Japanese porcelain and pottery differ from those of China in the following general respects: perspective is permissible in painting; as a rule, there is greater simplicity of design, and the ornamentation is more chaste and less profuse; and, as already noticed, nature is more closely followed. To explain the greater purity and refinement of Japanese art, there are three points to be noticed. While the Chinese degraded art by degrading the artists, the best and noblest Japanese were themselves artists. Princes are said to have engaged in lacquer-work. The Chinese lowered ceramic art into a merely mechanical pursuit, by dividing the different parts of the ornamentation among several workmen. Artistic conception was almost lost sight of where mechanical finish was thus painfully sought. The Japanese give us the creations of individual men, who bring their own marvellous industrial skill to the expression of their own ideas. The third advantage which they possessed was that already incidentally referred to, viz., the prevalence of hereditary occupations. It has been seen that descendants, of the eleventh generation, of Coreans who settled in Japan as workers in stone-ware are now engaged in the same pursuit. The transmission of technical knowledge was thus amply provided for. Possessing such advantages and tendencies, the Japanese surpassed the Chinese in several respects. That they do so to-day, the Centennial Exhibition, even making a due allowance for the superior organization of the Japanese section as a government representation, placed beyond all question or cavil. This truth is one to which ceramists, undeceived by the exaltation of China and the treatment of Japan as a mere offshoot, should not be strangers. In lacquer-work the Japanese have always been superior, and at the Exhibition one of the best specimens in the Chinese section was from Japan. The lacquer was so laid on that the ornamentation on the underlying porcelain disclosed itself, and animal forms in red and gold decorated the lacquer. Similar acknowledgments of the excellence of Japanese porcelain have been otherwise made. The Chinese sometimes copy Japanese decoration. Further evidence is not wanting, and has been referred to under China, of the rarity and high value of Japanese porcelain in China. In any event, the time for servile imitation has passed with all that was worth imitating. Instead of devoting themselves, as the Chinese have done for two hundred years, to vain attempts at rivalling the attainments of their ancestors, the Japanese have shown an inclination to return to their old and renounced standards as bases from which to reach a new originality. They are, in one word, progressive in the best sense. Instead of nineteenth century representations of the works of the seventeenth, it may reasonably be hoped that the present day will disclose an art at once national and its own. POTTERY.