mortar, and even to draw the water with which it was to be mixed. I had not so much as the help of a single man in fetching the bricks: my own back bore all!

"My first baking prospered pretty well; but when it came to the second, after the enamel had been spread over the pottery, I was unable to produce the heat necessary for the fusion. Six days and nights did I remain feeding and watching the furnace, half distracted, and almost stupefied by the intense heat, and my own bitter disappointment. At last it occurred to me that the composition contained an insufficient proportion of the substance which had produced fusion in the former instance; and I accordingly set about grinding and pounding, though still obliged to keep up the fire of the oven, so that I had treble labour on my hands.

"The former pieces being now spoiled, I was forced to go out and purchase new pots, to be covered by the fresh composition; and, on my return, I had the misery of discovering that my stock of wood was exhausted! What was to be done? I rushed into my garden, and tore up the trellises; and those being insufficient, was obliged to sacrifice the dressers, stools, tables, and boarding of my house! All these were successively thrust into the furnace, in the hope of melting the enamel !"

The reader will probably recall to mind the account given by Benvenuto Cellini, in his memoirs, of having contributed all his pewter dishes and household utensils to the metal prepared for his noble statue of Perseus, which proved slow and difficult of fusion. But the Italian protege of princes makes a vaunt of his sacrifice, whereas the meek Palissy couches his statement in the terms of a confession.

"Scorched by the heat of the furnace," says he,

"and reduced to a skeleton by the perspiration arising from this prodigious heat, I had now a new vexation in store for me. My family having indiscreetly circulated the report of my taking up and burning the flooring of my house, I was considered insane by my neighbours, and my precarious credit totally destroyed. If I had then died, I should have left behind me the name of a madman, who had ruined his family by a frantic speculation. But though sick and dispirited, I cheered myself with the certainty that the discovery of which I had been so long in pursuit, was effected; and that, henceforward, I had only to persevere in my labours. The difficulty of maintaining my family for five or six months longer, till a satisfactory result could be obtained, was the first consideration; but in order to hasten the period, I hired a potter to assist me in my work, furnishing him with models and materials.

"A cruel drawback it was, that I was unable to maintain this man in my dismantled home, for I was forced to run up a bill for his board at a neighbouring tavern. Nay, when at the end of six months he had made me the various articles of crockery, according to my designs, so that nothing remained to be done but to cover them with my enamel, and submit them to the furnace; being forced to dismiss my workman, I had no means of paying him his wages, except by giving him my clothes, which I accordingly did; and my person was now as thoroughly dismantled as my house!"

All the rest of his labour poor Palissy had to encounter alone, though his hands were so cut and bruised with his work, that he was obliged, he says, to eat his pottage as well as he could, with his hands wrapped in linen rags. The hand-mill, in which he ground his materials, required the power of two

strong men to work it, yet he was wholly without assistance. Nor were his disappointments yet at an end. After having, with infinite pains, and at considerable cost, constructed a new oven, it turned out that the mortar he had used was full of flints, probably the refuse of his materials; and when the furnace was heated, the flints flew, and attached themselves to his pottery, so that it was completely spoiled.

"On passing the hand over my vases," says he, "little fragments of flint were perceptible, which cut like a razor. I instantly determined to break them up, rather than sell them in a deteriorated state for what they would fetch, which might have injured the reputation of my discovery. But no sooner had I done so, than I was beset by the maledictions of my starving family, and the mockery of my neighbours, who treated me as a madman, for not having realized a few crowns by my damaged goods."

Nevertheless, the man of genius toiled resolutely on !-Satisfied of the strength that was in him, and of the importance of his discovery, he went to work again, with an injured credit and constitution, an object of hatred to some, and contempt to others. From the exhausting nature of his labours, his arms and legs became like sticks, so that, according to his own brief description, there was nothing to keep up his garters, and his stockings came upon his heels as he walked, till he was the picture of wretchedness and destitution. Between the action of the prodigious heat of his furnace, and the influence of the rain and frost on his ill-constructed works, the place was frequently unroofed, compelling him to borrow the materials for its reparation. But this was not always to be accomplished; and he tells us that he often remained watching his oven through the winter nights, exposed to wind and weather, with the owls hooting on the one side, and the dogs howling on the other.

Wet to the skin with the beating in of the heavy rains, and groping about in the dark, for want of a candle, I have often retired to rest at midnight, or even at daybreak," says he, "looking like some drunken wretch who had been rolling in a gutter. But the worst I had to suffer, was from the accusations of my neighbours, who had assisted me, and who now regarded me as a robber; and the reproaches of my family, who treated me as a selfish lunatic."

This is but a faint outline of the miseries and fatigues sustained by poor Bernard Palissy, in bringing to perfection an art which has proved so highly beneficial to his own, and other countries. The furnaces and ovens of his invention are still in use at Sevres, and have been closely copied in our own, and other porcelain works. The moulds in which the vases are baked, to secure them from accident, were devised by Palissy, after his unlucky loss from the flying of the flints; and his recipes for the mixing of colours are still patent.

The porcelain of Palissy soon attained a prodigious reputation, and few museums, or collections of objects, of virtu, in our own time, but contain specimens of his works, under the name of Raphael-ware, or China of the middle ages. The embossed dishes exhibiting reptiles and animals, in great perfection, were the invention of Palissy; and several of his dishes and vases present copies after celebrated pictures, executed in relief. Table services, to replace the wooden and pewter vessels then in use, were the chief objects to which he devoted his art; and with so much taste and skill, that many of the original designs exhibit the genius of a first-rate sculptor.

The fame of this discovery extended rapidly through France, and orders were given him by all the nobles of the court of Henry II.; among others, by the Duc

de Montmorency, who employed him to decorate his stately chateau of Ecouin. One of the chambers was paved with tiles of Palissy's porcelain, which still remain perfect, unless where the design has been destroyed by the introduction of one of those huge ungraceful N's, which during the empire, were made to disfigure all the ancient public edifices of France.

The account of Palissy reminds the reader of Jacquard, the inventor of the loom bearing that name. M. Jacquard was originally a manufacturer of straw hats, and it was not until the peace of Amiens that his attention was first attracted to the subject of mechanism. The communication between France and England being then open, an English newspaper fell into his hands. In this he met with a paragraph stating that a premium would be awarded by a society in this country to any person who should weave a net by machinery. The perusal of this extract awakened his latent mechanical powers, and induced him to turn his thoughts to the discovery of the required contrivance. He succeeded, and produced a net woven by machinery of his own invention. It seems, however, that the pleasure of success was the only reward which he coveted, for as soon as accomplished he became indifferent to the work of his ingenuity-threw it aside for some time, and subsequently gave it to a friend as a matter in which he no longer took any interest. The net was by some means at length exhibited to some persons in authority, and by them sent to Paris. After a period had elapsed in which M. Jacquard declares that he had entirely forgotten his production, he was sent for by the prefect of Lyons, who asked him if he had not directed his attention to the making of nets by machinery. He did not immediately recollect the circumstance to which the prefect alluded; the net was however produced, and thus recalled the