174 Josiah Wedgwood CHAP. 



drinking, and eventually he died, quite broken down, 

 in March 1719, in the thirty-fifth year of his age. 1 



The merits of this great inventor were only publicly 

 recognised a few years ago. On the 17th of October 

 1891, a monument was erected to the memory of 

 Bottgher at Meissen ; yet 182 years before, in 1709, he 

 had established the first hard porcelain manufactory in 

 Saxony. We are late in recognising the memory of our 

 benefactors. In the same year a statue to Bernard 

 Palissy was unveiled at his birthplace, Villeneuve-sur- 

 Lot, on the 6th of July 1891. Three hundred years 

 before, he died in the Bastille at the age of eighty. He 

 was a Protestant, which was the cause of his imprison- 

 ment. The valiant, persevering old man died a martyr 

 to his faith, though he was not burnt at the stake. 



The porcelain manufacture became so productive to 

 the Elector of Saxony that his example was shortly 

 after followed by European monarchs. Every care was 

 taken at Meissen to preserve the secret ; but where many 

 workmen are employed no secret is safe. A workman 

 named Stofzel carried it to Vienna in 1722, where an 

 imperial manufactory for the manufacture of hard 

 porcelain was afterwards established. Eoyal works 

 were founded at Berlin, St. Petersburg, Munich, and at 

 Sevres in 1755, under Louis XV., when the manu- 

 facture of soft porcelain was almost entirely discon- 

 tinued. 



The introduction of hard porcelain into England was 



1 A much fuller account of Bottgher is given in Self-Help. 



