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

Slavery and Emancipation in America,

- -4.- -
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-

;erised by the exigencies of war. Myriads have fled

'rom 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. Daboulaye, 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 lOs to £slos Od ; clover,
£5 lOs to £6 lOs Od ; and straw, £1 8s to £1 14s per load.
Trade slow.

CUMBERLAND.—Meadow hay, £4 10s to £5 10s ; clover,
£5 lOs to £6 lOs; and straw,-.£l 8s to £1 14s per load.
A slow sale.

WHITECHAPEL.—Meadow hay, £4 10s to £5 lOs ; clover,
£5 108 to £6 10s ; and straw, £1 8s to £1 14s per load
Trade steady.

COLONIAL.

TEA.—There has been a moderate inquiry for most de-
scriptions, and prices generally are well sustained. Good
shipping congou is quoted lld. per lb.
SUGAR.—The market has not been very active, 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.
RICE.--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 close of the market.

s. d. s. d.
Buddle'sWestHartley 16 9 Hetton l9 0
Holywell Main l6 6 Cowpen Hartley
Carway and Duffryn Heugh Hall l7 9
Malting 22 0 Walls End Harton ... 16 3
Braddyell's Hetton l7 3 South lielloe
Walls End Haswell... 19 0 Hastings Hartley l6 9
Tunstall

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 ! 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 radiaht 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-
tured by Robinson Crusoe in the desert island !

Nay the very implements of the craft—do we not

here learn all about them ? The potter's wheel—
his lathes, punches, whirlers, gravers, models,
moulds, and drying pans I 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,
awe traverse them own, to becozue at ladt as vaxie.