The Sun.
London, England, 1865-04-25 00:00:00

Slavery and Emancipation in America,

In the year 1860 the slave population of the
United States numbered about 4,000,000. There
were also 500,000 free people of colour. During
the military movements of the conflict waged for
the purpose perpetrating slavery by the one and for
preventing secession by the other, 2,000,000 of the
slaves had become free prior to Mr. Lincoln's re-
election as President. But immense numbers have
passed into freedom since the fall of Savannah,
Charleston, Wilmington, Petersburg, and Rich-
mond. The transition has been sudden and charac-
terised by the exigencies of war. Myriads have fled
from the home of slavery without clothing, provi-
sion, or the implements of industry, or even of
household economy; and are dependent on bene-
volence for sustenance and means of improving their
condition. The able-bodied have either been ab-
sorbed in the Northern armies or retained by their
Southern masters. The women, the children, the
aged, and the infirm, constitute a large dependent
population, among whom are to be found much pri-
vation and wretchedness. Benevolent efforts to
provide assistance, in money and clothing, have been
made by Freed Men's Aid Commissions in Boston,
Washington, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago, and
New York. Many philanthropic persons have gone
down into the South as teachers and helpers, and
have formed asylums, hospitals, schools, colonies,
camps, and industrial communities. Auxiliary
associations have been organised in Great Britain,
the principal of which have been composed of
members of the Society of Friends. Sir Thomas
Fowell Buxton, Bart., is president, and Samuel
Gurney, Esq., M.P., treasurer of the London
Freed Men's Aid Society, whose chief aim is
to collect and transmit funds to the American
organisations. During the past week a move-
ment for co-operation has been commenced in
Paris, and private social meetings have been held
by the invitation of M. Da,boulaye, in his
chambers, Rue Taitbout ; Pasteur G. Monod, at
his own house, and the Rev. T. Baron Hart, in the
English congregational chapel, Rue Royale. A
deputation from America and London has attended;
Levi Coffin, a " Friend" from Cincinnati, Messrs.
Haynes from New York, and the Rev. Dr. Massie,
acting secretary of the London committee, have by
their presence and statements contributed informa-
tion and interest. In the chambers of M. Lahoulaye,
the Prince de Broglie, Count de Montalembert, M.
Cushman, M. H. Martin, Dr. de Pressense, G.
Monod, and others, representing the sympathies and
desires of many absent philanthropists ; and a com-
mittee was formed to prepare an address and take
measures for soliciting co-operation. Measures will
also be matured by the friends who assembled at M.
Monod's and in the Rue Royale. The American
residents in Paris, desiring to uphold the reputation
of their country, will doubtless prove that though
the cause of the emancipated is cosmopolitan and
philanthropic, they have an especial duty which
they will promptly discharge among themselves.
The editors of journals of every political hue will
serve the cause by transferring to their columns
whatever information they may deem valuable.—
Galignani.

MARKETS--This Day.

HAY MARKETS.

SMITHFIELD.—Meadow hay, £4 10s to £5 lOs Od ; clover,
£5 108 to 16 lOs Od ; and straw, £1 8s to £1 14s per load.
Trade slow.

CIIMBERLAND.—Meadow hay, 1.4 108 to .£5 10s ; clover,
£5 10s to .£6 10s ; and straw, £1 8s to £1 14s per load.
A slow sale.

WHITEcHAPEL.—Ifeadow hay, £4 103 to £5 108 ; clover,
£5 10s to £6 10s ; and straw, £1 88 to £1 148 per load
Trade steady.

COLONIAL.

TEL—There has been a moderato inquiry for most de-
scriptions, and prices generally are well sustained. Good
shipping congou is quoted lid. per lb.
SUGAR.—The market has not been very aetive, although
good qualities of West India fully support previous rates.
In other descriptions there is also not much change.
Business in the refined market continues rather dull, at
about previous quotations.
COFFEE.—The demand for colonial has been steady, and
notwithstanding the large increase of stocks in hand, com-
pared with those of the same period last year, prices in
most instances are well supported.
Rics.---A fair amount of business has been done, and
full rates have been obtained for superior descriptions of
East India.

TALLOW.—The market has shown rather more anima-
tion, consequent upon the late American advices, and
prices for both present and forward delivery show an
upward tendency. P.Y.C., on the spot, is quoted 41s. ;
and last three months' delivery, 425. 6d. per cwt.

COAL MARKET.
Price per ton at the dose of the market.

s. d. s. d.
Buddle'sWestHartley 16 9 Hetton l9 0
Holywell Main l6 6 Cowpen Hartley l6 9
Carway and Duffryn • Heugh Hall l7 9
Malting 22 0 Walls End Harton ... 16 3
Braddyell's Hetton l7 3 South Kelloe
Walls End Haswell... 19 0 Hastings Hartley l6 9
Tunstall • l6 6 West Hartley
Ships at market, 54; sold, 41.

LEEDS BAR KING COMPANY.—The payment of the
first dividend of Bs. in the pound, under the winding
up of the affairs of this company, was commenced yesterday
at 11 o'clock in the forenoon, from which hour to the time
of closing in the afternoon the bank premises were crowded
with c; editors. Excellent arrangements had been made
by Mr. Turquand, the official liquidator, to prevent over-
crowding or confusion, each creditor having had a circular
sent to him informing him the time, between certain hours,
yesterday or to day he might receive the dividend. Those
persons who may not attend at the specified time will be
paid at the usual hours— a e., from 10 to 3 daily, on and
after to-morrow,

LITERATURE.

Meteyard's Life of Wedgwood.

The Life of Josiah Wedgwood. By Eliza Mete-
yard. With numerous Illustrations. Vol. One,
pp. 504. Hurst and Blackett.
In this magnificent volume we welcome one
of the very noblest contributions to the history of
the ceramic art ever published. We place it at once
and permanently—this record of the "Life of Josiah
Wedgwood "—side by side with Bernard Palissy's
Memoirs and with Benvenuto Cellini's Autobio-
graphy. " Silverpen " has here for once writ-
ten with a pen of gold. By this single per-
formance (evidently for her a labour of love) she
has securely established her literary reputation.
Miss Meteyard tells us in her prefatory remarks
that her researches, with a view to the composition
of this biography of Josiah Wedgwood, have ex-
tended over a period of fully fifteen years alto-
gether. Judging from the result, they have been
years in no way mis-spent. A more conscientious
discharge of the delicate and responsible duties de-
volving upon the biographer of a really great man,
has not been witnessed, we believe, since the days
of Boswell, the greatest of all Biographers. A
happy accident appears to have aided the accumula-
tion of the rare and some of them very precious mate-
rials here so admirably put together by the dex-
terous hand and exquisite taste of Miss Meteyard.
This same lucky accident being nothing less than the
passing into the possession of Joseph Mayer of
Liverpool—quite fortuitously—of a considerable
portion of the business papers relating to the Great
Potter's works both at Burslem and at Etruria.
From Mr. Mayer's possession, it will be seen, those
same papers passed on (with how many
more priceless materials, documentary or other-
wise, viva voce anecdotes, letters, drawings,
and so forth !)—into the safe keeping of Eliza Mete-
yard. And they did so, of course, with a view to her
judicious application of them to the purposes of
her long-projected biography—this biography
undertaken by her in her capacity as the chosen
celebrant of the genius, of the career, of the works,
of the fair fame, of the artistic and laborious
life of Josiah Wedgwood. The descendants and
the admirers, the friends and the family of the
Great Potter have, meanwhile, been vying with
each other in pouring into her lap a superabun-
dance of materials, materials which have been
placed (every one of them) at her own complete
discretion, for employment by her, howsoever her
judgment listed, in the building up under her reveren-
tial hand of a literary memorial not unworthy of
perpetuating the name of Wedgwood. And let us
here state at once quite distinctly that the authoress
has manifestly been in no way bewildered by what
must have proved an embaras des richesses to one
less fitted for the task. Prefixed, here, to this Life
of the Great Potter, the authoress has given a rapid
but comprehensive Sketch of the Art of Pottery,
not only in England, but elsewhere, far and wide—
not alone in modern times, not alone in the middle
ages, but, century beyond century, by a daring
retrospect, back even to the remotest antiquity.
As the writer herself says, to undertake the record
of the Life of Wedgewood without the possession
beforehand of a practical knowledge of pottery,
would be equivalent to penning the life of one of the
great composers without a previous knowledge of
music, or of one of the great painters without a prior
familiarity with the mysteries of the graphic art.
As the Historian of the Art of Pottery—for in very
truth such she may henceforth authoritatively
assume to be—as the celebrant of the genius of
Josiah Wedgwood—in one word, as the biographer
of that greatest among all the Potters of England,
Miss Meteyard has, happily for herself, for her
theme, and for her readers, entered upon the per-
formance of her appointed task, endowed with all
the qualifications requisite for its successful
completion. For that task, she has here, in truth,
shown herself to have been, from the very
outset, peculiarly well qualified. She appears
to have had, all along, quite a natural aptitude for
it. Beyond this, she seems to have been familiar
with the theme from her earliest childhood. Born and
nurtured herself in the midst of the localities which
are the scene of the story she has had to relate
while writing this life of Josiah Wedgwood, she has
necessarily enjoyed an intimate acquaintance, alike
with the memory and with the productions—
with the noble memory and the lovely
productions—of the hero of her narrative I His
name and his works, both of them the

joint results of his great genius and of his giant
industry, are among her very earliest recollections.
Familiarity, however, so far from leading, in this
instance, to another illustration of the truth
of the old proverb, has conduced, on the con-
trary, to the enhancement of her admira-
tion, to the perfecting of her appreciation, at
once of the man himself, and of his achievements.
Hence, in truth, the eminently satisfactory result of
her labours as Wedgwood's Biographer. And to in-
sure, so far as might be in any way possible, her
own yet greater fitness for the task of penning his
biography, she appears to have included among
her preliminary labours the complete apprehension
by her of the inner mysteries of the particular
craft in which the Great Potter had won for him-

self his radiant reputation. Following him (how
appreciatively !) footstep by footstep, she tracks him
through all the more remarkable of his many in-
dustrial and artistic processes, in the advancement

by him of his beloved art of pottery to a pitch of
excellence it had, until his time, in some respects,
never attained. She carefully and sedulously tracks
him, for example, in his search among spars of all
kinds, when he was so eagerly in quest of the terra

ponderosa, or carbonate of barytes. She notes, in
imagination—almost as sympathetically as Wedg-
wood's wife herself must have been wont to do, when
seated beside him at her spinning-wheel in his
workshop—one by one, each of his rarer successes

in the way of improvement--such, let us say, by way
of illustration, as his perfecting of the jasper body.
The authoress, in effect, is throughout so earnestly
and strenuously bent upon doing her work efficiently
—at once, as the Historian of Pottery and as the
Biographer of Wedgwood—that, among her preli-
minary labours to that two-fold end, we find her
actually getting herself initiated into one of the
innermost mysteries of the craft, to wit, the fritter-
ing of the glazes. The result of all this being,
that—if we come to view the work now under

notice simply as a Treatise upon Pottery—it must
be set down at once as a perfect marvel in its way
—coming to us, more particularly, as it does,
from the hands of a woman, a hand in its every
touch and movement, as will be seen, singularly
delicate and singularly vigorous. Everything
relating to pottery—from the commonest delft,
nay from the veriest potsherd, up to that antique
Marvel of the Art, the Portland Vase (the effigy of
which is most appropriately emblazoned upon the
cover of the noble volume here commented upon)
—everything, even of the smallest interest, relating,
either directly or indirectly, to the Art or History
of Pottery-, will be found to have been here duly
recorded and set down in these pages of Miss
Meteyard. Her retrospect extends back even to
the most primitive achievements in this most ancient
of handicrafts ! To productions as formless, one
might almost say, as those unshapely vessels, de-
scribed by Daniel Defoe, as having been manufac-

,ured by Robinson Crusoe in the desert island

Nay the very implements of the craft—do we not

hero learn all about them? The potter's wheel—

his lathes, punches, whirlers, gravers, models,
moulds, and drying pans ! All the essentials of the
art, moreover, are here taken carefully into consi-
deration—body, glaze, form, colour, ornament !
Turn by way of illustration for a moment--merely
to that one particular of colour in regard to this
same marvellous art of pottery ! And note, then,

as you flutter the leaves of the volume while read-

ing it, how from one solitary and perhaps dingy,
murky tinge, there are revealed to us, here, as they

become evolved in the expansion of the potter's

wonderful art, all the colours of the rain-
bow, colours multiplying and contrasting the one
with the other in every conceivable combination—

green-glazed, red-engined, cream-coloured, dark
grey, bluish-black, metallic coloured, vitreous

coloured—until the store-rooms of the potteries,
its we traverse them seem, to become at last as varie-

gated in hue, let us say, as the flower-beds of the
Temple-gardens, in November, when the pompones
and the chrysanthemums are in all the glory of full
bloom ! The intermediate colouring (so to speak) in
particular—alike in the parterres and in the potteries
--being, one is tempted to say, about the most mar-
vellous of all ! Instance this—the cream ware, with
its tints varying from those of newly-skimmed cream
to a pale sulphur, and so deepening and deepening
until it merges into crocus, or saffron, or orange !
From the record here given to us (very succinctly) of
British Pottery, in all its varieties and fluctuations,
it becomes manifest that it would hardly be any-
thing of an extravagance to speak of it as an art in
some sort indigenous. Among what the authoress
takes occasion to designate very aptly " our many-
nationed race," Pottery reveals itself to us under
how many different aspects or phases ! Now
Celtic as seen in urns exhumed from the
tumuli—now Roman as evidenced in still-dis-
covered patem and mortaria—now Saxon as
observed in those trenchers and pitchers
which were often among the spoils of the
Vikings—now Norman, as visible in platters and
porringers ornately marked with armorial bearings
—now Medieval or of the period of the Renais-
sance ! After which last mentioned epoch—with
a wide gap or hiatus in between—there follow in
due sequence the greatest of the English masters of
the art, Wedgwood, and Spode, and Minton, the
greatest of them all being Wedgwood, Josiah
Wedgwood, the hero of Miss Meteyard's book.
How under his direction the art rose and flourished
in the second half of the last century, this her record
of his Life will be found to relate, as it certainly
never before has been related—fully, authoritatively,
picturesquely—often with the interest of a ro-
mance, always with the dignity of a history. In-
cidentally, moreover, through these same chapters
of the life of Wedgwood, there are squandered
around us, as it were, to the right hand and to the
left—as though, in reading the book, we were
traversing a series of galleries littered with
the choicest articles of virtu—all the wares of all
the potteries of all the ages of all the coun-
tries of the earth. Mediaeval ware, including each
of the five distinct classes of tile-work, some of it
gorgeously fretted and arabesqued—Earthenware
from all parts of England—Majolica ware—
Palissy ware—the Red-ware of Japan—Oriental
Porcelain—marbled ware and mottled ware—
pewter and Treen ware—Yellow ware, Cauliflower
ware, Melon ware, Agate ware, Tortoise-shell ware !
Ware, one might almost say—

" Striped like the zebra, freckled like the pard !"

Goblets, bowls, services of all kinds, three-
handled tygs, posset-pots, and mortuary tab-
lets, masterpieces of the potter's art from
the hand of Wedgwood himself—these and mul-
titudes of others represented in engraved effigies
of them meet us at every turn (of the leaf) as we
devour the dozen chapters making up this singularly
handsome and costly volume—the mere care given
to the illustration of which, by the way, reflects the
very bighest credit upon the publishers, to say nothing
of their equally obvious care for the general getting
up of the work, more particularly in respect to its
typography. Views of the localities and medallion
portraits of the celebrities alluded to in the course
of the narrative, are plentifully intermingled with
the embellishments already mentioned—among
these notabilities being numbered, King George
111., Queen Charlotte, the Rev. John Wesley,
Dr. Priestley, Brindley the Engineer, Mrs. Bar-
bauld, Dr. Aikin, besides which, as the frontispiece to
the volume, we have a very fine engraving from the
original portrait of Josiah Wedgwood himself.
As a fitting preliminary to the relation of his his-
tory, our authoress, it should be observed, more-
over, gives a highly interesting account of Wedg-
wood's progenitors, as well as of others among the
famous Potters of Staffordshire, the Mayers of
Norton, for example, and the Bursleins of
Dale Hall. The true interest of the narrative,
however, begins only when we come to the record
of the birth —at Burslem, in Staffordshire
the birth, there, to Thomas Wedgwood and
Mary, his wife —of the youngest of a very
numerous family early in the July of 1730
—to wit, JOSIAH WEDGWOOD ! Then, in truth,
the charm of the book fairly " sets in" upon the
reader ! The commencement thus of the genuine
interest of the story may, in point of fact, be in-
dicated to the very page—beginning as that inte-

rest seems to us.to do in real earnest with the de

scription of the old house-place at Burslem, at p. 201,
with its ponderous settle beside the fire, its leather-
covered easy-chair, its shelved dresser, its clock,

and tables, and—aloft there—hooked to the beams
in the ceiling, the great oak-made cratch for bacon !
From that point in her narrative we are Miss
Meteyard's most obedient ! We " needs must hear"

—she " hath her will"—as quietly but as securely as
ever had the Ancient Mariner in the ballad of

Coleridge. From the holiday visits paid by
Josiah Wedgwood, when a child, to old Mrs.
Egerton, at the Overhouse—we follow the hero

of the story to the dame's school where he gets
his first taste of knowledge (hardly a Pierian spring
can we call it), before wending his way as he does
later on, day after day, across the meadows to
Blunt's academy at Newcastle-under-Lyme. There
it is that we note the first evidence of the boy's
ingenuity when, with a pair of scissors and paper,
he cuts out, to the delight of his school-fellows,

a fleet at sea, an army at combat, a house and gar

den, a whole pot-work—sticking the cuttings after

wards along the entire length of the sloping desks

of the school-room, to the amazement alike o:

scholars and of schoolmaster. His real education

and the same may be said with regard to al.

men of eminence, appears to have been his Self

education--when, striken down by severe illness,
he fastened upon every book he could lay his
hands upon, during the otherwise weary interval of
a long convalescence. His " real precursor" as a pot-
ter, Miss Meteyard tells us, was Samuel Astbury—
one of whom it is recorded that he won his knowledge
of the mysteries of the potter's art by a wonderful
impersonation (some say during a period of no less
than two years, but our authoress regards that as
an exaggeration) by a wonderful impersonation of
utter idiotcy—an idiotcy assumed by him so as to
enable him to discover the secrets of the

Brothers Elers, certain German potters who

were famous in their day for the manufacture

of Elers' ware at Chelsea.

An incident, this, i

will surely be allowed, sufficiently indicative of it-
self that the annals of pottery are marked with

,ouches of truly romantic interest.

Wedgwood's

own great career as a potter may be said to have

. _
dated from somewhere about the spring of 1759.
Then it was that he began to apply himself
in earnest to the development of the four

great essential of his art, body, glaze, form,
and ornament. Three years after the date last
mentioned, namely, in 1762, he was introduced to
the great friend of his life, Thomas Bentley the mer-
chant of Liverpool. Scarcely two years afterwards,
on the 25th of January, 1764, Josiah married—.
his wife, Sarah, being one who proved to him in
fact, and not merely in name, a veritable help-
mate. And so we are brought down here to the
close of this first of the two volumes into which Miss

Meteyard's Life of Wedgwood is portioned out—

among the latest facts recorded in this first volume

being one that may be said to have marked a very

turning-point in the artistic and industrial career

of the Great Potter, namely, that of his happening

to light upon the work par excellence upon the Lathe
—that open sesame to all the Mysteries of the Beautiful
in the Art of Pottery—Plumier's " L'Art de Tourner."

From that seemingly chance-reading, came forth,
in point of fact, the full ripening of Wedgwood's

genius, the perfection of his art, the revelation of

his exquisite taste, the establishment of his great re-

putation. Great as that reputation may be consi-
dered to have been, however, before the publication
of this Life of The Master-Potter, it can hardly
be deemed to have attained its full deve]opement
until now—when the seal may be said to have
been at last put to the credentials of his
fame by the hand of Eliza Meteyard l Credentials
formally attested—(it can hardly be pronounced

extravagant our so expressing the fact)--on the 26th
of October, 1863, in a celebrated speech delivered at
Burslem—by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, to
whom, by the way, this really superb work is, we
observe, most appropriately iuscribed,

Court ,•
AJ Ire!! It

HER MAJESTY.

OSBORNE, April 24.
The Queen drove out this morning in the grounds.
The Royal Family also took their usual exercise.

The Earl and Countess of Malmesbury come to
town this week from Heron Court, near Christchurch,
Hants.

The Earl and Countess of Derby, who have been
staying a few days at 'Tunbridge Wells, came to town
yesterday.

The Earl and Countess Spencer intend to come
to Spencer House, St. James's, on the 2d proximo, from
Althoipe Hall, Northamptonshire.
The Marquis of Tweeddale has engaged the
Countess (Dowager) Poulett's house in Hanover-square
whilst her ladyship is residing in Paris.