"One of the principal branches of industry at present consists in the manufacture of a kind of porcelain[8] which nowhere in Europe is made of such fine quality and so cheap. For some years, indeed, porcelain has been manufactured in Saxony, and also at some places in France. The former is finer than that made at Delft, but more expensive likewise, and therefore not much in general use; whereas the Delft porcelain, on account of its more moderate price, is more salable; and it is sent not alone to most places in Europe, but even to Asia also. The clay of which it is made comes from the neighborhood of Maestricht, and is purified in Delft by divers processes. Besides larger articles for general use, complete services are made here, ornamented with escutcheons, as they may be desired, beautifully gilt and painted, almost equal to the East Indian in transparency, and surpassing such in the painting. Many persons of property have such sets with their escutcheons made here, which then pass for Japan or Chinese porcelain." We must receive M. Boitet's judgment that the Delft "_surpassed_ the East Indian (or Chinese) in the painting" with many grains of allowance. Still, when it is known that many services were painted with landscapes after Berghem, and that William Vandervelde, Van der Meer, and Jan Steen, painted some of the ware themselves, we may easily believe that many pieces of delft had a character of their own, which gave it a very high rank. I have myself never seen such pieces of these, and hardly know where to look for them. Marryat says that in the Sèvres Museum is a large dish, in the centre of which is a landscape, with animals and figures after Berghem, which is one of the finest examples known; and that other fine pieces are in the Japan Museum at Dresden. Some of these finest pieces are (or were) in the collection of M. Demmin at Paris; one of them is a portrait of Jan Steen himself about twenty-five or thirty years of age, with flowing light hair covered with a cap or bonnet. Of the paintings upon delft by Van der Meer, Demmin enumerates a number; among which the "Head of a Woman," a "Landscape," and a "View of Delft," are at the Hague; the "Porch at Delft, upon which 'le Taciturne' was assassinated," is in the Museum at Amsterdam; and a variety of portraits, landscapes, city views, etc., are in private collections. Demmin describes a very elaborately-painted picture upon delft tiles in the Gallery Suermondt at Aix-la-Chapelle, containing a country-house, a figure of a woman, a well and a person drawing water from it, a pigeon, a tree, and the sunlight shooting through it and touching the walls of the house here and there. This very elaborate picture, so well and minutely painted, has been attributed both to Ruysdael and to Hobbema; it is now ascribed to Van der Meer.