Mayors. The beautiful vegetable dish of Meissen (Dresden) ware shown among these illustrations was taken from Messrs. Jones, McDuffee and Stratton's dinner service collection.

As early as 1756 a soft paste pottery was certainly made at Lowe stoft in Suffolk, England, situated ten miles south of Yarmouth. Rotterdam in Holland is just opposite, across the North Sea. Now Rotterdam was a port of entry for Dutch merchantmen from this point as long ago as 1600. Although there was a ware introduced and brought from China to England between 1775 and 1800, it would have been comparatively an easy matter for eastern pottery to be shipped in from Rotterdam, as there was no embargo between England and Holtand at that time.

On the other hand, if, as those who believe that the Lowestoft ware was really eastern pottery which was decorated in England by the Lowestoft potter, such large quantities of undesirable ware were brought to England, it is strange that scarcely a piece that remains is unpainted. Soft plaster pottery was certainly made there in 1756 and until 1762 in imitation of Delft ware. Thomas Frye and Edward Haylyn took out a patent for the China works at Bow, in Essex County, England, December 6th, 1744. The Bow porcelain was of two kindsthe earlier body contained porcelain clay (kaolin) mixed with sand and potash. In the later composition bone-ash-pipe-clay was substituted for porcelain clay and a lead glaze was used. In 1776 the Bow works were bought by Duesbury who established the Derby works and incorporated the Chelsea.

The uses to which clay vessels were put, were many in the early stages of pottery, and these increased as the needs of the human family increased. Some enthusiastic antiquarian asserted that in some localities in England, where traces of the rude kilns of the mediaval potters may be found and where some of the modern pottery works are still located, the fires of their kilns have never been extinguished since the days of Roman conquest of Britain. The remains of certain Romano-British tetinae found some time ago at Wilderspool, the supposed site of the old Roman town of Cordate, certainly corroborate the statement. The Wilderspool tetinae appears to be the forerunner of the Mammiform vessels of the mediaval period and both were suggested by the form and purpose of the female breast-a fact mentioned by Llewellyn Jewitt, F.S.A., in his "Quaint Conceits in Pottery.' These ancient tetinae prove that the baby's feeding bottle of our modern time has a very long pedigree and might by its connection with the past set the antiquarian on his hobby horse and send him on far quests into the shadow land of antiquity.

With the Anglo-Saxon and Norman proclivities for feasting and drinking, it is not remarkable that drinking vessels should have assumed rude forms and huge proportions, which were gradually refined by the inspiration of medieval art. Sometimes the Pilgrim bottles or "Costrils," which had their origin in "Mammiform" vessels, were rudely ornamented in "slip" and now and then bore such inscriptions as:

"This is good liquor-taste, But do not waste,"

"With love in ye breast,
May all be possest."

an injunction hard to be obeyed by the novice who unwisely tried the contents of some of the "puzzle jugs" of our ancestors. Some of the most grotesque of the early drinking vessels may be classed among the "Bellarmines" and "Greybeards" by which titles certain varieties were known. In 1626 a patent was granted to Thomas Rous als Ruis and Abraham Aukyn for the "Sole making of the Stone Potte, Stone Jugge, and Stone Bottele within our Dominions for the terme of fourteen years."

The "Bellarmine" received its name from the Cardinal Bellarmine who died in 1621 and who by his bigoted opposition to the reformed religion became obnoxious to the Low Countries. In derision, his short stature, rotund figure and ugly features were seized upon by the potters of that time and transcribed into clay portraits in the form of ale jugs which were called "Bellar

mines."

But before this the medieval potter had tried his art in making “puzzle jugs," some remarkable specimens of which are extant to-day. The oldest of these, perhaps, is that known as the "Mounted Knight," which was found at Lewes in 1846. This jug is of ordinary coarse brown clay, partially covered with a film glaze, with the bridle laid on in "slip." Although the workmanship and modeling are very rude the accurate details of the costume, the long-pointed toes and the pryck spurs place it among the productions of Henry II ceramic art.

Of a later period are the puzzle jugs which take the form of ani

mals. The quaintest of these is the "Sussex Pig," which can stand upon its four legs or upon hind legs and tail, as its owner prefers. When doing duty as a pitcher it stands on its hind legs, the fore legs serving as a handle. The "pig" is an old institution. Mr. Jewitt tells us, in Sussex County, where it is still used at weddings and christenings, when the pig's head comes off and is used as a drinking cup, the ears and snout making excellent legs for it to stand upon. Each guest is expected to drain this unique "Loving Cup" and drink literally a hogshead of ale to the bride or baby's health as occasion may require. The crest of Sussex County is said to be a pig passant and the motto, "We won't be druv," is suggestive of the sturdiness and resisting power for which the Sussex folk are noted.

On a very ornate jug, a photograph of which is here given, there is an inscription showing the jovial manners of the times:

"Here, gentlemen, come try your skill,
We hold a wager, if you will,
That you Don't Drink this liquor all
Without you spill or let some Fall."

Among the dated puzzle jugs now extant, is one bearing the legend, "John Wedgwood, 1691."

From the encaustic tiles now and then dug up in London, to the exquisite ware of our potteries of today, the potter's work in each stage of its existence, both as an industry and as an art, claims our interest and attention.

The story of the teacup is a dainty epitome of human existence -the tale written in that "common clay" which is the vehicle of the divine.

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NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE.

Degradation of Santa Claus

ALAS! poor Santa Claus!

We

knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. Far in the dim Northland he labored that he might bring us toys and Christmas cheer, and with them the jollity and merriment that were as much a part of the Kris Kringle visit as the pack on his back and the jingling bells on his reindeer.

Christmas eve or Christmas night only might he appear to us. The canny youth might see his burly form and his rosy face, note the twinkle in his eyes and hear him laugh; if he patiently watched the big chimney. It was worth a year of anticipation, a long evening of vigil, this fleeting glimpse of the good saint of toyland. Many of us -and perhaps we were the happier for it never saw him at all; we

deer hoofs on the crust of the snow outside, or dreamed we caught the faint jingle of their bells as we dozed, sleepy with long keeping tryst.

And now; to what base uses we may return, Horatio! Weeks before Christmas festival we find a markdown Santa Claus in every department store. A Santa Claus that represents no Christmas cheer is this, no giver of gifts and winker of sly winks from the grinning chimney, but a blatant barker who bids you come to Cohen's store and buy your own Christmas gift for a dollar ninety-eight, marked up from thirtyfive cents! Verily in the Santa Claus of to-day one may trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bunghole. From the department store he descends to the street. The child who believes in the good saint may well rub his eyes. and wonder if his imagination has not become cross eyed to see Santa Clauses in pairs wandering along Boston Common or standing disconsolately in groups about the entrance to the subway; poor mountebank specimens of the costumer's lack of art, rubbing the rouge from their cold noses and shivering in their false whiskers as they extend a hand for alms. This is the final degradation. Santa Claus, the giver of gifts, the rough and ready incarnation of good cheer, shivering on the street corner asking alms!

Supinely as we may lie back and permit the commercialization of high ideals to proceed, willing as we may be that the names of the just and the noble shall be seized upon by the unworthy as catch-word devices for their wares, still it does seem as if we might sit up and pro

test against this ignominious exploitation of the legendary patron saint of the children's Christmas. The burly, bustling, red-nosed sprite who came yearly from the realms of Arctic ice to descend the chimney and fill the stockings of the little children was but a beautiful myth, a personification of the spirit of giving. We know that, and even the little children knew it and, without analyzing the knowledge, accepted his appearance at the church. festival in the same kindly spirit, but to find Santa Claus working ten hours a day in all the department stores and parading the street in duplicate and reduplicate asking alms, is too bad. It is high time for a new Garrison to be born to preach abolition of the new slavery-that which has resulted in the degradation of Santa Claus.

Old Ironsides

THE new Secretary of the Navy, Charles J. Bonaparte, has lately come into public notice the country over, and especially in New England, through his suggestions in regard to the old frigate "Constitution." The ancient hulk, of glorious memory, lies at the Charlestown Navy Yard to-day, anything but the gallant ship which sailed the seas and hurled iron defiance at the ships of the enemy. A great deck house is built over her whole hull and her aged timbers slowly decay in the muddy tides which swirl about her. keel. Moreover, as the Secretary suggests, little of the original fighting ship remains. She has been rebuilt and repaired till the men who manned her guns in her great sea fights would not recognize her could

they go aboard to-day. Secretary Bonaparte wants to do away with the old ship. He suggests that a fitting finish would be to tow her to sea and blow her to pieces with shells from the modern guns of our modern navy. It is this suggestion that has caused the uproar, a genuine burst of feeling from the lips of the historian and the idealist the country over.

Secretary Bonaparte evidently does not understand the situation. It is not what the ship is to-day but what she represents that endears her to the hearts of the people. To shoot at her with a modern twelve inch would be to throw a shot into the ideals of the nation. Every schoolboy has been brought up on the glory of "Old Ironsides." He knows the tale of her battles and the record of the men who fought and died on her decks and the ship to-day stands to him as the living representative of that devotion and patriotism. No one of us goes down to the navy yard to-day without a thrill in his heart as he glances at the old hulk in passing. She may be unseaworthy; some of her timbers may be new, and her present use be deemed unworthy of the brave battles of old; yet there she stands, the old ship in which the heroes fought, an embodiment of the old ideal of patriotism, a thing to be looked upon still with glistening eye and the heart in the throat.

It is safe to say that "Old Ironsides" will never be sunk by the guns of the modern fleet to which she showed the way to the supremacy of the seas. She belongs to the nation, but she belongs still more to New England and most of all to Masachusetts. Massachusetts should and no doubt will, come forward and