Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/510

496 his tools is precisely the opposite of ours. He draws his plane toward him, works his saw in the reverse direction, taps with the side of his queer hammer, and handles his quaintly-chased graving tool in a way at which an English workman would stare. Yet, whether he is laying the shingles on the roof of a cottage, or chasing one of those wonderfully elaborate caskets in metal work, what English workman can approach him? His ideas discover an endless originality; individual impulse, rather than education, seems to inspire his fancy, although it may work according to received traditions of the quaint or beautiful; and, look where we will through a most miscellaneous collection, we can scarcely see a trace of servile repetition. In his pictorial art he can convey a world of expression and suggestion in the very smallest number of touches. Yet when it pleases him to finish, as when he is painting on his delicate porcelain, he is scarcely to be surpassed in harmonious minuteness. As for his colors, you may puzzle out his secret if you can; at least he shows you in an open case the chemicals which, as he professes, form his ingredients. All that can be said is, that none of the numerous attempts at imitation have ever proved to be any thing approaching a success. That strange superiority in color, not only in the tints, but in their management, is to be remarked in every one of the Oriental courts. The silks of China excel even those of Japan, in their bright blues and gorgeous crimsons; while, for softened brilliancy and exquisite delicacy of blending, the Persian carpets are confessedly unequalled. The invariably subdued beauty of these patterns argues something more than great mechanical perfection in the arts of color-making and dyeing. It is proof of a general purity of taste on the part of the Oriental purchasers for whom the fabrics were originally intended; for, although many of the best may now be consigned to Europe, the manufacture, precisely as we see it, has been practised from time immemorial; there are carpets in the Exhibition called modern by comparison, although they may date back for a century or so, and these are of patterns exactly similar to the latest ones. In every thing exhibited from China and Persia, the work is almost invariably good, and the designs felicitous; although, except in certain specialties, they cannot vie with Japan, yet every now and then one stumbles upon something that is extremely beautiful in art. So much can hardly be said of Turkey. Turkey makes a very imposing display; the Sultan contributed £100,000 toward forming the collection, and some of the great merchants in Constantinople, Smyrna, and elsewhere, have apparently done their best to advertise themselves. There is a good deal shown in Turkey, as well as in Tunis, that would have attracted great admiration had there been no Japan and no China to provoke unfavorable comparison. The famous Turkey carpets can scarcely be said to be satisfactorily represented. The very best, beautiful as the texture is, fall far short, even in that respect, of the Persian; while the contrasts displayed in the body of