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dyes used in Baluchistan are richer. The patterns are usually of the fantastic geometrical character found in Turcoman rugs, from which the patterns of the early "Brussels carpets were derived. They are laid on either a deep indigo or deep madder red ground, and traced out in orange brown and ivory white, intermixed with red, when the ground is blue, and with blue, when the ground is red. The ends terminate in a web-like prolongation of the warp and woof beyond the pile; and when striped in colours or worked in a small diaper form a most picturesque fringe.

The Agra Jail carpet, exhibited by Messrs. Edward Kilburn and Co., deserves a note of commendation for the fine proportion of its border to the centre. The borders of modern oriental carpets are generally made too narrow. In the mosaic floors of the Greeks and Romans, as seen at Pompeii, which were evidently suggested by Oriental tapestry, the border was always remarkably broad, and in the older Persian carpets it is often a yard deep, and more. The famous Jubbulpore carpets have deteriorated in quality and art in the most extraordinary manner since the establishment of the School of Industry at that Station, the influence of which has been equally prejudicial with that of the jails. The foundation, as now scamped, is quite insufficient to carry the heavy pile which is a feature of this make; and is moreover so short in the staple as to be incapable of bearing the tension even of the process of manufacture. Jubbulpore carpets often reach this country which will not bear sweeping, or even unpacking. I know of two which were shaken to pieces in the attempt to shake the dust out of them when first unpacked. The designs once had some local character, but have lost it during the last four or five years.

Benares Jail carpets have a texture very much like those of Jubbulpore and are equally untrustworthy. In fact the most durable jail carpets are those of Lahore, and it is this which adds to the aggravation of their hideousness.

In Mirzapore carpets we again find the evidence of the indiscriminate cheapening effects of the Jail system. In the Paris Exhibition of 1867 Mirzapore carpets were still shewn of fine texture, and good coloring, and serviceable wear; the designs too were suited to the coarse wool used in that district. But, in the carpets now sold, the materials are not so well chosen, the texture is coarser, and the colours are crude; and it is within proof to state that a Mirzapore carpet as now made, and sold in Europe at about 18s. the square yard, is one of the least economical carpets which people of moderate means could lay down on their floors. The staple is so short, and the texture so loose, that it will not bear the wear and tear of a middle-class English household; and common sense is of course the backbone of good taste in furnishing. Three years will wear out any Mirzapore carpet now made. Those made ten years ago will still be in use twenty years hence, and full of dignity to the end. But as they cost twice the money, there's the rub, fatal to the once great manufacture of this district.

Hyderabad carpets have also felt the influence of the jails. In the Exhibition of 1851 the very finest rugs exhibited were from

Warangal, about 80 miles east of Hyderabad. The peculiarity of these rugs, of which one remains in the India Museum, was the exceedingly fine count of the stitches, about 12,000 to the square foot. They were also perfectly harmonious in coloring, and the only examples in which silk was ever used in carpets with a perfectly satisfactory effect. The brilliancy of the colours was kept in subjection by their judicious distribution and the extreme closeness of the weaving, which is always necessary when the texture is of silk. All this involves, naturally, great comparative expense, not less than 107. per square yard; and it is not surprising, therefore, that in the competition with the Thug carpets of the jails, the stately fabrics of Warangal, the ancient capital of the Andhra dynasty of the Deccan, and of the later Rajas of Telingana, have died out, past every effort to revive them. Surely the Government which has spent so much money in introducing South Kensington Schools of Art into India, might make an annual grant for the purchase of the masterpieces of Indian local manufacturers, which they should present to any native prince or gentleman to whom they wished to shew great honour. A few thousand pounds spent in this way every year would have a most beneficial effect in sustaining many local traditional arts in India now nearly dying out, even of the very recollections of men. A carpet from the Warangal district is exhibited among the Prince's presents, but it is not of the old manufacture at all. The colours are too strong, the indigo very much too strong for the surrounding tones of grey, green, and yellow; and the large leaf pattern stares obtrusively from the crude madder red ground. It compares most unfavourably with an old Warangal carpet exhibited by Messrs. Vincent Robinson & Co.

The Mysore Jail carpets are like unto the jail carpets of Benares and Jubbulpore.

The jail carpets of Bangalore are coarse and clumsy in the extreme, and in coloring only less execrable than those of Lahore.

The carpets of Masulipatam were formerly amongst the finest produced in India, but of late years have also been corrupted by the European, chiefly English, demand for them. The English importers insisted on supplying the weavers with cheaper materials, and we now find that these carpets are invariably backed with English twine. The spell of the tradition thus broken, one innovation after another was introduced into the manufacture. The designs which of old were full of beautiful detail, and more varied than now in range of scheme and coloring, were surrounded by a delicate outline suggested as to tint by a harmonising contrast with the colours with which it was in contact. But the necessity for cheap and speedily executed carpets for the English market has led to the abandonment of this essential detail in all Indian textile ornamentation. Crude inharmonious masses of unmeaning form now mark the spots where formerly varied, interesting, and beautiful designs blossomed as delicately as the first flowers of spring and these once glorious carpets of Masulipatam have sunk to a mockery and travestie of their former selves.

The carpets of Malabar would seem to be the only pile woollen carpets made (in India, of pure Hindu design, and free at present from European as from Saracenic influences. They are made of a coarse kind of wool peculiar to the locality, and are distinguished by their large grandly colored patterns. The texture of the wool is exactly suited to the designs used, which are grey in tone, colossal in proportion, and wonderfully balanced in harmonious arrangement. No other manufacture of carpets known could hold a pattern together with such a scheme of coloring, and scale of design. The simplicity and felicity shewn in putting the right amount of colour, and exact force of pattern, suited to the position given them, are wonderful, and quite unapproachable in any European carpets of any time or country. They satisfy the feeling for breadth and space in furnishing, as if made for the palaces of kings.

These are not the only fine carpets still made in India. The collections exhibited by Messrs. Vincent Robinson & Co. prove that carpets of uncontaminated native designs and integrity of quality are still made by the caste weavers of India, but of varieties not yet recognised by huckstering European dealers, and obtained from villages far away from English stations and railway lines. Two carpets, from a little known district in the Madras Presidency, exhibited by Messrs. Vincent Robinson, & Co., are equal to anything ever produced in the Deccan. The colours are perhaps a little more brilliant than was observable in the memorable examples from the same district shewn in the Exhibition of 1851, now in the India Museum (which possesses also the most superb Afghanistan and Kirman carpets); but this brilliance is really due rather to want of age, for the details have, in a high degree, all the varied play of colour, and charm of pattern of the older carpets, and time only is required to mellow them to perfection. These choice specimens I shall not further indicate nor the places of their production, and I trust that the exhibitors of them will also keep their secret, which is the only protection they can give these fabrics, and their hereditary weavers (the Mahommedan descendants of Persian settlers), from the withering competition of the Indian Government.

It is beyond the purpose of this Handbook to notice other Oriental carpets than Indian, but it is impossible altogether to avoid a general reference to the selection of Persian and Turcoman carpets exhibited by Messrs. Vincent Robinson & Co., so remarkable are they for their great excellence of quality and design. The Kurdistan "Gift Rugs," Kermanshah galims, Daghestan tent hangings, and camels hair carpets, of "moukadem manufacture," the Yarkand rugs, and Bokhara carpets shewn by this firm are of the finest quality. The large Hamadan Carpet is absolutely unique in character and style. It is almost as thick as a "moukadem" carpet. An irregular lozenge form, an island of bright clustering flowers, of which the prevailing colours are red and blue, adorns the centre, while the wide extended ground of yellow, in irregular shades, surrounds it like a rippling amber sea; and there are blue pieces in the corners, within the blue border, worked

in arabesques. It is a carpet, however, which it will be difficult to put into a European room, as its surface is too beautiful to allow of its being broken by furniture. It is a carpet to be looked at like a golden sunset, and it was a sacrilege to remove it from the mosque where it evidently was once laid, under the great dome. Beati possidentes.

Messrs. Vincent Robinson & Co. exhibit a general Persian collection of pottery, brass-work, and fabrics, all selected with the greatest discrimination, and of the highest artistic value. Messrs. Farmer and Rogers also exhibit a general collection of Indian textile fabrics and miscellaneous small wares, and some of the finest Cashmere shawls.

Felts, called nammads or namdahs, are largely imported into India from Khotan by way of Leh. Messrs. Vincent Robinson & Co. exhibit some felts from Tabriz, which are beautifully ornamented with colored wools felted into them in regular arabesque designs. The manufacture of felt is a speciality of the town of Jarwal in the Bahraich district of Oudh.

Mats, called chatai, are made all over India. The mats of Palghat on the Malabar coast are remarkable for their strength, and those of Midnapore near Calcutta, several of which are exhibited by Messrs. Vincent Robinson & Co., are admired wherever they are seen for their fineness and the classical design of the mosaic like patterns of stained grass.

Apart from the natural beauty of the dyes used, and the knowledge, taste, and skill of the natives of India in the harmonious arrangement of colours, the charm of their textile fabrics lies in the simplicity and treatment of the decorative details. The knop or cone and flower pattern appears universally, but infinitely modified, never being seen twice under the same form, and the seventi and Lotus, which has been reduced, through extreme conventionalisation to one pattern. Besides, we have the Shoe flower, the Parrot and Peacocks, and Lions and Tigers, and Men on Horseback, or on foot, hunting or fighting. These objects are always represented quite flat as in mosaic work, or in draps entaillez, and generally symmetrically and in alternation. The symmetrical representation of natural objects in ornamentation and their alternation seems through long habit to have become intuitive in the natives of the East. If you get them to copy a plant, they will peg it down flat on the ground, laying its leaves and buds and flowers out symmetrically on either side of the central stem, and then only will they begin to copy it. If the leaves and flowers of the plant are not naturally opposite, but alternate, they will add others to make it symmetrical, or at least will make it appear so in the drawing. Nothing at first used to provoke me more when botanising in India, until subdued by the special charm of the drawings themselves. The intuitive feeling for alternation is seen in their gardens and heard in their music, and is as satisfactory in their music as in their decoration, when heard amid the association which naturally call it forth, as when benighted native travellers hail the rising moon. When the same form is used all over a fabric, the interchange of light and shade and the effect of alter

nation, are at once obtained by working the ornament alternately in two tints of the same colour. Each object or division of an object is painted in its own proper colour, but without shades of the colour, or light and shade of any kind, so that the ornamentation looks perfectly flat, and laid like a mosaic in its ground. It is in this way that the natural surface of any object decorated is maintained in its integrity. This, added to the perfect harmony and distribution of the coloring, is the specific charm of Indian and Oriental decoration generally. Nothing can be more ignorant and ridiculous than the English and French methods of representing huge nosegays, or bunches of fern leaves tied together by flowing pink ribbons, in light and shade, on carpets, with the effect of full relief. One knows not where to walk among them. Constantly are also seen perfectly shaped vases spoiled by the appearance of flowers in full relief stuck round them, or of birds flying out from them. Such egregious mistakes are never made by the Indian decorative artist. Each ornament, particularly on fabrics, is generally traced round also with a line, in a colour which harmonises it with the ground on which it is laid. In embroideries with variegated silks, for instance, on cloth or satin or velvet, a gold or silver thread is run round the outline of the pattern, defining it and giving a uniform tone to the whole surface of the texture. Gold is generally laid on purple, or in the lighter hincobs on pink or red. An ornament on a gold ground is generally worked round with a dark thread to soften the glister of the gold. In carpets, however, gay in colour, a low tone is secured by a general black outline of the details. All violent contrasts are avoided. The richest colours are used, but are so arranged as to produce the effect of a neutral bloom, which tones down every detail almost to the softness and transparency of atmosphere. The gold-broidered, snuff-colored Cashmere shawl in the Prince's Collection presents this etherial appearance. Light materials are lightly coloured and ornamented, heavier more richly, and, in the case of apparel, both the coloring and the ornaments are adapted to the effect which the fabric will produce when worn and in motion. It is only through generations of patient practice that men attain to the mystery of such subtleties. It is difficult to analyse the secret of the harmonious bloom of Indian textures, even with the aid of Chevreul's prismatic scale. When large ornaments are used, they are filled up with the most exquisite details, as in the cone patterns on Cashmere shawls. The vice of Indian decoration is its tendency to run riot, as in Indian arms, but Indian textile fabrics, at least, are singularly free from it, and particularly the carpets. They are threatened, as has been shewn, by quite another danger.

POTTERY.

Purest in art, in directness and simplicity of form and decoration, of all its homely arts is the pottery of India, the Hindu pottery of Madura and the Indian pottery of the Punjab and Scinde. Unfortunately, there is nothing of these two styles to shew. Pottery is made everywhere in India, and has been from before the