Literature has been enriched by figures drawn from the ceramic art. Some of the most effective similes of Biblical writers are thus derived. It is under the type of a potter that Jeremiah represents God as showing his absolute power over the Israelites: “Behold as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.” In a similar manner, St. Paul typifies the divine control over man. “Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?” It is this absolute “power over the clay” which led men to use it for the conveyance of their first conceptions of the beautiful. The pottery of all countries shows how religion stimulated art, by furnishing it with themes, and infusing into it a spiritual signification which all could understand. The pottery of the Greeks shows best how art may embellish religion and history, and perpetuate the legends belonging to neither. To the above may be added the very effective simile employed by Plato in characterizing Socrates: “The outside of the vase is scrawled over with odd shapes and writing, but within are precious liquors and healing medicines, and rare mixtures of far-gathered herbs and flowers.” [Illustration: Fig. 11.--Enamelled Babylonian Brick. (Louvre.)] And thus, by a short step, we reach the art represented in pottery. It supplies, beyond all question, the best means of observing the growth of intelligence and the expansion of artistic ideas. The very qualities of clay which led to its being used in the gratification of awakening necessities, led also to its being adopted for the expression of the first inspirations of art. When the Assyrian potter first ornamented the brick he had moulded (Fig. 11), the mechanical pursuit was elevated to the sphere of art. The same course was followed among all nations. When the discovery was reached, that clay could be made serviceable for building or for household vessels, decoration sooner or later suggested itself. Either forms were varied and became in themselves ornamental, or a superficial decoration was resorted to. The useful led to the beautiful, and their combination, as seen on the dinner-tables of our day, is the natural result of a universal process by which nations have advanced from rude and unskilful ignorance to art. The aboriginal American potter decorated his coarse vase with a few scratches made with a stick; his modern successor moulds his porcelain into graceful forms, and brings to its ornamentation a palette of bright colors, a trained hand, and a cultivated taste. The one is a relic of barbarism, the other a work of civilization, and both are the fruits of a combination to which all nations have been irresistibly led, viz., the useful with the beautiful. This course has been universally followed, and may, for that