CERAMIC WARE. 233 



ment. The troublesome eloquence and objectionable irrita- 

 bility of Madame his wife has already been adverted to. Jus- 

 tice to that lady, however, compels the historian to remark 

 that she received some provocation. Her husband was very 

 poor, and his experiments were somewhat expensive. I have 

 no doubt that Madame had to go without many a bonnet and 

 many a crinoline (or the sixteenth-century representatives of 

 these feminine appurtenances, whatever they may have been) 

 because of the narrow means of her lord and no, not master. 



Nor is this all. On one occasion it is recorded that Pa- 

 lissy, not having the means to purchase fuel for his furnace, 

 thrust into it chairs, tables, and other articles of wooden do- 

 mestic furniture. These consumed, he forthwith began to pull 

 up the wooden floor of his apartment and commit it to the 

 flames. It is recorded that Madame, happening to return 

 just at the moment when her spouse was thus engaged, gave 

 herself some unpleasant airs, and spoke very frankly. 



The provocation was considerable, we must own. The fact 

 is, Madame was the wife of a man of genius ; .and, not aware 

 of that fact, she had not learned to put up with the vagaries 

 of genius. Whether representative men have any business to 

 marry, may be a question permissible. Look about you, my 

 fair friends ; scan the domestic life of the married ladies of 

 your acquaintance. Put the mediocre married men on one 

 side, and the clever married men on the other. This done, 

 tell me now, in which class you will find the most comfort- 

 able husbands ? 



Had chemistry been a trifle more advanced than it was in 

 the sixteenth century, Europe would not have had to wait so 

 long and so unavailingly for a revelation of the secret of por- 

 celain, similar in nature to the Chinese prototype. It would 

 have sufficed to analyse a fragment of real China ware, and 

 the secret would have been revealed. That, however, was 

 far in the future. Experimentalists continued to work on 

 empirically. Pure clay in other words, pure hydrate of 



