Although at the end of this period he was released, he was subsequently re-committed, and executed.

During the civil war, Royalists and Parliamentarians seemed to vie with each other, as their respective turns of power came, in imprisoning and executing their foes in the Tower.

The last scene of horror which marks the history of this building as a prison was that of the execution

of a large number of persons, including the Earl of Kilmarnock, Lord Balmerino, and Lord Lovat, who were captured after the battle of Culloden, in 1745.

Crosses, images of saints, and other memorials of the religious fervour of kings and queens, decorated some of the chambers. Beneath an altar lie the remains of poor Anne Boleyn and her brother, Lord Rochford; the guilty Catherine Howard; the venerable Countess

of Salisbury; Cromwell, the prime minister of Henry VIII.; and those of many other notable persons.

From the reign of John, the Tower has regularly been used as an arsenal, where suits of mail, fiercelooking helmets, long and strong bows, arrows and lances, spears and battering-rams, muskets, cannon, bayonets, and huge cannon-balls, have had a share in the catalogue of warlike implements in this great fortress. The most curious and interesting part of the building, as an exhibition, is the Horse Armoury, a one-storied building, near to the White Tower, measuring about 150 feet in length and 33 in width. Two long ranges of equestrian figures constitute a most effective and picturesque scene. The lines of mounted warriors, with lances, swords, or battle-axes in hand, with banners overhead, represent the styles or fashions of different periods, about a dozen of which figures are identified as images of various kings and men of warlike renown.

In Queen Elizabeth's armoury, multitudes of pikes, swords, battle-axes, ancient pistols, guns and bayonets, helmets and breast-plates, shields and suits of armour, maces, and instruments of torture, form a picture which, once seen, can never be forgotten. The effect is crowned by an equestrian figure of Queen Elizabeth, attired as she was when proceeding to St. Paul's Cathedral to offer thanks for her deliverance from the terrors of the Spanish Armada. The queen, however, was not on horseback in the procession, but was drawn in a "triumphal car, ornamented with the spoils and ensigns of the enemy."

A JOURNEY by the night-mail, in winter, for the first time, through that part of Staffordshire known as "The Potteries," awakens strange thoughts to one whose notions of the manufacture of jugs, vases, tea and dinner services, and fancy tiles have been framed on the scriptural accounts of the "potter's wheel." A large share of our modern comforts is derived from the use of various products of the ceramic art, which is the term for this interesting manufacture. The country around is grimy, black, and almost dreary, except for

the huge furnaces which send up their large volumes of bright flame, lighting up the district for miles around. The scene would never suggest the existence of so much delicate and artistic work as I have seen in the magnificent gallery of paintings in the Louvre, at Paris, where numbers of ladies and gentlemen were engaged in copying from the works of renowned painters parts of pictures, and transferring them to the surfaces of specimens of ornamental earthenware.

Few, if any, of our modern manufactures can claim such a long line of history as that of pottery. We learn from the Book of Chronicles that the art was an honourable occupation among the Jews; and the control of the potter over his clay was used as a symbol of the power of God in moulding his people, as described by the prophet Jeremiah.

Earthenware was made by the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans; and the Chinese declare that so far back as 2,000 years ago, their manufacturers of earthenware were under the control of a superintendent appointed by the government. The vessels for holding water were probably made originally of the skins of animals, and of pieces of wood roughly hollowed out. The inconvenience of these articles renders it likely that the observing powers of man in the earliest ages would soon discover the usefulness of soft clay to be shaped into vessels, hardened in the sun, as still practised in Egypt and India. It is so difficult to understand how metals could have been melted, except in clay vessels, that we are compelled to believe that the potter existed long before the blacksmith.

Some of the relics of Egyptian pottery, bearing

inscriptions, show how skilful were the Egyptians in the processes of glazing and colouring, as well as in constructing earthenware figures, ornaments, and many articles of domestic use. The art was carried from Egypt, and successfully practised by the Phoenicians and the Assyrians, more especially in ornamenting their buildings. The Greeks next learnt the art, and elevated it to such an extent in point of decoration, that wealthy Romans readily paid sums equal to many thousands of pounds in our money for a simple Corinthian vase; and the potters of the present day believe that the high taste of the Greeks can never be surpassed. The Romans created a style of pottery, peculiarly their own, called the Samian, the leading features of which consisted of the material being of reddish clay, the designs being embossed, but not coloured, and the form being invariably round.

After the Romans had made this class of earthenware at home and in their colonies, for about four centuries, the art appears to have partially died out, the refined processes having been lost with the subversion of the Roman Western empire. The Saxons, Gauls, and Celts produced very rude specimens, until the art was revivified from Arabia and Spain. The establishment of Islamism among the Arabs prompted new energy in fashioning pottery to illustrate the religion of that day, and the people carried with them their new ideas to the countries which they conquered; and Syria, among other countries, was soon famous for the production of its wares.

Through Egypt and the North of Africa, the art made its way to Spain, and was firmly established about the eighth century, when the introduction of

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