It may be that these vain cravings for pages from the past run not attune to the dreams of the master potter with an eye to the future; possibly decorative technique forbids--but here are the stray lines of a foreign spectator in kindly spirit. [Illustration] The ware is marked in green with an italic _A_ to signify its origin from the parent Aluminia factory as early as 1863, and to this are added the three lines so well known as a Royal Copenhagen Porcelain mark. [Illustration: COPENHAGEN ART FAIENCE. Vase and Boxes with lids surmounted by wood sprite and by bird, richly decorated in colours. By H. Slott-Möller and Christian Joachim.] CHAPTER XII THE FACTORY TO-DAY CHAPTER XII THE FACTORY TO-DAY Its situation and surroundings--Facilities for the study of plant, flower, and animal life--Modern equipment in machinery and in hygienic improvements--The absence of lead poisoning--New impulses. In the word _factory_ there is nothing suggestive of poetry. In England it represents the Frankenstein who has slain many cottage industries. In connection with our own potteries there are the Five Towns, merged into one, with a quarter of a million of inhabitants. They stand for organized science and applied manufacture. Their architecture is an architecture of chimney-shafts and kilns, black with smoke. It is a prosperous district, crammed with the workers in a gigantic industry. There are visions of murky canals and great hills of accumulated rubble of the mines, coal and copper and iron, dug from the bowels of the earth and blotting out the skyline. There are crowded byways filled with hurrying operatives, men and women and girls. The beauty of the rich, green, undulating lands of Staffordshire has been effaced by this delving of human moles. It is as though some ruthless giant had made sport of the hills and worked havoc on a smiling plain. But modern life demands sacrifices, and chinaware must be made to send to the four corners of the earth--this is the great White Country. In Denmark things are managed differently. It comes as a welcome surprise to the English visitor, educated to other scenes, to find the Royal Porcelain Factory set in a pleasant suburb of the city near the old gardens of the Palace of Frederiksberg. One cannot have an omelette without breaking eggs: the factory chimneys are there, the green-hedged paths are surely a snare leading up to another such prison-house as are all factories the world over. Here are the heaps of quartz, and we catch the hum of the machinery. The workers are in the hive; some unkind sprite has snatched them from the pleasant ways of a delightful city set by the sea and immured them for their sins in this fortress of stone. [Illustration: COURTYARD OF ROYAL COPENHAGEN FACTORY. Showing turkey and brood.]