The pâte tendre scratches easily, and the great
problem is how to have soft colours and a hard
surface. Minton uses a softer glaze than
formerly, and more of it; hence the rich grounds
he produces now, and the soft sinking of the
paintings into the glaze in his ware. M. Gille's
figures in semi-biscuit china are remarkable
productions; we have nothing like them in
England. All his clay is ground very carefully
four or five times, after being sifted and washed;
and the way in which the figures are propped
during baking is quite a science.

In the glass manufacture there are two sides,
good and bad, excellent and worthless. In
glass painting the French get their high lights
by a needle-point and not by a brush or
"scrub," which gives a more artistic finish,
though it is a longer and more tedious process
than by the scrub. They cut out their glass for
painted windows in the stupid old way, by
papers, which we have long discarded; and
they lead up the various pieces while painting,
instead of simply cementing them together, so
that when unleaded the colour is apt to come
off at the edges. Ours, by cement, is a better
and quicker process. Some of their colours
are better than ours, some of ours better than
theirs. They have a rose-pink which we have
not got, but our "flashed ruby" far surpasses
theirs. Salviati has some new tints altogether,
so at least says Francis Kirchhoff, glass painter,
who was the artisan selected for this special
work. He was much struck with some of the
old church windows in Paris, and mentions
several; among others, St. Sulpice as being
remarkable for peculiar rather than for
beautiful glass. "But I will not be certain as to
the name," he says, naïvely; " I went into so
many churches, and I have got muddled since
as to their names." In the modern painted
glass there is a tremendous defect from which
both England and France equally suffer. Owing,
it is supposed, to some corrosive action of the
colours employed— probably inferior mineral
colours— after the painting is burnt in, the
coloured parts get full of small holes letting in
the clear light, which, is by no means an advantage.

From glass-painting to glass-blowing is only
a step. Mr. Barnes, glassmaker, finds lack
of ease and finish in the way in which French
handles are affixed to jugs, &c. The manipulation ,
too, is different with them and us. We do
our lighter work by hand; in France it is blown
in wooden moulds. Their coloured glass is
better than ours; but our white glass is better
than theirs. Indeed, they do not come near the
crystalline purity of our best makers. They
make more beautiful things than we do, but
they finish them off ill; the feet and stems of
their glasses and vases being often scratched;
"our masters would decline to receive such
work from the hands of their workmen. We
in England are making straw-stemmed wine
glasses, from one ounce to one ounce and a
half," we are quoting Mr. Barnes, " whereas
the foreigners make their lightest wines about
three ounces, using double the quantity of
metal that the English workman does. I myself
have made an antique jug ten ounces in weight,
which is capable of holding an imperial quart."
Our workmen will make ninety wine glasses in
six hours, the French under a hundred in ten
hours; and yet they can undersell us. The
writer of this report, evidently a skilled first-
class workman, has three pounds ten shillings
a week; a French workman of the like grade
has five pounds in the fortnight; our men work
forty-eight hours in the week, theirs only forty.
Time was when a well sheaved wine glass could
be made only in England, when all foreign
goods of the kind were flatted or cut at the
edge, so as to give them the appearance of having
been repaired; but France and Belgium last
year both showed wine glasses with tops as
well sheaved, hollow stems as well formed, and
generally as well made as the best work on the
English stalls. " Our flint glass," says one
workman, Mr. Swene, as did his predecessor,
"is infinitely superior to theirs in colour and
brilliancy. They do not come near Osler say,
whose flint cut glass is almost as bright as
diamonds; their best flint cut glass, Baccarat's,
is colourless and dead beside Osler's." One
peculiarity is noticed by Mr. Wilkinson. " If
you get a melon and a pear, cut them into
various depths, and vary the size of opening,
you. get all the patterns of the lamp-glasses
used in France and on the Continent."

In tool making, England is in advance of
France, Belgium, and Germany, for the highest
excellence in model and the cutting edge in
saws and tools. Some houses have English saw-
makers, and the highest class of toolmakers on
the Continent are not equal to us, though the
second class is, as well as cheaper than us. Our
make of cutlery is imitated very extensively, as
are our trade marks, and most of the best
French cutlery is made of English cast steel.

We possess superior natural advantages, more
especially good grindstones and a cheaper supply
of coal and steel; also more capital and larger
commercial relations. Our Sheffield steel-makers
have a monopoly of the best Swedish iron.

In hammered iron, the old story of French
excellence in art and English superiority in
workmanship is again repeated. The English
weld their hammered iron, and the French rivet
or braze theirs. The French small-arms are
beautiful, and the best are better than ours, but our
breech-loaders are the best. Their locks are not
so good as ours, and their work is dearer, from
two to three hundred francs being asked for
goods for which we should ask six or seven
pounds. There was a capital invention shown—
a cavalry sword with a revolver in the hilt; and
there was a Belgian gun for fourteen francs
seventy-five centimes, which the reporter, Mr.
Hibbs, says candidly was the worst he ever
handled. But France is rapidly drawing to the
front in all kinds of metal work, even in things
in which we have for generations held the
foremost place. In some things, though, both
France and England are distanced; as in