The Cannock Chase Examiner. — 1877-05-18 (Cannock, Staffordshire, England)

MODERN POTTERY.  Our modern pottery can never do, for future Inquirers thousands of years hence, what Assyrian and Egyptian, Greek and Peruvian works do for us. We use metal vessels more freely. The Chinese too, are perhaps to blame in this matter, and their wares have proved so beautiful and attractive that modern art too often imitates them, and does not aim at preserving the aspects of everyday existence. Illustrated books and illustrated journals are our subetitide for the old vases, and, of course, books of paper or parchment are far more perishable things than pottery. In the last century Oriental porcelain came in like a flood, and was imitated at once, though it was really not new to the more western lands. Thus, shortly after Saladin became master of Egypt, about 1171, he sent Nouereddin " a service of China ware, consisting of more than 40 pieces," and long before that the ware was an article of commerce. The more porcelain held the market, the rarer did representations of modern life in this material become. Indeed, our present costume looks odd enough in the real Oriental examples on which Japanese and Chinese have depicted Europeans in tall hats and frock coats. There is little temptation to go on with that branch of Industry, even for the behoof of inquirers in the thirtieth century. In the meantime it has become not unusual to reproduce modern pictures on plates, and in this way the simpering young ladles of a popular designer may be preserved. Excavators on the site of Bond street will discover, from the shards of pottery there, that large and shady hats were worn by ladies towards the end of the nineteenth century. It is impossible to predict the effect that these discoveries will produce, but in the meantime pottery is ens of the crafts that Is reviving in England. It would be easy to name factories where beautiful and useful objects are made of plain materials and with simple elegance. The uniformity in human nature has always shown itself manifest in pottery. Peruvian graves contain vases and drinking cups which an inexperienced eye would not readily distinguish from those of Greece. In Mexico there are abundance of the odd clay "whorls," or marked and perforated buttons, which puzzle explorers in Asia Minor. Modern English pottery has not, Indeed, gone back to these, but old and lost effects of glaze, of colons% and of Iridescence bare been rediscovered by patient experiment. It is impossible to vie with Nankin, but it is by no means impossible to cope with the old European factories, English and Flemish, whose works increase in value and general esteem.—Daily ,News.  The Court of Queen's Bench on Monday made the rule absolute for a criminal information in the case of Thornton v. the WhiteAall Reveal.. The defendants had insinuated that murder had been committed. A destructive fire took place on the 11th instant at Messrs. Burt, Benlton, and Haywood's sawing and planing mills, Burt's Wharf, Rotherhithe. A large building of one and two floors, used as saw mile, engine and boiler house, and blacksmith's shop, was nearly destroyed, and the offices and some stock in the open yard seriously damaged by fire and water. This makes the eighth fire at these premises reported since September, 1872.