Staffordshire now smokes for miles with the fires of her kilns, and vast quantities of wares are produced. Within the last twenty-five years a growing desire has been felt to bestow upon these articles of every-day use some grace of form and some decoration of art; and in both the English and the French pottery of to-day beauty and use are combined. CHAPTER X. THE PORCELAIN OF CHINA Difficulties.--The Porcelain Tower at Nanking.--First Making of Porcelain.--Kaolin and Pe-tun-tse.--Marco Polo.--Portuguese Importation.--The City of King-te-chin.--Jacquemart's Groups.--Symbolic Decoration.--Inscriptions.--The Ming Period.--The Celestial Blue.--The Celadons.--Reticulated Cups.--The Crackle.--Various Periods.--Individualism.--Marks and Dates. No people and no civilization have been or are still of greater interest than those of the "Flowery Kingdom;" and, spite of much study and careful investigation, of none are we less certain than of these. Through thousands of years a peculiar people have developed a peculiar social system--most striking, most distinct, and, in its way, as complete as any other, even if compared with ours, of which we loudly boast. And now this singular people--a people who have grown into a population of four hundred millions, having their barriers broken down by the guns and rams of England, so that trade should enter--are themselves coming out to do the work of the world cheaper than any others can do it. We see them in Batavia, in Siam, in Singapore, in great numbers, as workers, as brokers, as merchants, as manufacturers, and now they are flowing a steady tide into California; and who can say where the flood will reach, where it will stop, and whom it will submerge? No other question of such importance now presses upon us as this. But here we have to deal only with one of the most perfect and most beautiful of industries--one which seems to have had its rise and its culmination with this strange people. What we know of it we can hardly be said to _know_. The Chinese have always kept their own secrets, and have not cared to convert us to their methods, or to cater to our ways. We therefore gather, here and there, a scrap of information upon the subject of porcelains; we get, when we can, examples of their work; we try to learn something of their processes; but, after all, can only submit what we gather with some misgivings as to the absolute truth.