Terra-Cotta And Luca Della Robbia Ware, Considered On The Principles Oe Decorative Art.

their lordships' suggestion , I shall seek from within the Museum itself such objects as more fittingly exemplify my observations ; and if the things themselves are not immediately before your eyes upon the table , it is because several of them are too largetoo preciousto ask for and have

unfas-, , tened from the Avails , Avhere I hope they may hang , in their present well-arranged order , to delight ancl instruct the world for ages yet to come . At the outset I ought to say that , to smgularise each and every valuable article belonging , in the museum , " to our subjectAvould be as tiring as useless . -

, When , therefore , I happen to select one specimen , it is not that all the others are less important in art , or under it in value , but only less apt , as I look upon them , to illustrate that particular point upon Avhich I Avant to throw , as best I may , some little light .

" Terra-cotta , as you may knoAV , is Italian , and signifies " cooked or baked earth , " and we Anglicise the expression as " burned clay . " Though , in strictness , applicable to all the appurtenances of household use—to everything , in fact , made out of that substance—the term is here employed in its

restricted sense , and must be understood as referring solely to such of its manipulations as bear about them a decorative plastic character . The so-called " Della Robbia Ware" is burned clay , presenting itself to us under the form of its very highest—most artistic development wherein ,

to all the beauties of statuary , it has given it the additional charm of colour heightened by bright glazing . Begin Ave UOAV Avith " burned clay , " looked at in its first simple shape , that is , as a decorative ornament , with no other than its OAVU natural self colour about it .

Among the materials employed by man in his earliest attempts at anything like decorative art , one—perhaps the very first—was burned clay ; and of the use of it as such , Ave shall find proofs in every country . Passing by the land of Sennaar , Avith it Babel toAver , and reaching the valley of the

of the Nile , sure may Ave be , from the many curious fragments gathered there , that Avhile the Hebrews were making their bricks , their Egyptian masters ' hands were busy in fashioning- more artistic works in clay . Like Egypt , Phoenicia , both at home ancl in all her settlements on the northern shores of

Africa and in Spain , displayed the skill of her people in the use of the same material . In Greece , not the earliest of its worthies only , but the mightiest of its many mighty masters—Phidias himself , in all the full bloom of his fame , thought it not beneath his own glory nor the sculptor ' s art ,

like them , to work in clay . Go where you will in Italy , and dig where once stood its oldest cities , and you will find specimens of decorative burned clay . That delightful writer on Italian art and artists , Vasari , tells ns in his introduction to the " Lives , " that at Chiusi , one of the ancient towns of old Etruria , tiles in burned clay have been dug

up from the earth there , on which Avere figures in low relief , so admirably executed and in so good a manner , that all mig ht perceive the arts to be far from their first attempts when these were formed ; nay , rather from the perfection of the Avork , it miht be fairlinferred that they to

g y were nearer their hig hest summit than to their origin . . Had good Master George been treated , like ourselves , Avith the sight of that long-lost but now unburied city of Pompeii , and walked its streets , he would have beheld the practical use to which those old Romans put works wrought in clayas he found

, the shopkeeper's sign of his trade done in that material over his door . Thus , the milkman shoAved a goat ; the wine-seller displayed two men carrying between them , slung upon a pole , a narrow , long , two-handled pitcher , then called an amphora , in which the custom AA as to store their wine ; nor

would the observant George overlook in the museum the painting that the schoolmaster hung out , shoAving the animated scene of the idler or truant horsed upon another ' s back , or boy plaintive , in more senses than one , against birch , coloured to the life and quite in accordance , as the Austrian

friars at St . Giminiano's thought , with tlie discipline folloAved hy the pedagogue of Madaura , for whipping Greek into the reluctant little Austin , afterwards so good , so great , so famous—done , too , in such a manner as would have joyed the heart of any rod-loving Dr . Busby .

That our forefathers the Britons , even in their earliest or Celtic period , long before the coming hither of the Romans , knew somewhat of the potter's art , we learn from the vases and the beads of clay , ornamented after a manner , found in their cistvaens" or cromlechs—so their

stonebuilt graves are called . By the way , however , and as a caution , it may be well to notice how great have been the mistakes , on this point , committed by persons who , though otherwise well educated , have learned little of art and less of archaeology . Writing , on the 1 st of February ,

1715 , from the Charter House , London , to that laborious editor of England ' s mediaeval Latin literature , Thos . Hearne , at Oxford , a Mr . Bagford says : " I shall take notice of a very great curiosity , a brick , found in Mark-lane , about fourty years since 28 ft . beloAV the pavement . Near to

, this pi ace were dug up many quarters of wheat burnt very black , but yet sound , which were conjectured to have layn buried ever since the burning of this city about 800 years before . This brick is of a Roman make , and was a key-brick to the arch Avhere the corn was found . 'Tis made

of a curious red clay , and in base-relief on the front hath the figure of Sampson putting fire to the foxes tayles , and driving them into a field of corn ; and this brick is at this time preserved in the Museum belonging to the Royal Society in Fleet-steet , from whence I have caused an accurate draug'ht of it to be sent you , " & c . So much did Hearne think of this discovery