In New England seaport towns, where there has been during past years a large direct trade with China, vast quantities of Lowestoft ware are found. It would, of course, be argued from this fact that such porcelain is Chinese, and in truth it is Chinese in nine cases out of ten. And I presume the reason that I am so incredulous about Lowestoft china, is that I have really seen so little, my Lowestoft studies having probably all been in Chinese porcelain. Then, too, the Lowestoft factory, had it sent all its wares direct to America, could never have furnished our vast supply, from which we still have plenty of specimens to dispute and quarrel over. And is it not strange that we have no record of this vast trade in English porcelain? Who ever knew of a vessel arriving in an American port from Lowestoft? Who ever saw an advertisement of Lowestoft china in an old American newspaper? On the other hand, we know well how Chinese porcelain could have been brought—nay, was brought—in vast quantities to New England; for though New York took the lead in sending a single ship direct to Canton in 1784, the question of the China trade had been agitating Salem for a year previously, and in Connecticut, state aid had been asked to further direct commerce with the Orient. This aid had been at once refused by the prudent home-staying farmers in the Legislature. Providence, Newport, and Boston quickly awakened to the rich possibilities of the new commercial opening with the Orient, but Elias Haskett Derby, of Salem, known as the “Father of the East India Trade,” crowded his great vessels across the ocean to Canton and brought home rich stores of Oriental products. His fine Grand Turk sailed from Salem in 1785, and the return cargo doubled the money invested; and in the rooms of the East India Marine Company at Salem is a great Lowestoft bowl bearing paintings of the Grand Turk and the date, Canton, 1786, which proves that that piece positively was neither made at Lowestoft, painted at Lowestoft, brought to Lowestoft, nor exported from Lowestoft. From that year to 1799, of the hundred and seventy-five voyages made by Derby’s stanch ships, forty-five were to India and China. He had four ships at one time at Canton. In 1793 three Indiamen brought into New England ports $14,600 worth of “China-ware;” one of these ships, the Rising Sun, landed at Providence. And Billy Gray, of Salem, the largest ship-owner in the world at that date, sold many a hogshead of chinaware from the cargoes of his great ships, the Light Horse, the Three Friends, the Lotus, the Black Warrior.