Before his death his wares had become famous, and were greatly prized. The enamel, which he went through so much toil and suffering to discover, was the foundation of a flourishing national manufacture. III.--JOSIAH WEDGWOOD. Josiah Wedgwood, whose name in connection with pottery-ware has become a household word amongst us, was the younger son of a potter at Burslem, in Staffordshire, who had also a little patch of ground which he farmed. When Josiah was only eleven years old, his father died, and he was thus left dependent upon his elder brother, who employed him as a "thrower" at his own wheel. An attack of smallpox, in its most malignant form, soon after endangered his life, and he survived only by the sacrifice of his left leg, in which the dregs of the disease had settled, and which had to be cut off. Weak and disabled, he was now thrown upon the world to seek his own fortune. At first it was very uphill work with him, and he found it no easy matter to provide even the most frugal fare. He was gifted, however, with a very fine taste in devising patterns for articles of earthenware, and found ready custom for plates, knife-handles, and jugs of fanciful shape. He worked away industriously himself, and was able by degrees to employ assistance and enlarge his establishment. The pottery manufactures of this country were then in a very primitive condition. Only the coarsest sort of articles were made, and any attempt to give elegance to the designs was very rare indeed. All the more ornamental and finer class of goods came from the Continent. Wedgwood saw no reason why we should not emulate foreigners in the beauty of the forms into which the clay was thrown, and made a point of sending out of his own shop articles of as elegant a shape as possible. This feature in his productions was not overlooked by customers, and he found a growing demand for them. The coarseness of the material was, however, a great drawback to the extension of the trade in native pottery; and it seemed almost like throwing good designs away to apply them to such rude wares. Wedgwood saw clearly that if earthenware was ever to become a profitable English manufacture, something must be done to improve the quality of the clay. He brooded over the subject, tested all the different sorts of earth in the district, and at length discovered one, containing silica, which, black in colour before it went into the oven, came out of it a pure and beautiful white. This fact ascertained, he was not long in turning it to practical account, by mixing flint powder with the red earth of the potteries, and thus obtaining a material which became white when exposed to the heat of a furnace. The next step was to cover this material with a transparent glaze; and he could then turn out earthenware as pure in quality as that from the Continent. This was the foundation not only of his own fortune, but of a manufacture which has since provided profitable employment for