Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/329

Rh Improved processes of decoration have been devised by M. Salvetat and M. Ebelmen, of which the manufactory of Sèvres has possession, and which, I believe, will permit the substitution for painting of a lively and brilliant decoration, as distinct as that of delf, but which will be as superior to that as the material to which it is applied is more precious and delicate. Using these processes, the artists of Sèvres will be able to go beyond making commonplace copies of what has been made in the East, and to create a genuine French school of porcelain, restoring that material to the high rank which the artistic delfs have nearly taken away from it.

I consider that the manufactory at Sèvres, being a national establishment, supported by the country, ought to lay aside the character of a factory, and become a school of ceramics, devoting itself to the search for new processes, for original forms and decorations, to the creation of workmen and artists who shall be masters in their business; and that it is its absolute duty to give to French industry the results of its investigations. Thus might it become a most useful element in the national industries, and a glory to France and the republic.



LTHOUGH the reputation of the Romans as a civilized people has somewhat sunken of late, their army-life still awakens unbounded admiration. The Greeks called their army after the camp, the Macedonians after its formation. To the neo-Latins the army is armed power; the Germans seem to regard it as a union of the warriors into a common host. The Romans, on the other hand, as Gibbon has remarked, named their army from exercise. The Greeks aimed at the harmonious development of individuals, without any well-defined purpose. Incessant methodical drill of the manhood, a field of Mars, is essentially a Roman institution, for war was the natural condition of the Roman commonwealth.

Overthrown by the barbarian hosts, the regular army disappeared from the world's stage for a thousand years, and the greatest question of controversy for mankind, whether Christian or of Islam, was how once upon a time the quarrel of a clan over a pretty woman was decided by single combat of knights before Ilium. With the revival of ancient culture on the threshold of the new time, the drilling of troops came again into its right. No one now doubts that, other things being 