Draperies about that pent-up tiger, the fire, as I have already said, to me seem always a fault in taste. However heavy, however unlikely to catch fire, they always look as though they meant to, and with any draught they are apt to balloon in an annoying fashion. Norwich grates might surely be constructed with a drawer-plate (which hardly ever slides down easily) elongated so as, if required, to reach the hearth: this flat surface, like a blind, would offer capital opportunities for wrought-iron decoration in bas-relief or simple incision; this protected by sufficient depth of ridge at each side to admit of constant pulling up and down. Nothing could be a better shield for this kind of stove; for the use of the idle grate Would not be denied, though decorated, and the tiles would remain visible.

When will somebody invent a fine bas-relief design in lieu of the mock Japanese ornament which we are so tired of in these grates? and when will it occur to some one that bars might as well be twisted, knotted, or network fashion, as the inevitable straight or bowed bit of iron of clumsy thickness which forms the conspicuous portion of every grate? People wander over France and Germany seeking for those simple old iron firebacks which are certainly a point of interest when the fire is not piled; but who ever heard of good hammered iron ornaments being placed at the front of grate or hobs - at least, since the old artists of Cellini's school perished, who would have shown us Vulcan at his forge as grandly modelled on the blower as any infant Bacchus on a cup or hanap, and beaten the torch of Eros into hob or andirons with twenty times the spirit and good sense put into the vulgar cast-iron flowers (!) or ormolu shells and birds (a cricket would be a better subject!) which we hook into our burnished steel without a question or a qualm.

What Quentin Matsys, Benvenuto Cellini, Thomas Rucker of Augsburg, Peter Vischer, would have done with such an opportunity as a modern grate and fire-irons - yea, and not rested till he had done it - I sigh to think. The Cluny Museum possesses magnificent fire-dogs of various periods, and there are talented, conscientious blacksmiths now a days whom a little instruction and encouragement would develop into veritable pillars of English art. I saw some iron foliage treated much in the Matsys spirit at Powell's once, which gave me hope and comfort; however, I heard that the nineteenth-century atmosphere had so far injured the workman that he could only be got to work at a price which frightened away most customers; and the world is the loser by the scarcity of good workmen to provide what so many cultivated people are willing to pay a fair, if not a fancy, price for. The next best wrought-iron I have seen in England is in Ely Cathedral, provided by Skidmore, of Coventry - very pretty work.