JOSIAH WEDGWOOD'S CABINET. 411 



benefited ; and it is pleasant to feel that these three towns 

 have vied with each other in doing honour to the memory of 

 the man to whom they were each and all so lastingly 

 indebted. 



remain as they were placed by him,and there they are now thanks to that 

 commendable spirit which induced the executive of the institution to 

 secure them by purchase likely to remain, as lasting mementoes of his 

 skill and industry. The cabinet contains, among a mass of other matters, 

 some hundreds of Wedgwood's and Chisholm's trials of glazes, &c., all 

 carefully numbered ; of trials of bodies, with, in some instances, the degrees 

 of heat to which they have been subjected j of small earthenware vessels 

 in which his samples of clays, &c., were kept, and of other things of equal 

 interest. These small earthenware vessels (mostly of fine Queen's ware) 

 are generally oblong square in form, of various sizes, from an inch to 

 three or four inches in length, and they have each a small projection, 

 inwardly, at the top, on which the number could be affixed. Nothing 

 could show the care which Wedgwood bestowed on the details of his 

 business better than these little vessels, which are almost all marked with 

 his name, and are remarkably well formed ; and it is truly pleasant, on 

 withdrawing the bars and opening the drawers of this cabinet, to feel 

 that one is as it were in the presence of the great man, surrounded by 

 his secrets, and admitted into all the intricacies of his private laboratory. 

 It is very much to the credit of the committee of the Hanley Mechanics' 

 Institution that they have secured to the Potteries this memorial of the 

 great head of its native art. 



