tities of Marsala, Cape, and other white wines are mixed with products of Xeres, and under the magic name of sherry are unsuspectedly consumed as the genuine article. We fancy that Diogenes would require his lanthorn to find the natural 'standard of sherry.' We find it pasted up on the tops of the omnibusses, but nowhere else. If we could only get at the real constituents of the Spanish white wine that has so long ruled in England, we should undoubtedly find that a very large portion of the cheaper sorts were made up of light wines of other countries brought to the requisite standard of strength by potato spirit. In strictness a large proportion of such wine should go to swell the quantity of light wine which has made such an extraordinary advance in our consumption since the lowering of the duty. Mr. Ford, in his 'Gatherings from Spain,' plainly says:

'The ruin of sherry has commenced from the number of secondrate houses which have sprung up, which look for quantity, not for quality. Many thousand butts of bad Nubla wines are thus palmed off on the enlightened British public, after being well brandied and doctored. Thus a conventional notion of sherry is formed, to the ruin of the real thing; for even respectable houses are forced to fabricate their wines so as to suit the depraved taste of their consumers. Sherry (he says in another place) is a foreign wine which is drunk by foreigners; nor do the generality of Spaniards like its strong flavour, and still less its high price... More of it is swallowed at Gibraltar, at the messes, than in either Madrid, Toledo, or Salamanca. . . . The men employed in the sherry vaults, and who have, therefore, that drink at their command, seldom touch it, but invariably, when their work is done, go to the neighbouring shop to refresh themselves with a glass of innocent Manzanilla.'

Richard Ford (all honour to his pleasant memory) had the honour of introducing this pure light wine to Englishmen, no mean achievement; for of all difficult things the most difficult, especially in England, is to introduce a new wine taste. Manzanilla is preeminently a light dry wine, and its introduction to British tables is another proof that we are not irredeemably wedded to made-up spirituous decoctions.

There is no doubt that the wine of Oporto is slowly but steadily dropping out of use, going to the same limbo to which Lisbon has long been banished. In 1859, 2,201,306 gallons were consumed at our tables, equal to 30-97 per cent. of the whole quantity consumed; but year by year this percentage has declined, until last year it had fallen to 22.57 per cent. It is quite clear that the disappearance of the once favourite port is only a matter of time, and, if we may prophesy, a not

very long time. The late Baron Forrester spent his life in showing that in order to obtain port we were destroying very fine vintages for the sake of manufacturing a very inferiorflavoured and adulterated drink. The result has been that all true wine flavour is destroyed and a standard set up such as the juice of no grape can produce. To use the words of the agents of the British wine merchants of Oporto, as far back as 1754, who say that according to our tastes it (port 'wine) should feel like liquid fire in the stomach; that it should burn like inflamed gunpowder; that it should have the tint ' of ink; that it should be like the sugar of Brazil in sweetness, and like the spices of India in aromatic flavour.' The persistence of this vitiated taste in a minor degree, it is true, is the only explanation that can be afforded for the absence from our tables of a number of Portuguese wines that we might have expected to have received upon the reduction of the duty in 1860. Portugal possesses immense resources in good natural wines of a quality stouter than the clarets of France, but possessing their fine qualities, which are alone sufficient to supply the whole of England.

We have no doubt that in Portugal and in other countries, when the real taste of the British consumer has been formed and ascertained, abundant means will be found to supply the demand. But the taste in wine which has existed in this country for the last 150 years was an artificial creation of restrictive duties and prohibitive laws. That taste is now undergoing a rapid and complete change. Old habits have, no doubt, a great influence on all such matters, and it will require one or two generations to teach an Englishman to drink wine like the rest of the world. But gradually freedom and nature will have their way, and meantime we are now happily at liberty to select from all the vintages of the earth those which are best suited to our palates, our purses, and our climate.

ART. VIII.-1. The Life of Josiah Wedgwood, from his Private Correspondence and Family Papers, in the possession of JOSEPH MAYER, Esq., F.S.A.; F. WEDGWOOD, Esq.; C. DARWIN, Esq., M.A., F.R.S.; Miss WEDGWOOD, and other original sources; with an Introductory Sketch of the Art of Pottery in England. By ELIZA METEYARD. 2 vols. London: 1865.

2. The Wedgwoods: being a Life of Josiah Wedgwood, with notices of his Works and their Productions; Memoirs of the Wedgwood and other Families; and a History of the early Potteries of Staffordshire. By LLEWELLYNN JEWITT, F.S.A., &c., &c., &c. 1 vol. London: 1865.

3. Wedgwood. An Address by the Right Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE. London: 1863.

THE potter's art has in all ages been so universally practised

that there is probably no nation, whether barbarous or civilised, which could not contribute some interesting pages to a general history of pottery; whilst in almost every country it would be found that the state of this art at any particular time is a tolerably fair test of the degree of civilisation to which its people had attained. Sir Samuel Baker says:

'Nearly all savages have some idea of earthenware; but the scale of advancement of a country between savagedom and civilisation may generally be determined by the examples of its pottery. The Chinese, who were as civilised as they are at the present day, at a period when the English were barbarians, were ever celebrated for the manufacture of porcelain, and the difference between savages and civilised countries is always thus exemplified: the savage makes earthenware but the civilised make porcelain-thus the gradations from the rudest earthenware will mark the improvement in the scale of civilisation.'* (Albert Nyanza and Nile Basin.)

To this rule, however (allowing even that it should not be too strictly applied), England presents so remarkable an exception that it will be well, before considering the great potter whose biographies form the subject of this paper, that we should present our readers with a slight sketch of the state in which his art had lingered in this country from Celtic times to his own.

The specimens of Celtic pottery which have been found in

* We presume that Sir Samuel Baker takes porcelain' to mean a very fine earthenware, otherwise Luca della Robbia, Palissy, and Wedgwood would only rank as savages.

various parts of England were probably made in the immediate neighbourhood of the places of their discovery, since neither the habits of the people who made them, nor the means for carrying goods about the country, render it likely that they should have been used as articles of barter or merchandise. It is not surprising therefore that considerable differences should be exhibited in the execution of the various pieces since brought to light, which for other reasons are supposed to belong to the Celtic period. A state of constant warfare, and the want of proper materials, might oblige one tribe to form hastily with the hand rude vessels which were dried in the sun, while another, more happily circumstanced, would be turning their pots upon a wheel and hardening them in the fire.* In spite, however, of these differences, the Celtic pottery, which consists mainly of sepulchral urns, drinkingcups, vessels for food and incense-pots, exhibits those strong resemblances in form and ornament which give to a manufacture a national character.

The Romans, on gaining possession of the country, introduced not only their pottery, but also the art of making it. They established kilns in Kent, in London, in Essex, Buckinghamshire, Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, and Hampshire; also in Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and Shropshire. It is almost certain that they established potteries in Staffordshire, at which the red ware known as English Samian was made, although no kilns which can positively be assigned to the Roman period have as yet been discovered in that county. The wares produced in these different districts had each its own distinctive character-that produced at Upchurch, near the Medway, was black, hard, light, and well burnt; often exhibiting beautiful forms which could only have been obtained by the wheel or lathe. It was ornamented with vines, dots, or semicircles, drawn with a pointed instrument. The pottery made at Castor, in Northamptonshire, was also of good shape and ornamented with scrolls and figures in relief generally of the same colour as the body, but occasionally white, and laid upon the glaze. Other pottery, more or less resembling the Upchurch and Castor wares, which are the

*With respect to the generally received opinion that Celtic pottery was baked in the sun we venture to express considerable doubt, for these two very simple reasons-first, that unless the climate has very much changed there could have been no sunshine sufficient for the purpose; and, secondly, that had they been so dried they would certainly have got damp again during the hundreds of years they have lain underground, and would have fallen to pieces.

best known, has been found in various Roman sites; as also various specimens differing much from those wares both as to colour and glaze, which undoubtedly belong to the same period, but of the origin of which nothing certain is known.

The order, the civilisation, and, above all, the good roads which the Romans established in England, enabled pottery to become an important article of commerce-a fact which may be proved, if proof be wanted, by the size and number of their kilns, by the discovery of wares known to have been made in particular spots scattered through various and distant districts, and by the riveted specimens (of which there are several in the Museum of Practical Geology*), showing that earthenware was of sufficient value to be worth the trouble and expense of mending.

After the departure of the Romans from England, the potter's art appears soon to have relapsed into the barbarous state from which they had temporarily raised it. The few specimens of Anglo-Saxon ware which have come to light, consist chiefly of cinerary urns rude in shape and ornament, and probably made as occasion required near the places where they have since been found. The subsequent abandonment of paganism and its funeral rites; and later still, the introduction of Roman manners and customs, caused an extensive change in the forms of pottery. Pitchers, jugs, porringers, and dishes, came into general use; but the Normans, who could build splendid cathedrals, and fill their windows with stained glass, which we are still striving to imitate, appear to have bestowed no thought upon the methods by which their pottery might become a thing of beauty.'

* In alluding to the very interesting little collection of pottery and porcelain in this museum, we must express our regret that it is not better arranged for the convenience and instruction of those who wish to examine it. Many of the specimens are placed so high as to be almost out of sight. They have no descriptive labels but merely tickets affixed to them, giving a reference, consisting of two sets of letters and a number, to a catalogue which has been for some years out of print. This catalogue, which was compiled by the late Sir Henry de la Beche and Mr. Trenham Reeks, contained a great deal of useful and interesting information on the subject of porcelain and pottery, and should certainly be reprinted. It may be questioned, however, whether it would not be better, after selecting such of the specimens as are required for the illustration of practical geology, that the collection in Jermyn Street should be transferred to the South Kensington Museum, which must eventually become the 'ceramic' museum of England. The same course might also be advantageously adopted with respect to the small collection of mediæval and renaissance pottery in the British Museum.