reason for the double price;
but this is simply a copy and adoption, and
the high price is therefore of no necessity, but
simply in order to hold in check all taste for
articles of similar elegance or grace. Mr.
Squabton does not approve of them. He
only admits them into his show-rooms,
because it looks well to have all sorts. But
they do not please the habitual Squabton
eye. He therefore assumes that they would
not meet the public taste; or, if they did, the