Spain, aided in suggesting new designs to the
Italian potters, who often combined Moresque
with Italian subjects. Italian princes patronised
Majolica works near or in their
palaces, and treated the potters as maestri,
or masters of a liberal art. Those potters
were especially skilled in the production of
metallic lustre on the surface of their ware—
a kind of metallic paint, yielding gorgeous
results, which a collector goes well nigh crazy
in contemplating. He declares that the potters
and chemists of the nineteenth century
have never yet succeeded in imitating these
lustres; and he believes in his inmost heart
they never will. The famous ruby lustre of
Maestro Giorgio Andreoli is to him almost
beyond price, partly for its inimitability, and
partly for the same reason that a unique,
dirty, old copy of Shakspere ia worth a hundred
times more than a brand new modern
copy. The brilliancy and durability of the
colours on Majolica ware are estimated more
highly than the drawing of the designs; but
the shape of the ware is a distinct quality,
and often exhibits grace and taste in a
high degree. The plateaux, fruttiere, tazze,
perforated baskets, cups, vases, ecuelles or
sauce-boats, salt-cellars, ewers, bowls, flasks,
plaques, chalices, cruches or lipped jugs, are
frequently full of elegance in form; and thus
it is that, for colour, lustre, and form, the
Majolica ware is believed to be worthy of
study. Our Staffordshire potters evidently
join in this opinion, for they have done much
towards bringing the Soulages collection into
England.

Then, again, there is the Palissy ware, introduced
by Bernard Palissy the potter,
whose life and labours have recently been
deemed worthy of an admirable memoir by
MR. MORLEY. Some admire him, because he
was a romance hero; others, because he was
a great master in industrial art. Originally a
glass painter, he invented the ware that goes
by his name; and, removing to Paris, there
carried on his art-manufacture during forty
years of the sixteenth century. His workshop
became a mere workshop, and nothing
more, soon after his death; for nearly all
the Palissy ware of any value is believed to
have been made during the lifetime of Palissy
himself, and under his immediate supervision.
His ware is adorned in a singular
way with reptiles, shells, plants, &c., or with
figures in bas-relief, or with fanciful ornaments.
The dozen specimens contained in
the Soulages collection, will enable even untaught
observers to see how widely Majolica
ware and Palissy ware differ; how that the
former depended more for effect on colour,
and the latter on relief. And the same observers
may learn what is the Delia Robbia
ware— the closest alliance of sculpture with
pottery; and the Faience ware of the south
of France, and the Hispano-Moresco lustred
ware of the fifteenth century, and the
Flemish stone-ware, or Grds de Flandres.
But if the search be for Sevres or Dresden,
productions, or any of such recent date, the
Soulages collection must not be applied to.

It must not be inferred that pottery or
porcelain is the only kind of treasure comprised
in this collection. There are nearly a
hundred very curious specimens of Venetian
glass; twenty or thirty enamels from Limoges;
thirty specimens of painted glass;
one hundred and thirty in which bronze or
other metal is curiously combined with
ivory, pearl, or gems, in the form of knives,,
forks, spoons, snuffers, scissors, locks, keys,
clocks, watches, &c.; about a hundred
medals; twenty pieces of tapestry; a few
pictures; eighty coffers and cabinets, and
chairs, and tables, and other articles of
decorative furniture in carved woods: altogether,
the number of separate articles or specimens
amounts to a little short of seven hundred.

The specimens in metal and wood will probably
excite more interest than the Majolica
and Palissy wares, in visitors who have not
yet learned to be virtuosi; the difficulties
and the beauties being more apparent, more
obvious at a glance. The metallic collections
show to how great a degree each single specimen
was regarded by its fabricator as a distinct
work of art. Sheffield polishes her
fenders and knives very brightly, and
Birmingham makes her gilt buttons and brass
candlesticks glitter very showily; but there
was something about the old workers in metal
that we seldom try to imitate now-a-days.
Perhaps we might do so with advantage.
The Damascene work yet preserved to us
from the cinque-cento artists is beautiful—
an incrustation of a design in one metal on a
groundwork of another— be they silver or
gold, iron or copper, or gold on silver, or
silver on gold, and be the incrustation in
rilievo or iu piano. The picqué work,
consisting of a design formed of small pins or
studs inserted in a groundwork of another
metal, is very singular. The Niello-work,
still more singular and somewhat earlier in
date, is produced by engraving a design on the
surface of metal, filling the incised lines with
small grains of some other metal blackened
by sulphur, and then fusing and fixing the
grains by heat. The chasing, chiselling,
pouncing, and embossing by which articles in
metal were adorned by the old artists, are
often delicate and graceful. Look, for
example, at the snuffers in the Soulages
collection. Who could find in his heart to soil
these delicate specimens of steel carving, by
the greasy carbon of candlewick? It would
be a desecration— that is the only
objection to them. Then the scissors: we
hope they would not cut, for they are pretty
enough to look at without cutting. Then
the chased steel or iron handles of knives
and forks. And the spoons, with bowls so
engraved that it would be a pity for soup or
gravy to hide them. And the keys, not more
remarkable for the elaborate intricacy of the