workshops at Goldsmith Street, Gough Square,[241] and here white porcelain from many sources was decorated. There is a curious water-colour drawing, representing the interior of this workshop, at South Kensington. It is the work of the younger Baxter, famous in his day as a painter on porcelain. The pale, anæmic faces of the artists--one of them wears a large pair of spectacles--crouching over their work in a narrow, crowded room, may be taken as evidence that this occupation was injurious both to the eyesight and to the general health (PL. LXVII.). To return to the general history of the Worcester factory. In 1770 we hear of a strike among the painters, who were alarmed at the spread of the underglaze printing process. The movement was not unconnected, probably, with the introduction of new blood from Chelsea. In 1772 there was a general shuffling-up and reorganisation of the company, with the result that Dr. Wall and the two Davises, father and son, finally gained possession of nearly all the shares. But the doctor died in 1776, and seven years later the whole concern was sold to Mr. Flight, a London jeweller, who had previously acted as agent for the company. At the same time Chamberlain, an original apprentice, and a man who had taken a leading part of late in the artistic management, seceded from the company, and, with his son, set up an independent manufactory. After the visit of George III. to the works in 1788, the factory became ‘Royal,’ and this is, perhaps, the nearest approach to a royal patronage that we can find in the history of English porcelain. In time the Chamberlain offshoot came to flourish more than the original stock, and finally, in 1840, the older firm, then known as ‘Flight and Barr,’ was absorbed by it. Towards the end of the eighteenth century many magnificent services of china were made for the royal family, painted with finished pictures in the style admired at the time. The porcelain was again ‘made to speak.’ In answer to the Napoleonic victories figured on the ware of Sèvres, we in England painted naval emblems and portraits of Lord Nelson on our plates and dishes. The joint-stock company which now owns the Worcester factory was founded in 1862. Since that time great efforts have been made to keep on a level with the artistic movements of the day. Much attention has been paid to the modelling of the handles, the stands and the covers of the vases, so that some of them are works of art by themselves. The porcelain has been designed and decorated in ‘the style of the Italian renaissance,’ in the ‘French style,’ then for a time a Japanese influence prevailed, to be followed by vases in ‘Persian style,’ and then back to the ‘Florentine renaissance’ once more. But running through the whole, we may perhaps trace a _soupçon_ of the French art of the later nineteenth century.