For the perfection, the idealization of the teapot we must turn to the productions of Josiah Wedgwood. Appropriate and convenient in shape, elegant in decoration, perfect in manufacture, they have handles adjusted in precisely the best possible balancing place, spouts shaped to empty the contents in the most perfect and thorough manner, covers that slide or fit with ease and yet with exactitude, bases that are perfectly proportioned and levelled—in a Wedgwood teapot we find elegance and fitness equally combined, it obeys and satisfies every artistic, economic, and mathematical rule; “built by that only law—that use be suggestive of beauty.” Our modern tastes do not run now to the black basalts, the blue jasper, the cream-ware of Wedgwood; we fancy a glazed, painted porcelain for every-day use, but the fact remains the same—the Wedgwood teapots are the best, the most perfect ever made; even in China and Japan, the acknowledged home of teapots, where the little vessels are not only used to hold tea, but as an omniparient cistern of every other liquid, even in those countries can be found no more perfect teapots than those of Wedgwood. They deserve the appellation of De Quincey, “an eternal teapot.” X. PUNCH-BOWLS AND PUNCHES There is no individual piece of china around which shines such a glowing halo of warm hospitality, of good-fellowship, of good cheer, as around the jolly punch-bowl. A plate, a mug, a pitcher, is absolutely devoid of any interest or sentiment save what may come from knowledge of past ownership, or from beauty or quaintness of decoration; a teapot conveys a sense of cosiness and homeliness; but a punch-bowl, even a common, ugly, cracked crockery punch-bowl—visions of good company and good companions rise at the very sight, even at the very name.