MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 105 



tion of his goods are, however, sold to the trade unframed. The market-price 

 was 9s. a dozen previous to the war, but has fallen a trifle since, though not so 

 much as the demand. The wooden frames cost not quite the same and see- 

 ing that these precious works of art are hawked at the present moment at from 

 6s. to 7s, the pair, it is clear that profit has not been lost sight of. The num- 

 ber of manufactories similar to Mr. Daubham's, he tells us, is eight or ten, 

 exclusive of the small .shops of amateur daubers in the trade who get up 

 pictures of exceptional sizes at a low rate by working from exhausted plates 

 purchased as old metal. Looking to the vast numbers which may be and are 

 produced, amounting to several gross a week from a single workshop, we are 

 puzzled to know what becomes of them, considering that the country demand 

 has so greatly declined. "But," says Mr. Daubham, "you don't take into 

 account the exportation. They goes abroad, sir. A hundred gross, at least, 

 of my pictures goes to Catholic countries every year. Most of my plates is 

 Catholic subjects Madonnas and Martyrs, and the blessed saints St. Francis, 

 St. Januarius. St. Nicholas, St. Theresa, and so on. Then I've got twelve 

 different Holy Virgins, and lots of subjects that is Catholic or Protestant, and 

 will do for the home or export market either. I pack 'em without frames in 

 racks made on purpose, and they travel safe enough. The poor people abroad 

 likes to have their patron saint ; and then they vows a picture to the Virgin 

 perhaps, and so they get stuck up in churches. I've heard tell that you can 

 see 'em in most of the churches in Italy, as well as in Spain and Portugal. I 

 used to send twenty to thirty gross to Oporto every year, but the vine-disease 

 has very much injured that trade, and I don't send half as many now/' Tv r e 

 commend Mr. Daubham's candid summary to the notice of bookmaking travel- 

 lers and tourists, some of whom, if we are not very much mistaken, have 

 dwelt with curious yet blundering minuteness upon these identical pictures, 

 without conjecturing that in so doing they were describing the products of 

 English industry. But we must leave the obliging Mr. Daubham to the pros- 

 ecution of his trade, and take a look at another and more pretentious branch. 

 of equivocal art. 



" "We have said that the home trade in the productions of Mr. Daubham and 

 his congeners, has of late greatly declined. This is not because the love of art 

 has declined, but because it has become more ambitious we can hardly say 

 more discriminating. The glass-painting has at length been pretty generally 

 discovered not to be the genuine thing ; and oil-paintings on canvas are now 

 extensively superseding the oil-paintings on glass. 



" In the new trade, the Jews mingle very largely, and take the lead. They 

 get up new frames from old worn-out moulds, gild them with Dutch metal, clap 

 a landscape of a good thumping size into them, and sell a pair of them for five 

 and twenty shillings. They have a gorgeous appearance, and impart an air of 

 luxury and grandeur to a poor man's cottage or a farmer's parlor, which pleases 

 him none the less that it is barbarously out of keeping with all the rest of his 

 domestic havings. The middle classes accept the same bait ; and even in 

 London, several thousands of such cheap wares are annually retailed. Nothing 

 is more common hi the streets of the suburbs than the spectacle of a wander- 

 ing Jew, with a couple of pair of these tawdry pictures, slung round Ms sliould- 



