our, and the manual dexterity displayed in
the execution of the patterns. The superior delicacy of the porcelain of
China, which about this time began to be imported freely into England
from the East caused it to be preferred to the "Dutch ware," and the
consequence of international commerce was, that the Chinese imitated
European devices and patterns upon their porcelain, probably with the
view of rendering the article more acceptable in the Dutch and English
markets. But while the Chinese were imitating us, we were copying their
style of art in the potteries of Staffordshire, with the commercial
manufacturing advantage given by the power of transferring a print to the
clay over the production of the same effect by means of the pencil, an
idea no doubt suggested by our roundels of Charles I.'s time, and which
process became of the same relative importance as printing to manuscript.
This was the origin of our common blue-and-white plate, or what is known
as "the willow pattern," where

"Walking through their groves of trees,
Blue bridges and blue rivers,
Little think those three Chinese
They'll soon be smash'd to shivers."

The popularity of this porcelain pattern must not be ascribed to superior
beauty or cheapness, for to the eye of taste surely a pure plain white
plate is infinitely superior to an unfeeling copy of a Chinese pagoda,
bridge, and willow-tree "in blue print." The fact is that the bugbear of
a vulgar mind--"fashion"--long rendered it imperative upon every good
housewife and substantial householder to keep up a certain dinner-set of
earthenware, consisting of two soup-tureens and a relative proportion of
dishes and vegetable-dishes, with covers, soup-plates, dinner-plates, and
dessert-plates, which were all to correspond; and should any accidental
breakage of crockery take place, it was a manufacturing trick to make it
a matter of extra-proportionate expense and difficulty readily to replace
the same unless it happened to be of "the blue willow pattern." The
practice, however, of using for the dessert-service plates of Worcester
china painted by hand, and the execution of many of which as works of art
call for our admiration as much as any enamel, created a taste for
forming what are called harlequin sets, among which, if a few plates
happen to be

"Smash'd to shivers,"

the value of the whole set is only proportionately depreciated, and what
has been broken may perhaps be a