the more scholastic color-notions of Europe. There was young Munich
with Müller's lions and the anti-realistic figures of Schwanthaler;
Austria with Monti's veiled heads, henceforth to be credited to
Lombardy; Prussia with Rauch; and Denmark with Thorwaldsen--all pure
form, copied without color from Nature, from convention and from
the antique. Then came design and color united in ceramics--in
the marvelously delicate flowers of Dresden, purified in the
porcelain-furnace as by fire; in the stately vases of Sèvres, just
but varied in proportion, unfathomable in the rich depths of their
ground-shadows, and exact and brilliant in the superimposed details;
the more raw but promising efforts of Berlin, marked, like the jewelry
from the same city, by faithful study of Nature; and, blending the
decorative with the economic, the works of the English Wedgwoods and
Mintons, infinite in variety of style and utility, and often pleasing
in design. Italy, though supplying from her ancient stores so many
of the models and so much of the inspiration of the countries named,
seems to have forgotten Faenza and Etruria, and to prefer solid stone
as a material to preparations of clay and flint. Her Venetian glass
has markedly declined, at the same time that glass elsewhere--notably,
the stained windows of Munich and the smaller objects of France
and Bohemia--shows a great advance in perfection of manufacture and
manageability for art purposes.

In that debatable land where the artistic and the convenient meet at
the fire-side and the tea-table, English invention, enterprise
and solicitude for the comfort and presentability of home shone
conspicuous. Domestic art finds in the island a congenial home,
and helps to make one for the islanders. English interiors, often
incongruous and sombre in their decorations, at least produce the
always pleasant sensation of physical comfort, the attainment of