those which have to be placed at great heights requiring a much simpler treatment; but although the colours in this case are more massed, still each piece of glass should be of a different tone if we want to obtain a jewel-like effect. The windows in the cathedral at Florence are a proof of this, and look as if made of slices of immense jewels, in contradistinction to the Eastern ones, which have the appearance of being composed of a number of very small gems. Other artists have drawn for stained glass, for example, Messrs. Poynter, Westlake, and Holiday, but we cannot expect artists to be always working at cartoons, and we therefore come round to what I stated in my first lecture, viz. that we must educate the paid designer of the manufacturer. As regards the difference between old and new stained-glass windows, if we allow somewhat for age, I think a window designed by Messrs. Jones or Holiday, and executed wholly in streaky glass, is as good as any old one that was ever made; and if we could get an unlimited supply of them, I should certainly not lament the loss of all the old ones, at least those in England and France.

I have still to mention two more applications of glass to the arts, viz. mosaic and enamelling. Mosaic is the art of imitating cartoons by means of small tesseræ of opaque glass fixed into plaster. The glass is made in the form of small flat cakes about half-an-inch thick, which are broken into tessera by being struck between two steel hammers or chisels, the lower one being fixed. If the mosaic is to be placed high up, the broken surfaces are exposed, thus getting an infinite play of light, and giving texture to the composition; if, on the contrary, the work was on a level with the eye, say a border to a marble pulpit, the flat and polished side is placed uppermost. The gold is produced very much in the same manner as in the antique Christian vases, viz. by placing it between two thicknesses of glass, only in this case the lower one is a quarter-ofan-inch thick, while the upper one is as thin as a hair. This upper surface is executed in two ways. One is by covering the gold with a sort of glaze, which was afterwards fused; the other is to put on the upper surface in the form of a thin sheet. At the present day the glass cakes for mosaic, as well as the gold, are made at Murano; and most people will remember the

See Theophilus.

beautiful specimens exhibited by Signor Salviati at the International Exhibition. This gentleman has now in hand sundry mosaics for the vaulting of the tomb-house at Windsor. Messrs. Powell and Mr. Rust have also produced both the coloured and the gold mosaics, and with them several essays have been made by Mr. Fisher. The ornaments have been executed in the ordinary manner, but the tessera of the heads are simply portions of square glass rods broken off; a good deal of labour is thus saved, and at a distance the effect is much the same as if the material had been chopped out in the ordinary manner. In this case, as in stained glass, it is very desirable to vary the tones of the different colours, more especially the gold, which it is perfectly possible to make too well. It is much to be wished that this beautiful and very lasting kind of decoration should be more generally employed, but I am afraid that this will not happen until the cost of execution is brought down to something like that of stained glass. At present the gold is excessively dear, and of course retards this consummation, for the gold is a most essential ingredient in all mosaics for architectural purposes. We must hope, however, that this difficulty will be got over in time.

The last application of glass I shall notice is that of enamelling. At present, when we see it only used for jewellery and clock-faces, it is difficult to conceive it to have been the subject of an extensive art-manufacture; but such it was formerly, when the town of Limoges alone produced almost innumerable specimens, and such it must have been in China during the last two centuries.

There are various sorts of enamel, all of which have been more or less extensively practised in all ages. The first and simplest is where the ground of the metal is scooped out, and the enamel-of which the base is crystal coloured with metallic oxides, put in in the shape of powder, or of a paste, and then fused and polished; the visible surface of metal in this case generally being copper-gilt. This is the sort of enamel produced during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in such quantities at Limoges, to say nothing of other manufactories in Germany. All sorts of articles were made of it and exported, from marriagecoffers and horse-trappings up to large tombs. We know that one of the latter was actually imported into this country for Rochester Cathedral, and there is little doubt but that the

monument of William de Valence in Westminster Abbey comes from the same source.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries silver was much used as the ground for enamels; then the vitreous pastes be came transparent, and the works altogether much finer. The Italians, indeed, had a process of covering a very slightly raised subject with coloured enamels, which has a most beautiful effect. But to execute these demanded a first-rate artist to do the raised subject, and a most skilful enameller to prevent the enamels, when in the act of fusion, from running into one another. In fact, it was part of the goldsmith's art, and was never produced in sufficient quantities to become a trade.

A third method of enamelling was to form the pattern of thin strips of metal placed on their edges instead of scooping it out. Most European enamels of this kind are executed in gold, and are of ancient date, like the pallo d'oro at Venice, or the cross in the possession of Mr. Hope. Many of the enamels employed are also transparent. If, however, we look at the Chinese enamels produced in such quantities during the last two or three centuries, we shall find that they are nearly all produced in this manner, the metal being copper. It is almost impossible to enumerate the various objects made by this nation of enamelled copper, but every new importation brings to our notice some new application of it. I believe the Chinese themselves say that they received the art from the barbarians, and that at no remote antiquity; the earliest date I know of being 1475, marked on a vase, one of the spoils of the Summer Palace.

In the beginning of the sixteenth century the good citizens of Limoges revived their trade in enamels, which had quite fallen away; but then they took up an entirely new process, better suited to the prevailing architectural taste. The vessel to be ornamented was made of thin copper, then covered with black enamel, upon which most delicate figures and ornaments were executed in white. This of course was a far more artistic affair than their former process, and in all probability they did not produce anything like the same number of objects, but still it was a trade, and a great quantity must have been turned out, for the manufacture only ceased in the last century.

Of late years several attempts have been made in France to revive the art of enamelling as applied to considerable-sized objects, and in some instances with great success. Thus one artist

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imitated a quantity of the late Limoges work with such success as completely to deceive a celebrated collector, and obtained the honours of a lawsuit. Last year I had the pleasure of visiting the atelier of M. Legoste. His process, which is founded on the early Limoges school, consists in casting the copper instead of scooping out the pattern; but the great difficulty is to so mix up the enamels that they shall all flux at the same temperature. The enamels shrink during the firing, and have to be filled up and fired again. This process is very tedious; so much so, that the artist considers himself very lucky if it only occurs three times. In a circular article the fusing and firing is done in portions at a time, the other parts being protected by loam. A great deal of labour is saved by the casting process, and the works of M. Legoste are therefore comparatively cheap. He is also his own designer, and a very good one too; the only defect being a little sharpness in the colours, which is at once seen when comparing them with ancient or Chinese work. But what can be expected from a modern European, who lives without any surrounding colour?

I think it will be agreed that there is a pretty wide field open to the manufacturer even in glass, and its various applications; and as we have got stained glass as good as the old, let us hope that some day we may have drinking-glasses rivalling the Roman, and enamels which surpass those of Limoges, both of the early and late school.

POTTERY.

THE whole history of pottery is so well known, and has been related in so much detail by various excellent authorities, that it appears almost hopeless to make even such an abridgment of it as may suit the purpose of these lectures. It is also the most advanced of our art industries, for nothing can be more beautiful than the pottery, china, and earthenware made for the use of the upper ten thousand. Unfortunately, however, art has not been much applied to those objects in pottery of which we are compelled to use a large quantity, and we accordingly find ourselves in this dilemma-if we buy a beautiful thing it is very dear, if a cheap one it is often very ugly.

The painted Greek vase, as we shall see, was a valuable article, and corresponded to our better sort of china; but the unpainted vessels were made in equally excellent forms, the distinction being the painting, the finer clay, and the greater care in the manufacture. While I can, therefore, find very much to say on the subject of what has been done and what is doing in the manufacture of pottery, I shall have much less to suggest as to what remains to be effected; beyond putting in a plea for a greater employment of mechanical appliances to first-rate designs, so as to secure much smaller though remunerative prices. And first of the Greeks.

In the tombs scattered over Italy, Greece, and the Greek islands, it is by no means unusual to find beautifully painted vases disposed around the body, or hung up at the sides of the walls. If the tombs were small, as in Greece, the vases are also small, and we consequently find the largest and finest in Etruria and southern Italy, where it was the custom to bury rich persons in sepulchral chambers. These vases are generally of a lightish red earth, painted in blackish brown, yellow, white, and red; sometimes they hold ashes, and sometimes small objects which the owner used in life. In a state of society when it was considered fashionable to bury the warrior in his armour or the lady in her dress and jewellery, it can very easily be understood how the more valuable household vessels cor