revolving; they cut and mangle, and twist and torment the clay into all manner of shapes, and by some contrivance, not at all comprehensible to a looker-on, thrust it forth from a square orifice at the bottom in the form of a four-sided mass of clear, solid, and compact substance. This, as it crawls lazily forth, is cut off in large lumps, and carried to the workshop to await the formative skill of the potter. It is not, however, yet quite fit for his purpose; severe as was the treatment of the kneading-mill, the clay yet retains a sufficient quantity of air to frustrate the efforts of the workman who would venture to use it. It is, therefore, taken in hand piecemeal by a labourer, who, by dint of blows and fisticuffs, and violent banging and beating, reduces it to good behaviour, gets rid of its air, and finally prepares it for the thrower or the modeller.

We will now follow the clay to the thrower, and see what he is doing with it. We find this formative genius comfortably seated on a bench, with a revolving flat disc about a foot in diameter between his knees. He is attended by a woman, who weighs him out the clay in portions as he needs it, and by a boy, who, as he issues the word of command, "faster" or "slower," regulates the speed of his wheel by means of a conical drum turned by the steam-engine, upon which he shifts the strap upwards or downwards, as greater or lesser speed is required. We find him upon our entrance engaged in making jugs. Taking a lump of the clay in his hand, he places it firmly upon the centre of his flat wheel, which he instantly sets in motion; at first he grasps the clay with both hands as a dairymaid does the handle of a churn, and it is pressed upwards between his fingers in the form of a column; then he inserts his thumb or finger in the centre of the top, and in two seconds the clay is a hollow vessel; then dips a small modelling tool into the cavity, and the column is gracefully swollen out into the form of a vase; in a moment he applies the same tool, or something else, to the outside, and the vase becomes a jug or ewer, wanting the handle; a few touches to the bottom of the column, and an elegant basement or footing to the vessel is modelled; another touch to the top, and the upper edge is formed; then he cuts it from the wheel by means of a thin wire, lays it on a bench at his side, and has done with it for ever. Understanding that we are quite a griffin, and have never witnessed such strange tricks before, he politely invites us to a tea-party, and immediately sets about preparing the "tea-things," in a style which would have astonished a fashionable coterie. Down goes a lump of clay on the wheel

dab

goes his fist into the middle of it-and in a "jiffy" it is a basin at our service. Down goes a second lump-whiz goes the wheel the clay begins playing at all manner of strange games; one moment it is a flattish-looking pan, then it is almost a capacious salver, then a deep basin, then it 18 a very corpulent-looking vase, and then, and all in less than half a minute, it is an undeniable tea-pot, lacking the spout, and big enough for a large family party. Before we have calculated how many cups it will hold, plump falls a handsome knobby cover on the top of it, fitting it to a hair. A third lump of clay is transformed to a tea-cup, and a fourth to a saucer, in less time than it would

have taken to fetch them up-stairs" at our house at home." A fifth lump being dashed on the wheel, expands first like a flower, then contracts in the middle like a young lady in an exceedingly tight pair of stays-then opens its circular top as wide as the mouth of a stump-orator in for a three hours' speech-then a thin wire cuts off two sections from the yawning lip, a touch of the operator's thumb depresses the spout, and, lo! it is a capital cream-jug. By this time the thrower has taken it into his head that we are fond of pork-which, by the way, is not true in the abstract-and volunteers to garnish the tea-table with a pork-pie. No sooner said than done. Plump goes a dab of clay on the wheel-in go his five fingers in the very heart of it-up rise the thin circular walls of crust-quick as thought the upper edge converges towards the centre, and before you can say it is covered in by a dome, which it certainly is for about seven-eighths of a second, or thereabouts, the dome is depressed to a flat roof, the edges of which slanting outwards in the true gastronomic fashion, consummate the construction of an admirable pork-pie, complete in all respects, barring the pork.

The thrower, whose marvellous skill in manipulation is the result of long and careful practice upon a material beyond all others the most pliable and plastic, ensures uniformity in wares made by pattern by means of gauges fixed in front of his wheel, the points of which can be so arranged as to make impressions upon the clay in any part of the fabric under formation. Of course, his operations are confined to articles which are perfectly circular in form; if any of these, such as jugs, ewers, and water-vessels, have to be furnished with lips or spouts, such additions are made by another hand while the clay is yet soft.

The

Leaving the thrower at his work, with a convic tion that he has got his business completely under his thumb, we may follow the ware to the dryingroom. Here it is ranged on shelves in vast quantities, and exposed to a gentle heat produced by steam-pipes running through the apartment, and in the course of a few days is ready for the operations of the turner. The turner may be regarded as the special coadjutor of the thrower, who having modelled the goods to the required shape, and carefully finished their interior surface, takes little pains with the outside, leaving that to be pared down and finished by the turner's tool. turner stands at work at a lathe, fitted with a chuck shaped for the reception of the articles he has in hand: one is turning basins, another jugs, another bowls, and another confection-pots, and so on. The articles to be turned are only partially dry, and the shavings fly off them in long ribbands; but they are dry enough to allow of being accurately turned to the required shape. The process is very rapid, a minute or less sufficing for a small-sized article. When the cup, pot, or basin has been pared down to its proper proportions, the turner reverses the action of the lathe, and the article revolving in a contrary direction is polished all over by a few touches of the polishing tool.

At a former era in the art of pottery, the operations of the thrower and the turner were comparatively much more in demand than they now are. By late improvements in manufacture, much of

along beneath the raised floor and converge together at an orifice in the centre, through which their united flames ascend. This is the biscuitoven; entering it through a breach in the wall, such as might have been made by a cannon-shot, we observe that the flooring of fire-brick is highest in the centre, descending at a slight inclination towards the circumference: this plan is evidently adopted as a convenience in packing the saggers, which, as they are piled one upon another in rows reaching to the top of the kiln, have a tendency to lean against the surrounding wall. The men are busy in piling the loaded saggers one upon another; and ever as a fresh one is laid on, it is cemented to the one beneath with soft clay, to prevent the searching flame from visiting their contents. The men have to mount ladders in order to complete the stacks. As they proceed in their work, the oven becomes filled by degrees; and by the time that two thousand five hundred of these clay bandboxes, all filled with pottery wares of every description, have been carefully stowed in their places, there is barely room enough left for the last work man to crawl out. The rugged breach by which we entered has now to be built up with solid masonry, and then the fires are lighted-cautiously and temperately at first, in order that the inclosed goods may be dried and hardened by degrees, without which precaution they would not stand the full heat of the oven; the fire must also be as gradually slackened after the wares are sufficiently burnt, as a sudden reduction of temperature would destroy them. Altogether, this operation of first firing, by which the goods are converted into what is called biscuit-ware, occupies in the whole about sixty hours, during the greater portion of which time the wares, saggers and all, are kept in a state of incandescence at a white heat. It is important to know the degrees of heat attained in the oven at different periods of the firing, and for this purpose Wedgwood invented a pyrometer, which, however, in practice is not much used, the masters preferring a species of pyrometer of their own, consisting of small thimble-shaped clay vessels planted in certain parts of the oven, and withdrawn for examination at certain periods of the firing. The men can tell, by the appearance these small pieces present, the degree of heat and the probable state of the wares subjected to it, and can regulate their fires accordingly.

When the goods within the kiln are sufficiently burnt, the fires are first slackened and then extinguished; and so soon as the oven is cool, crowbar and pickaxe go to work, and a forcible entrance is effected. The saggers are now taken out, and their contents rigidly examined; and as the hands employed in the previous processes generally work good from the oven," as it is called, that is, contract to be paid only for such work as stands the biscuit-firing without injury, the scrutiny which now takes place is interesting to all parties concerned. The bad, cracked, crooked, or ill-shaped pieces are rejected and thrown away as good for nothing, the master losing his materials and the workman his labour-good workmanship only being paid for. The wares, in this state known as "bisenit," are now ready for the subsequent processes of printing, painting, and various kinds of ornamentation, regulated by the demand of the

market or the caprice of fashion. Vast quantities of them are stored away in this condition in long galleries and warerooms, where hundreds of thousands of them may be seen piled in stacks and heaped on shelves, ready to receive the impression of any new device for which a sudden demand may arise: it is the possession of a good store of biscuit which enables a manufacturer to execute large orders for new patterns at a very short notice.

The next operation which the potter's wares have to undergo may be considered to be that of printing; for though all ware, as the reader knows perfectly well, is not printed, and a great deal is not ornamented in any way, yet all that is printed, is printed at this stage of the manufacture. To witness this process we must resort to the printing-room, where the rationale of the whole ceremony is visible at a glance. The patterns to be printed on the china or earthenware are first engraved upon copper plates, at a cost, by the way, which must form no small item in a manufacturer's expenses. They are worked at a copperplate press, differing slightly in construction from that in general use; but the plate itself undergoes a course of treatment which it would astound a good engraver to witness-the face of it being actually shaved clean at each impression by the blade of a large knife. The impressions are taken upon a thin greasy-looking kind of tissue-paper; and as fast as they are worked off, they are taken in hand by girls who, first cutting off the surplus paper with a pair of scissors, spread the pattern, its inky side downwards, upon the plate, dish, or whatever vessel it is upon which it is to be transferred. Ware in the biscuit state is exceedingly dry and thirsty, and the moist oily ink of the pattern readily adheres to its surface. So soon as it is laid on in the proper position, the girl rubs the back of the paper rapidly with the end of a cylinder of rolled flannel, moistened with some soapy mixture, until the thin paper adheres so closely to the ware as to be scarcely distinguishable from it. It is allowed to stand thus for some time, until a complete set-a tea-service, or a dinner-equipage, it may be-is thus covered with the printed patterns: it is then taken to a tub of water, and by simply rubbing with a wet sponge the thin paper is removed, the pattern remaining on the ware, perfect and complete to the faintest line and the smallest dot. Now it happens, unfortunately, that the ware, though before it was printed it was ready for the process of glazing, yet after it is printed it is not : the ink or rather colour used for printing is of a very oily consistence, and until this oil has been evaporated from the colouring matter the wares cannot be glazed. In order to get rid of the oil, the printed wares are piled upon shelves in "muffles" or small kilns, in which no saggers are used, as the flame of the fires is not allowed to enter the muffle, but only to circulate in flues around it. Here they have to remain for a period of ten or twelve hours; and here, for the present, we shall leave them to griddle at their leisure, while we make a few observations on the printing department of the pottery trade.

It appears to us, then, that in this branch of his manufacture the master potter lags miserably in the rear of the modern march of improvement. For what reason he should go to the expense of

copper plates from which but a few thousand impressions can be taken before they are worn out, when wood-engravings would cost less, would yield half a million impressions each, and might be multiplied by stereotyping, at the cost of a few shillings P-why grown men should laboriously produce sixty or seventy impressions an hour, or perhaps a trifle more, while a couple of boys at a hand-press might work three or four hundred? -why young girls should waste their days and years in cutting tissue-paper with scissors, when the paper might be cut to the required form either by machinery before it is printed, or by the press in the act of printing ?-these are questions which, from all we could observe in the potteries, cannot be answered satisfactorily, and which demand the serious consideration of all persons largely concerned in the trade.

JUSTICE TO PUSS

FEW animals, I consider, have received a greater share of unjust calumny than the cat, and it is my intention in the present paper to stand up for it, and prove its claim to consideration by recapitulating certain passages of feline history, with which it has been at various times my lot to become acquainted. I shall state nothing but facts. If puss be dear to me, truth is dearer; and let no man suspect me of sophistication if I tell him what he never heard before, and might have been slow to suspect. My feline friends, some traits of whose personal history and character I am about to recall, are all, with one exception, dead and buried long ago. Did I say "buried ?" Having pledged myself to speak truth, I must recall that expression: few of them, I am sorry to say, were buried; one or two, I recollect, did find rest in honoured graves -in the garden under the gooseberry bushes; for the remainder, the reader will be so good as to substitute" dust-boxed" for "buried." And now, that point being settled, we may proceed to invoke from what some long-haired poet calls "the caverns of memory," the slumbering shades of Grimalkin grey and his parti-coloured compeers, and exhibit their virtues to the world.

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ing at the door, where he waited till she came forth. He slept a good part of the day, but would wake up immediately if she rose to leave the room. In case of her illness he took his station on the landing outside of the chamber where she lay, and had to be fed there, as nothing could induce him to leave the spot. He was a cat of no accomplishments, and would rarely submit to be fondled by any but his mistress. Poor fellow! his fine coat and portly proportions were the death of him; he was snatched up by a member of the skinners' company, while watching at the door for the return of her he loved, and was slaughtered for the sake of his fur.

"Turnkey" was intended for Brindle's successor, and might have led a happy life had he known our good intentions towards him. He was brought up at a dairy-farm, was a magnificent tortoise-shell tom, and derived his name from the figure of a large key plainly visible on his flank. Happening to be on a visit to the farm soon after the loss of Brindle, I begged him of farmer Bolton, and putting him in a canvas bag, which I thoughtlessly suspended from the axletree of the gig, drove him home, a distance of some miles. When released from the bag in my mother's kitchen, while Betty was preparing, according to the prescribed formula, to butter his feet, to prevent his straying, he darted like a mad creature twenty times round the room, shot over the fire and up the chimney, where being stopped by the smoke-jack, he came down again, looking black and furious, dashed through a pane of glass, and made off. Of course we gave him up for lost, and expected neither to see nor to hear of him again. Not so, however. When farmer Bolton rose next morning, Turnkey, dirty, drag gled, wet and wounded, and shorn of half his coat, was the first living thing that met his eyes. How he had found his way back is one of those mysteries not very easily fathomed. No wonder that he was shy of strangers ever after, and would fly from the house whenever they appeared.

"Peter" was a stray, who came, as cats are frequently known to do, to volunteer for the situa tion of Brindle, which he must have instinctively discovered to be vacant. He was an undersized, foxy-looking fellow, with a disreputable tail which The first was my mother's cat "Brindle." What had suffered fracture, and, from lack of surgery, a host of endearing associations does the name re- had healed with a knot in the middle. But he was call to memory, and what an endless panorama of a knowing tactician, and earned his way to favour family pictures, which must all vanish, as they before he claimed it. At first he hung about the come, without observation. Naturalists have said house, seizing such scraps as were offered to him that the cat is attached to places and not to per- out of compassion for his hungry face, and not sons. Brindle would have said, if he could have venturing to be familiar till he had proved himself said anything, that they knew nothing about it. of use. One night he managed to avoid being shut He was an overgrown tom, of the true tabby out, and the next morning he brought an enor pattern. All places were alike to him, if one per- mous rat, which he had killed in the cellar, and son, his mistress, were present. He would sit and laid it in the centre of the kitchen-floor, where he doze on the narrow back of her chair for hours was found keeping guard over it. This exploit was together, but preferred the middle of the table, interpreted, as it was doubtless meant, as an offer under her eye, and close to the book from which of service, accompanied with a specimen of work she read. He always overlooked the preparation manship. A compact was entered into, ratified by of the pastry when she visited the kitchen for that a basin of milk, into which Peter dipped his whispurpose, and followed her up-stairs and down kers, and took post at once as the house-cat, giving through all her domestic duties daily. At night general satisfaction by the diligent discharge of his he escorted her regularly to her chamber-door, and duties. He soon began to exhibit extraordinary then descended to the lower regions on a mousing talents. His first acquirement was the art of expedition. In the morning he called her re- opening the kitchen-door for himself, and this he gularly at seven o'clock, by crooning and scratch- | learned to do ere long by a single leap at the latch:

the dining-room door, however, presenting nothing | rat emerged at his friend's call, Prince refused to but a smooth brass handle, cost him more pains; eat his dinner at all, and would have starved had still he frequently accomplished it by continuous not his friend been restored to him. How this anopawing, though it evidently required a very strong malous friendship originated no one could guess. inducement to impel the undertaking. Though he Rats and cats, as we all know, have been trained would not submit to nursing, the children grew by professed animal tamers to live amicably tofond of him, and taught him to fetch and carry. gether; but this is the only instance, as far as I In this he excelled the cleverest dogs, and liked am aware, of two animals of these hostile races the sport so well that he would bring the ball in having spontaneously cultivated a friendship for his mouth and solicit a game two or three times a each other. Prince, in the end, was mercifully day. He was neither greedy nor a thief, and killed to save him from the agonies of dying of inthough he would beg with the patience and perse- digestion, to which he had become a victim through verance of a Carmelite monk, it was never from over-feeding and over-indulgence of every kind. choice, but at the word of command, that he did so. He had but one fault, and that was his leanness. He refused to grow fat and sleek. Perhaps this was owing to his eating nothing but flesh, fish, and fowl, of which latter, by the way, he contrived to help himself to a liberal quantity, by pouncing from under the cabbage-leaves, or out of a tree, upon the sparrows in the garden. Peter died in the height of his popularity from the bite of a terrier dog, who had the reputation of having killed half the cats in the neighbourhood.

Cats are sometimes taxed with a want of gratitude; but this is a charge which no one who is systematically kind to them would ever think of making. The fact is, they have more discrimination of human character than most dogs possess, and are slow to testify attachment which may not be deserved or reciprocated. Pincher wags his tail and licks the hands of a dozen benefactors in a day, if they turn up; Puss rarely bestows her affections on more than one, and that one must be essentially a keeper at home, a part and parcel of "Prince" was a spoiled beauty, the pet of a the establishment of which puss is a member. She maiden lady whom I was in the habit of occasion- manifests her gratitude much in the same way as ally visiting about twenty years ago. He was the dog, that is, by licking the hands of her beneproud beyond all parallel, and as much an exclu- factor, or rubbing herself against his feet or garsive as any lap-dog in Belgravia. He was of a ments; and if such demonstrations are much less light clear grey colour, deepening to black along frequent with the cat than with the dog, it may be the back of the spine; and of a prodigious size, that they are none the less sincere. A playful weighing twenty-four pounds. He fed from the tabby of our acquaintance, in gambolling with a same fowl or joint, and the same pies and pastry, ball of worsted, unhappily swallowed a needle and as his mistress; and took his siesta in a bed of a portion of the thread which had been left thrust down shaded by silk curtains, and supported on through the ball. In the course of a few days the gilded pillars, constructed, regardless of expense, needle worked its way to the shoulder, which swellfor his sole use. He would associate with none of ed and festered into an unsightly gathering. Unhis race, and savagely drove away all feline in- able to walk about, puss lay in a corner, moaning truders; but having no vocation to utter solitude, with pain. A child, whose companion and playfellow he cultivated the acquaintance of a huge rat. If she had long been, thought of examining the it be the natural and instinctive propensity of a cat wound to see if anything could be done for the to destroy rats, which I neither affirm nor deny, relief of her favourite. The examination led to the then it may be the nature of excessive indulgence discovery of the needle beneath the skin. to annihilate such a propensity. However this child tenderly urged it to the surface, and drew it may be, I have on several occasions been witness to gently forth, together with a yard of worsted with the following scene, which I can account for on no which it was threaded. The operation, so successother principle. Prince dined with his mistress fully performed, restored instant ease to the cat. daily at three o'clock. His dinner, consisting of Any one who could have witnessed the strange meat and vegetables for the first course, was served antics by which puss sought to express her gratiupon a large plate laid upon the hearth-rug before tude-the licking, patting, rubbing, and actual the fire. So soon as it was set, the creature would embracing of the child that ensued, together with walk round it several times, uttering a kind of the indescribable tones, all but words, by which whimpering cry, at which his friend the rat would her feelings were in a manner articulated-would come forth from beneath the fender, and both have formed a different idea of feline gratefulness would at once fall to eating the food. Rat was a from that which is generally current. We might fine whiskery guest, but not nearly so polite as adduce other instances of the kind; but we must Prince, and would eat with ravenous haste, snatch-pass on to illustrate feelings and faculties of a yet ing dainty morsels from beneath his very nose. higher order, as evidenced in our next sketch. This behaviour Prince bore with perfect good temper; but when rat, not content with clearing his own side of the plate, veered round to that at which Prince was leisurely feeding, the latter would lift his paw, and with a sound box on the ear return him to his own position. Rat never withdrew while a serap remained, though he vanished immediately when the affair was over. This friendship endured, to the best of my recollection, about two years; attempt was made to put an end to it by stopping up the hole in the flooring from which

and when an

The

In London, cats are frequently the victims of cruel negligence, from being thoughtlessly abandoned by their owners upon a change of residence. Poor puss is too often omitted from the catalogue of "goods removed," and is left to bewail her fate in the empty house, in which she is sometimes starved to death through the absence of any tenant; or, escaping that fate, has to subsist by hunting and foraging upon the cat's common ground, the roofs of outhouses, the gardens, and garden-walls of the district. Sometimes puss has