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be preferred to the "Dutch ware," and the consequence of international commerce was, that the Chinese imitated European devices and patterns upon their porcelain, probably with the view of rendering the article more acceptable in the Dutch and English markets. But while the Chinese were imitating us, we were copying their style of art in the potteries of Staffordshire, with the commercial manufacturing advantage given by the power of transferring a print to the clay over the production of the same effect by means of the pencil, an idea no doubt suggested by our roundels of Charles I.'s time, and which process became of the same relative importance as printing to manuscript. This was the origin of our common blue-and-white plate, or what is known as "the willow pattern,” where "Walking through their groves of trees,

Blue bridges and blue rivers,
Little think those three Chinese

They'll soon be smash'd to shivers."

The popularity of this porcelain pattern must not be ascribed to superior beauty or cheapness, for to the eye of taste surely a pure plain white plate is infinitely superior to an unfeeling copy of a Chinese pagoda, bridge, and willow-tree in blue print." The fact is that the bugbear of a vulgar mind--" fashion "-long rendered it imperative upon every good housewife and substantial householder to keep up a certain dinner-set of earthenware, consisting of two soup-tureens and a relative proportion of dishes and vegetable-dishes, with covers, soup-plates, dinner-plates, and dessert-plates, which were all to correspond; and should any accidental breakage of crockery take place, it was a manufacturing trick to make it a matter of extra

proportionate expense and difficulty readily to replace the same unless it happened to be of "the blue willow pattern." The practice, however, of using for the dessert-service plates of Worcester china painted by hand, and the execution of many of which as works of art call for our admiration as much as any enamel, created a taste for forming what are called harlequin sets, among which, if a few plates happen to be

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the value of the whole set is only proportionately depreciated, and what has been broken may perhaps be advan tageously replaced.

Earl of Essex.

If you like, we will return to the inner hall, where is a

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portrait of the celebrated Earl of Essex, an undoubted original picture, dated 1598, three years previous to his being beheaded (Zucchero), and from it at once enter the library, or breakfast-room. Here there is a superbly carved Elizabethan chimney-piece.

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What are you about?

You should not have touched so thoughtlessly that "brass inkstand," as you call it. It is actually a pix, or holy box, which once contained the host, and was considered "so sacred, that upon the march of armies it was especially prohibited from theft." We are told that Henry V. delayed his army for a whole day to discover the thief who had stolen one. You may admire the pictures as much as you please; they are odd and

hard-looking portraits to my eye; but they are historically curious, and clever, too, for their age. Could you only patiently listen to a discussion upon the characters of the originals of the portraits

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that have hung upon these walls, or the volumes that have filled these shelves; you might gain a deeper insight into the workings of the human heart than, perhaps, you would care to be instructed by. There were in the next room

the dining-room-into

Pix.*

which we may proceed when you please, for only by a sliding door between the library and dining-room are they separated-such pictures!

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Office, was the purchaser of Eltham Palace, when disposed

*Now in the South Kensington Museum.

of by the Parliament after the death of Charles I.; and we also know from Strype's Annals of the Reformation, that Elizabeth visited Eltham and passed some days there in 1559, and that she made her favourite Sir Christopher Hatton keeper of the royal palace there.

You should not disturb those books; you will look in vain for the publication of George III.'s Illustration of Shakspeare,' and corrected in the autograph of the king for a second edition. How remarkable are the opinions entertained by His Majesty respecting Doctors Johnson and Franklin, and how curious are some of the notes! This book is the true history of his reign, and would be worth to us fifty black-letter Caxtons. Mr. Thorpe

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Hill, and are of genuine Spitalfields damask. There is no

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