of the Medici porcelain. The shield of the Condé family is sometimes found on plates of this ware, the ‘baton of cadency’ between the lilies so reduced in size as to look like an accidental spot. The mark, a hunting-horn, is carefully painted in red on the older pieces; later on, it is found rapidly sketched in blue under the glaze[176] (PL. D. 53). MENNECY-VILLEROY.--This time it is not a prince of the blood, but a _très grand seigneur_, whose name we find associated with a group of French porcelain. It was on the estate of the Duc de Villeroy, the son of Louis XIV.’s notorious marshal, at Les Petites Maisons, near Mennecy,[177] that Barbin began to make porcelain in the year 1735. The ware he turned out is remarkable for a translucent body covered by a brilliant and uniform glaze. Many kinds of decoration were tried by Barbin and his successors during the forty years of the existence of these works. This period of time well covers the culminating period of soft-paste porcelain in France, and the Mennecy ware fairly represents the school as a whole in its more modest efforts. The decoration with scattered flowers (_bouquets de style français_) is perhaps the most characteristic design on this ware, but more ambitious work in imitation of Sèvres was attempted later. As at Saint-Cloud and at Chantilly, much attention was given to the little daintily painted ‘toys’--patch-boxes, cane-heads, and knife-handles--many of which were copied a little later at Chelsea. But the reputation of Mennecy rests above all upon its _figurines_--little statuettes, generally brilliantly painted, though some are covered with the plain white glaze only (PL. XXXV.). Others, again, are in a biscuit of peculiar quality, and these last are at times remarkably well modelled. The mark D. V. (PL. D. 54), doubtless referring to the patron, was maintained up to the time of the removal of the works to Bourg-la-Reine, near Sceaux, in 1773. We have taken up the porcelain of Mennecy at this point, as the date of its foundation is earlier than that of Vincennes. From its general character, however, we might rather class it as a ‘younger sister’ of Sèvres, while the other wares we have described, Saint-Cloud, Chantilly, and Lille, form a distinct and earlier group by themselves. These latter are distinguished from the later soft pastes of France, on the one hand, by the predominance of designs either of Oriental origin or derived from the French enamelled fayence of the seventeenth century; on the other, by the restrained way in which the coloured decoration is applied, or even by the total absence of colour, so that, as a whole, these wares form an essentially white group of porcelain.