in the habit
of distributing them as presents among the crowned heads and his
personal favourites. After the ware has been made with the greatest care
and of the best materials, artists of celebrity are employed to paint
it. You can easily imagine the value of these articles, when you
remember that each plate has a design of its own, beautifully executed
in colours, and presenting a landscape or an historical subject that is
fit to be framed and suspended in a gallery. One or two of the artists
employed in this manner have great reputations, and it is no uncommon
thing to see miniatures in gilded frames which, on examination, prove to
be on porcelain. Of course the painting has been subject to the action
of heat in the baking. As respects the miniatures, there is not much to
be said in their favour. They are well drawn and well enough coloured;
but the process and the material give them a glossy, unnatural
appearance, which must prevent them from ever being considered as more
than so many _tours de force_ in the arts. But on vases, dinner-sets,
and all ornamental furniture of this nature, in which we look for the
peculiarities of the material, they produce a magnificence of effect
that I cannot describe. Vases of the value of ten or fifteen thousand
francs, or even of more money, are not uncommon; and at the exhibition
there was a little table, the price of which I believe was two thousand
dollars, that was a perfect treasure in its way.

Busts, and even statues, I believe, have been attempted in this branch
of art. This of course is enlisting the statuary as well as the painter
in its service. I remember to have seen, when at Sevres, many busts of
the late Duc de Berri in the process of drying, previously to being put
into the oven. Our cicerone on that occasion made us laugh by the
routine with which he went through his catalogue of wonders. He had
pointed out to us the unbaked busts in a particular room, and on
entering another apartment, where the baked busts were standing, he
exclaimed--"Ah! voila son Altesse Royale toute cuite." This is just the
amount of the criticism I should hazard on this branch of the Sevres
art, or on that which exceeds its legitimate limits--"Behold his Royal
Highness, ready cooked."

The value of some of the single plates must be very considerable, and
the king frequently, in presenting a solitary vase, or ornament of the
Sevres porcelain, presents thousands.

The tapestry is another of