ian, they set alight potters' fires that have never
since been extinguished. The Roman empire falls, and over Europe its
pottery is forgotten along with its greater achievements; yet still
pottery-making goes on in a very simple way, to be slowly revived and
modified once more by the communities of monks, who, in later centuries,
replace the Roman legions as the great civilizing influence in Europe.
Meantime Egypt and the nearer East continued, in a debased form, the
splendours of their glorious past, and glazed and painted pottery was
still made by traditional methods. What part the Byzantine civilization
and the Persians played during this obscure time, we are only just
beginning to realize; but we now know that many interesting kinds of
decorated pottery were made at Old Cairo, at Alexandria, at Damascus, in
Syria, Anatolia and elsewhere (on which the later Moslem potters founded
their glorious works), at a time when all over Europe crocks of simple
red or drab clay, covered only with green and yellow lead-glazes, were
the sole evidence of the potter's skill. What the Arab conquests
destroyed, and what their breath quickened into life, we can only guess;
but the fact is indisputable that with the Mahommedan conquests there
came a time when the potter's art of the Occident reached its highest
expression, and when methods and knowledge hitherto confined to Egypt,
Syria and Persia were spread from Spain and the south of France to
India--even, it may be, into China.

Meantime, in the farther East, the Chinese--the greatest race of potters
the world has ever seen--were quietly gathering strength, until from
their glazed, hard-fired pottery there emerged the marvellous, white
translucent porcelain, one of the wonders of the medieval world.

With the dawn of the 15th century of our era, the state of affairs was
practically this:--In European countries proper we find rudely fashioned
and decorated wares in which we can trace the slow development of a
native craft from the superposition of Roman methods on the primitive
work of the peoples. The vessels were mostly intended for use and not
for show; were clumsily fashioned of any local clay, and if glazed at
all then only with coarse lead-glazes, coloured yellow or green; in no
case above the level of workmanship of the travelling brick- or
tile-maker. The finest expression of this native style is to be found in
the Gothic tile pavements of France, Germany and England, where a