The English and Portuguese traded with Japan in Elizabeth's reign, but were expelled in 1637. The Dutch were more tenacious, and from the commencement of their trading operations with Japan, in 1600, managed, at intervals, to keep in touch with their new market. Even the Dutch were regarded unfavourably by the Japanese authorities, and traded under considerable disabilities. The majority of the lacquered ware which came to England filtered through Holland. It was brought to Europe round the Cape in the armed Dutch merchantmen which, at the same time, were bringing home the beautiful old Imari vases and dishes with _kinrande_ (brocade) decorations, which served later on as the models for the early Crown Derby "Old Japan" wares and the simple Kakiyemon specimens copied at Chelsea, Bow, and Dresden. One of these old ships, the _Middleburg_, trading from the China Seas, homeward bound and laden with bullion and curios, went down in Soldanha Bay, off the South African coast, on October 18, 1714. In August 1907 the divers salvaged some of the cargo. Needless to say, the "Jappan Cabinets" had long since perished, but the little Chinese blue-and-white cups and saucers came to the surface none the worse for nearly two hundred years' immersion in salt water. We are fortunate in still possessing at Hampton Court Palace a goodly number of Kakiyemon hexagonal covered jars and bottle-shaped vases, and tall cylindrical Chinese blue-and-white vases of the Khang Hi reign, placed there by William and Mary; but the scarcity of contemporary English furniture there is deplorable. The real beauty of old Oriental porcelain is never so apparent as when displayed on the old "Jappan Cabinets" or the sombre furniture of the Orange-Nassau dynasty. It was fashionable to decry the craze for things Chinese, and early eighteenth-century literature teems with gibes at the china maniacs of the day. We have referred in the first chapter of the volume to Macaulay's small opinion of the merits of old Chinese porcelain. The _Spectator_ for February 12, 1712, contains a letter from an imaginary Jack Anvil who had made a fortune, married a lady of quality, and grown into Sir John Enville. He tells how my Lady Mary Enville "next set herself to reform every room in my house, having glazed all my chimney-pieces with looking glasses, and planted every corner with such heaps of China, that I am obliged to move about my own house with the greatest caution and circumspection for fear of hurting some of our brittle furniture."