Tea [Thea in list of 1671]; Tamarine; Tincall, [see Borax]; Vermillion. Wax [see Hard Wax]; Wormseed; and piece goods of upwards of 200 leading denominations. Atlases [Sattins], Baftas, Canvas, Chintzes, Diapers, Dimities, Ginghams, Gauzes, Longcloths, Mulmuls [Muslins], Quilts, Sailcloths, Taffaties, and Muckmuls [Velvets], all of which are given in detail under the section on Cotton Goods. The devotion of Waghorn, and the genius and heroic enterprise of De Lesseps, are destined to restore to Egypt and Italy and Greece the greatness of their ancient trade with India; and, owing to the development of trade with the eastern coast of Africa, the Suez Canal will now always remain the great channel of commercial intercourse between the East and West. But, stimulated by the immense discoveries of gold and silver in the present generation, and the use of steam carriage and electricity, modern commerce is returning to all its overland routes between Europe and Asia. It is not deserting the more modern way by the Cape of Good Hope, but is simply flowing into every channel that is opened to it, and the next generation will probably see all the old cities of the Tigris and Euphrates valley again rising from the dust and oblivion of ages; and Petra, Jerusalem, Palmyra, Tyre, and Sidon, Aleppo, Antioch, and Tarsus, once more participating in the returning prosperity of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Not in all cases the same cities, but new ones corresponding with them in situation and greatness. Owing moreover to the intrusion of Europe into Asia, through the conquests of Russia, the area of the transit lands between these continents is being extended further eastward; and, as commerce seeks the shortest routes, and always finds them at last in spite of every obstacle, a new line of communication is sure to be formed between Southern Asia and Europe nearer to India than either the Suez Canal or the Tigris and Euphrates valley. A great overland trade must again spring up in the tracks of the old caravan route between India and Russia, having its emporium possibly at Merv; again must commerce flow between India and the Black Sea, by Bayazid, Erzerum, and Trebizond; and when the use of the Persian Gulf route is revived Mahammerah will probably eclipse the fame of Baghdad and ancient Babylon. The shortest line, however, between almost any part of Europe and India leads through Russia, the Caspian Sea, and Persia. From Astrakhan to Bandar Abbas is a perpendicular line of some 1,400 miles, of which one half lies through the Caspian Sea: it is barely 200 longer to Karachi. As sure as the fall of a plummet will the commerce of the future between India and Europe gravitate to this new line. From Bandar Abbas it will run through Kirman, by Yezd, Julfa, Ispahan, Kashan, Kum, Teheran, Kazvin, and Resht, and along the western shore of the Caspian, to Baku and Astrakhan, whence it will branch off to every part of Europe, THE MASTER HAND CRAFTS OF INDIA. The present collection of Indian handicraft consists principally of the presents made to the Prince of Wales during his recent visit to India. It is therefore primarily not a systematic collection of Indian handicraft, but of objects of Indian art suitable for presents. Many things, therefore, indeed whole classes of some of the most interesting and instructive of the traditional industries of India, which we have been accustomed to see at previous Exhibitions, are absent from the present Exhibition. But, on the other hand, many objects are now shewn of the highest artistic value, but which are so costly, and have required so long a time for their production, that there would never have been an opportunity of seeing them out of India, except among the rich and rare offerings of its greatest Chiefs and Princes to the heir to the British Throne and Empire. Her Majesty's Commissioners for the Paris Exhibition have, however, been enabled to exhibit some of the classes of Indian handicrafts not represented in the collection of the Prince's presents, partly by purchases made under their own orders in India, particularly of pottery, one of the purest traditional arts practised in that country, and still more largely through the cooperation of the leading London importers of Indian hand-wrought goods,the house of Vincent Robinson & Co., Messrs. Farmer & Rogers, and Messrs. Watson & Bontor, who, with the Maharajah of Cashmere, together contribute the most extensive and most instructive series of Indian tissues, stuffs, broidered work, and carpets ever displayed in Europe. The Government of India has also sent a complete collection of the natural productions of India, which have been so admirably arranged by Mr. Simmonds that it is not necessary to say anything more about it than I have already done in drawing attention to the light it throws on the antiquity and historical development of Indian commerce. The collection of woods, and other forest, productions made under the direction of Dr. Brandis, the Director-General of Forests, is of the highest scientific, as well as commercial, interest. I have added, as Appendix B, a special memorandum on Chinchona cultivation in India. It is impossible in describing Indian handicrafts to follow the classification adopted at European Universal Exhibitions of Art and Industry, based as it is on the broad distinction that must be drawn between art and industry, when industrial productions are no longer hand-wrought, but "turned out," as it is aptly phrased, by machines. Thus, the very word manufacture has come at last in Europe to lose well nigh all trace of its true etymological meaning, and is now generally used for the process of the conversion of raw materials into articles suitable for the use of man by machinery. Even sewing-such sewing-has come to be done by machines.. Work thus executed, in which the invention and hand of a cunning workman have had no share, must be classified apart, and under the most intricate and elaborate divisions. Machinery and mechanical processes cannot be applied to any artistic work, except the frank and avowed imitation or copying of great art works, not for the æsthetic enjoyment of such copies, which is almost universally impossible, but simply for the purpose of art instruction, although it is possible that not even this advantage is gained. In India everything, as yet at least, is hand wrought, and everything, down to the cheapest toys and earthen vessels, is therefore more or less a work of art. On the other hand, it is impossible to rank the decorative art of India, which is a crystallised tradition, although perfect in form, with the ever living, progressive arts of Europe, wherein the inventive and creative genius of the true poet, acting on his own spontaneous inspirations, asserts itself, and which constitute the Fine Arts, as they are called. The spirit of fine art is everywhere latent in India, but it has yet to be quickened into creative operation. It has slept ever since the Aryan genius of the people would seem to have exhausted itself in the production of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. But the Indian workman, from the humblest potter to the most cunning embroiderer in blue and purple, and scarlet [Ex. xxxviii. 23], is a true artist, although he seldom rises above the traditions of his art. It is very necessary also to bear in mind that we have in India several distinct and indigenous varieties of decorative art; the savage arts of the original black and yellow Turanian tribes of the peninsula, now found only in the hills, or in the most inaccessible parts of the plains; and Hindu art, derived from the contact and subsequent mixture of the Aryan immigrants with the local Turanian races; and, lastly, the art which resulted from the influences of Arabian and Persian arts in India, which is peculiarly distinguished as Indian art. Indian collections are now also, unfortunately, becoming, at every succeeding exhibition, more and more overcrowded with mongrel articles, the result of the influences on Indian art of English society, missionary schools, schools of art, and international exhibitions, and, above all, of the irresistible energy of the mechanical productiveness of Manchester and Birmingham, and Paris and Vienna. No collection from India has ever shewn this great and growing evil so flagrantly as that of the Prince's presents. It was desired to do the Prince the utmost honour, and the native chiefs and princes, in many instances despising their own arts, had literal copies executed, in solid silver, of the latest Birmingham patterns in teapots (which came originally from India) and paper weights, and centre pieces, as the most acceptable gifts they could lay before the Prince. It was fortunate that they did so, for an evil which has been made so conspicuous will be checked. The natives have, indeed, a great genius for imitation. Thus Nearchus [Strabo, xv. 1, 67], producing proofs of their skill in works of art, says that, when they saw sponges in use among the Macedonians, they imitated them by sewing hairs, thin threads, and strings inextricably through flocks of wool, and, after the wool was well felted together, drew out the hair and threads and strings, when a perfect sponge remained, which they dyed with bright colours. That is exactly what a native, under a happy inspiration, would do. There quickly also appeared among Alexander's Indian camp followers manufacturers of brushes for scrubbing the body, and of vessels for oil, which they saw the Greeks using. Terry, in his "Voyage to the East Indies," 1655, in describing the people of India, writes :-"The natives there show very much " ingenuity in their curious manufactures, as in their silk stuffs, "which they most artificially weave, some of them very neatly "mingled either with silver or gold, or both; as also in making "excellent quilts of their stained cloth, or of fresh-coloured "taffata lined with their pintadoes [prints or chintz], or of their "satin lined with taffata, betwixt which they put cotton wool, "and work them together with silk. . . . They make likewise "excellent carpets of their cotton wool, in mingled colours, some "of them three yards broad and of a great length. Some other "richer carpets they make all of silk, so artificially mixed as "that they lively represent those flowers and figures made in "them. The ground of some others of their very rich carpets is "silver or gold, about which are such silken flowers and figures "most excellently and orderly disposed throughout the whole "work. Their skill is likewise exquisite in making of cabinets, “boxes, trunks, and standishes, curiously wrought within and "without; inlaid with elephants' teeth or mother-of-pearl, ebony, "tortoiseshell, or wire. They make excellent cups and other "things of agate or cornelian, and curious they are in cutting of "all manner of stones, diamonds as well as others. They paint "staves or beadsteads, chests or boxes, fruit dishes or large 66 chargers extremely neat, which, when they be not inlaid as "before, they cover the wood, first being handsomely turned, "with a thick gum, then put their paint on most artificially made "of liquid silver or gold or other lively colours which they use, "and after make it much more beautiful with. a very clear varnish "put upon it. They are also excellent at limning, and will copy "out any picture they see to the life. . . . The truth is, that the "natives of that monarchy are the best apes for imitation in the "world, so full of ingenuity that they will make any new thing "by pattern, how hard soever it seem to be done, and therefore. "it is no marvel if the natives there make boots, cloaths, linen, "bands, cuffs of our English fashion, which are all very much "different from their fashions and habits, and yet make them all "exceedingly neat." We therefore incur a great responsibility when we deliberately undertake to improve such a people in the practice of their own arts, and hitherto the results of our attempts to do so have been anything but encouraging. The Cashmere trade in shawls has been ruined through the quickness with which the weavers have adopted the "improved shawl patterns" which the French agents of the Paris import houses have set before them, and presently we H 22. E shall see what the effect of the teaching of our Schools of Art has been on Indian pottery, the noblest pottery in the world until we began to meddle with it. The great dread of course is of the general introduction of machinery into India; that, just as we are beginning in Europe to understand what things may be done by machinery and what must be done by hand work, if art is of the slightest consideration in the matter, in India, owing to the operation of certain economic causes, machinery may be gradually introduced for the manufacture of its great traditional handicrafts, resulting in an industrial revolution which, if not directed by an intelligent and instructed public opinion, and the general prevalence of refined taste, will inevitably throw the decorative art of India into the same confusion of principles, and of their practical application to the objects of daily necessity, in the use of which we should have delight, which has for three generations been the destruction of decorative art and of middle-class taste, in England and North-western Europe, and the United States of America. We therefore incur a great responsibility in attempting to interfere in the direct art education of a people who already possess the tradition of a system of decoration founded on perfect principles, which they have learned through centuries of practice to apply with unerring truth. The social and moral evils of the introduction of machinery into India are likely to be still greater. At present the industries of India are carried on all over the country, although weaving is everywhere languishing in its fast failing competition with Manchester, and the Presidency Mills. But in every Indian village all the traditional handicrafts are to be still found at work. Outside the entrance, on an exposed rise of ground, the hereditary potter sits by his wheel moulding the swift revolving clay by the natural curves of his hands. At the back of the houses, which form the low irregular street, there are two or three looms at work, in blue, and scarlet and gold, the frames hung between the acacia trees, the yellow flowers of which drop fast on the webs as they are being woven. In the street the brass and copper smiths are hammering away at their pots and pans; and further down, in the verandah of the rich man's house, is the jeweller working rupees and gold mohrs into fair jewelry,-gold and silver earrings, and round tires like the moon, bracelets and tablets and nose rings, and tinkling ornaments for the feet, taking his designs from the fruits and flowers around him, or from the traditional forms represented in the paintings and carvings of the great temple, which rises over the grove of mangoes and palms at the end of the street above the lotuscovered village tank. At half-past three or four in the afternoon, the whole street is lighted up by the moving robes of the women going down to draw water from the tank, each with two or three water jars on her head and so going and returning in single file, the scene glows like Titian's canvas, and moves like the stately procession of the Panathenaic frieze. Later the men drive in the mild grey kine from the moaning jungle, the looms are folded up, the coppersmiths are silent : |