t they must have new plate. Their father's plate may be
very handsome, but the fashion is changed. They will have a new service
from the leading manufacturer, and the old plate, except a few apostle
spoons, and a cup which Charles the Second drank a health in to their
pretty ancestress, is sent to be melted down, and made up with new
flourishes and fresh lustre. Now, so long as this is the case--so long,
observe, as fashion has influence on the manufacture of plate--so long
_you cannot have a goldsmith's art in this country_. Do you suppose any
workman worthy the name will put his brains into a cup, or an urn, which
he knows is to go to the melting-pot in half a score years? He will not;
you don't ask or expect it of him. You ask of him nothing but a little
quick handicraft--a clever twist of a handle here, and a foot there, a
convolvulus from the newest school of design, a pheasant from Landseer's
game cards; a couple of sentimental figures for supporters, in the style
of the signs of insurance offices, then a clever touch with the
burnisher, and there's your epergne, the admiration of all the footmen
at the wedding-breakfast, and the torment of some unfortunate youth who
cannot see the pretty girl opposite to him, through its tyrannous
branches.

46. But you don't suppose that _that's_ goldsmith's work? Goldsmith's
work is made to last, and made with the men's whole heart and soul in
it; true goldsmith's work, when it exists, is generally the means of
education of the greatest painters and sculptors of the day. Francia was
a goldsmith; Francia was not his own name, but that of his master the
jeweller; and he signed his pictures almost always, "Francia, the
goldsmith," for love of his master; Ghirlandajo was a goldsmith, and was
the master of Michael Angelo; Verrocchio was a goldsmith, and was the
master of Leonardo da Vinci. Ghiberti was a goldsmith, and beat out the
bronze gates which Michael Angelo said might serve for gates of
Paradise.[7] But if ever you want work like theirs again, you must keep
it, though it should have the misfortune to become old-fashioned. You
must not break it up, nor melt it any more. There is no economy in that;
you could not easily waste intellect more grievously. Nature may melt
her goldsmith's work at every sunset if she chooses; and beat it out
into chased bars again at every sunrise; but you must not. The way to
have a truly noble service of plate, is to keep adding to it, not
melti