chitecture. "The first requisite," he maintains, "of a
good piece of silver-plate is that it be _well built_." The artist in
silver has also to keep constantly in view the practical and commercial
limitations of his art. The forms which he designs must be such as can
be executed with due economy of labor and material, such as can be
easily cleaned, and such as will please the taste of the
silver-purchasing public. It is by his skill in complying with these
inexorable conditions, while producing forms of real excellence, that
Mr. Wilkinson has given such celebrity to the articles made by the
company to which he belongs.

Few of us, however, will ever be able to buy the dinner-sets, the
tea-sets, the gorgeous salvers, and the tall epergnes with which the
warerooms of this manufactory are filled. A silver salver of large size
costs a thousand dollars. A complete dinner-set for a party of
twenty-four costs twelve thousand dollars. The price of a nice tea-set
can easily run into three thousand dollars. We noticed one small vase
(six or eight inches high) exquisitely chased on two sides, which Mr.
Wilkinson assured us it cost the company about seven hundred dollars to
produce. There are, as yet, but two or three persons in all America who
would be likely to become purchasers of the articles in silver which
rank in Europe as works of art, and which are strictly entitled to that
distinction. The wonder is who buys the massive utilities that are
stacked away in such profusion in Maiden Lane. The Gorham Company have
always in course of manufacture about three tons of silver, and usually
have a ton of finished work for sale.

An important branch of their business is one recently introduced,--the
manufacture of a very superior kind of plated ware, intended to combine
the strength of baser metal with the beauty of silver. The manufacture
of such ware has attained great development in England of late years,
owing chiefly to the application of the mysterious power of electricity
to the laying-on of the silver. We must discourse a little upon this
admirable application of science to the arts.

Hamlet amused his friend Horatio by tracing the noble dust of Alexander
till he found it stopping a bunghole. If we trace the course of
discovery that resulted in this beautiful art, we shall have to reverse
Hamlet's order: we must begin with the homely object, and end with
magnificent ones. Electroplating, electrotyping, the electric telegraph