The Beauty of Life

'--propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.'--Juvenal.I stand before you this evening weighted with a disadvantage that Idid not feel last year;--I have little fresh to tell you; I cansomewhat enlarge on what I said then; here and there I may make boldto give you a practical suggestion, or I may put what I have to sayin a way which will be clearer to some of you perhaps; but mymessage is really the same as it was when I first had the pleasureof meeting you.It is true that if all were going smoothly with art, or at allevents so smoothly that there were but a few malcontents in theworld, you might listen with some pleasure, and perhaps advantage,to the talk of an old hand in the craft concerning ways of work, thesnares that beset success, and the shortest road to it, to a tale ofworkshop receipts and the like: that would be a pleasant talksurely between friends and fellow-workmen; but it seems to me as ifit were not for us as yet; nay, maybe we may live long and find notime fit for such restful talk as the cheerful histories of thehopes and fears of our workshops: anyhow to-night I cannot do it,but must once again call the faithful of art to a battle wider andmore distracting than that kindly struggle with nature, to which alltrue craftsmen are born; which is both the building-up and thewearing-away of their lives.As I look round on this assemblage, and think of all that itrepresents, I cannot choose but be moved to the soul by the troublesof the life of civilised man, and the hope that thrusts itselfthrough them; I cannot refrain from giving you once again themessage with which, as it seems, some chance-hap has charged me:that message is, in short, to call on you to face the latest dangerwhich civilisation is threatened with, a danger of her own breeding:that men in struggling towards the complete attainment of all theluxuries of life for the strongest portion of their race shoulddeprive their whole race of all the beauty of life: a danger thatthe strongest and wisest of mankind, in striving to attain to acomplete mastery over nature, should destroy her simplest andwidest-spread gifts, and thereby enslave simple people to them, andthemselves to themselves, and so at last drag the world into asecond barbarism more ignoble, and a thousandfold more hopeless,than the first.Now of you who are listening to me, there are some, I feel sure, whohave received this message, and taken it to heart, and are day byday fighting the battle that it calls on you to fight: to you I cansay nothing but that if any word I speak discourage you, I shallheartily wish I had never spoken at all: but to be shown the enemy,and the castle we have got to storm, is not to be bidden to run fromhim; nor am I telling you to sit down deedless in the desert becausebetween you and the promised land lies many a trouble, and deathitself maybe: the hope before you you know, and nothing that I cansay can take it away from you; but friend may with advantage cry outto friend in the battle that a stroke is coming from this side orthat: take my hasty words in that sense, I beg of you.But I think there will be others of you in whom vague discontent isstirring: who are oppressed by the life that surrounds you;confused and troubled by that oppression, and not knowing on whichside to seek a remedy, though you are fain to do so: well, we, whohave gone further into those troubles, believe that we can help you:true we cannot at once take your trouble from you; nay, we may atfirst rather add to it; but we can tell you what we think of the wayout of it; and then amidst the many things you will have to do toset yourselves and others fairly on that way, you will many days,nay most days, forget your trouble in thinking of the good that liesbeyond it, for which you are working.But, again, there are others amongst you (and to speak plainly, Idaresay they are the majority), who are not by any means troubled bydoubt of the road the world is going, nor excited by any hope of itsbettering that road: to them the cause of civilisation is simpleand even commonplace: it wonder, hope, and fear no longer hangabout it; has become to us like the rising and setting of the sun;it cannot err, and we have no call to meddle with it, either tocomplain of its course, or to try to direct it.There is a ground of reason and wisdom in that way of looking at thematter: surely the world will go on its ways, thrust forward byimpulses which we cannot understand or sway: but as it grows instrength for the journey, its necessary food is the life andaspirations of ALL of us: and we discontented strugglers with whatat times seems the hurrying blindness of civilisation, no less thanthose who see nothing but smooth, unvarying progress in it, are bredof civilisation also, and shall be used up to further it in some wayor other, I doubt not: and it may be of some service to those whothink themselves the only loyal subjects of progress to hear of ourexistence, since their not hearing of it would not make an end ofit: it may set them a-thinking not unprofitably to hear of burdensthat they do not help to bear, but which are nevertheless real andweighty enough to some of their fellow-men, who are helping, even asthey are, to form the civilisation that is to be.The danger that the present course of civilisation will destroy thebeauty of life--these are hard words, and I wish I could mend them,but I cannot, while I speak what I believe to be the truth.That the beauty of life is a thing of no moment, I suppose fewpeople would venture to assert, and yet most civilised people act asif it were of none, and in so doing are wronging both themselves andthose that are to come after them; for that beauty, which is what ismeant by ART, using the word in its widest sense, is, I contend, nomere accident to human life, which people can take or leave as theychoose, but a positive necessity of life, if we are to live asnature meant us to; that is, unless we are content to be less thanmen.Now I ask you, as I have been asking myself this long while, whatproportion of the population in civilised countries has any share atall in that necessity of life?I say that the answer which must be made to that question justifiesmy fear that modern civilisation is on the road to trample out allthe beauty of life, and to make us less than men.Now if there should be any here who will say: It was always so;there always was a mass of rough ignorance that knew and carednothing about art; I answer first, that if that be the case, then itwas always wrong, and we, as soon as we have become conscious ofthat wrong, are bound to set it right if we can.But moreover, strange to say, and in spite of all the suffering thatthe world has wantonly made for itself, and has in all ages sopersistently clung to, as if it were a good and holy thing, thiswrong of the mass of men being regardless of art was NOT always so.So much is now known of the periods of art that have left abundantexamples of their work behind them, that we can judge of the art ofall periods by comparing these with the remains of times of whichless has been left us; and we cannot fail to come to the conclusionthat down to very recent days everything that the hand of mantouched was more or less beautiful: so that in those days allpeople who made anything shared in art, as well as all people whoused the things so made: that is, ALL people shared in art.But some people may say: And was that to be wished for? would notthis universal spreading of art stop progress in other matters,hinder the work of the world? Would it not make us unmanly? or ifnot that, would it not be intrusive, and push out other thingsnecessary also for men to study?Well, I have claimed a necessary place for art, a natural place, andit would be in the very essence of it, that it would apply its ownrules of order and fitness to the general ways of life: it seems tome, therefore, that people who are over-anxious of the outwardexpression of beauty becoming too great a force among the otherforces of life, would, if they had had the making of the externalworld, have been afraid of making an ear of wheat beautiful, lest itshould not have been good to eat.But indeed there seems no chance of art becoming universal, unlesson the terms that it shall have little self-consciousness, and forthe most part be done with little effort; so that the rough work ofthe world would be as little hindered by it, as the work of externalnature is by the beauty of all her forms and moods: this was thecase in the times that I have been speaking of: of art which wasmade by conscious effort, the result of the individual strivingtowards perfect expression of their thoughts by men very speciallygifted, there was perhaps no more than there is now, except in verywonderful and short periods; though I believe that even for such menthe struggle to produce beauty was not so bitter as it now is. Butif there were not more great thinkers than there are now, there wasa countless multitude of happy workers whose work did express, andcould not choose but express, some original thought, and wasconsequently both interesting and beautiful: now there is certainlyno chance of the more individual art becoming common, and eitherwearying us by its over-abundance, or by noisy self-assertionpreventing highly cultivated men taking their due part in the otherwork of the world; it is too difficult to do: it will be always butthe blossom of all the half-conscious work below it, the fulfilmentof the shortcomings of less complete minds: but it will waste muchof its power, and have much less influence on men's minds, unless itbe surrounded by abundance of that commoner work, in which all menonce shared, and which, I say, will, when art has really awakened,be done so easily and constantly, that it will stand in no man's wayto hinder him from doing what he will, good or evil. And as, on theone hand, I believe that art made by the people and for the peopleas a joy both to the maker and the user would further progress inother matters rather than hinder it, so also I firmly believe thatthat higher art produced only by great brains and miraculouslygifted hands cannot exist without it: I believe that the presentstate of things in which it does exist, while popular art is, let ussay, asleep or sick, is a transitional state, which must end at lasteither in utter defeat or utter victory for the arts.For whereas all works of craftsmanship were once beautiful,unwittingly or not, they are now divided into two kinds, works ofart and non-works of art: now nothing made by man's hand can beindifferent: it must be either beautiful and elevating, or ugly anddegrading; and those things that are without art are soaggressively; they wound it by their existence, and they are now somuch in the majority that the works of art we are obliged to setourselves to seek for, whereas the other things are the ordinarycompanions of our everyday life; so that if those who cultivate artintellectually were inclined never so much to wrap themselves intheir special gifts and their high cultivation, and so live happily,apart from other men, and despising them, they could not do so:they are as it were living in an enemy's country; at every turnthere is something lying in wait to offend and vex their nicer senseand educated eyes: they must share in the general discomfort--and Iam glad of it.So the matter stands: from the first dawn of history till quitemodern times, art, which nature meant to solace all, fulfilled itspurpose; all men shared in it; that was what made life romantic, aspeople call it, in those days; that and not robber-barons andinaccessible kings with their hierarchy of serving-nobles and othersuch rubbish: but art grew and grew, saw empires sicken andsickened with them; grew hale again, and haler, and grew so great atlast, that she seemed in good truth to have conquered everything,and laid the material world under foot. Then came a change at aperiod of the greatest life and hope in many ways that Europe hadknown till then: a time of so much and such varied hope that peoplecall it the time of the New Birth: as far as the arts are concernedI deny it that title; rather it seems to me that the great men wholived and glorified the practice of art in those days, were thefruit of the old, not the seed of the new order of things: but astirring and hopeful time it was, and many things were newborn thenwhich have since brought forth fruit enough: and it is strange andperplexing that from those days forward the lapse of time, which,through plenteous confusion and failure, has on the whole beensteadily destroying privilege and exclusiveness in other matters,has delivered up art to be the exclusive privilege of a few, and hastaken from the people their birthright; while both wronged andwrongers have been wholly unconscious of what they were doing.Wholly unconscious--yes, but we are no longer so: there lies thesting of it, and there also the hope.When the brightness of the so-called Renaissance faded, and it fadedvery suddenly, a deadly chill fell upon the arts: that New-birthmostly meant looking back to past times, wherein the men of thosedays thought they saw a perfection of art, which to their minds wasdifferent in kind, and not in degree only, from the ruder suggestiveart of their own fathers: this perfection they were ambitious toimitate, this alone seemed to be art to them, the rest waschildishness: so wonderful was their energy, their success sogreat, that no doubt to commonplace minds among them, though surelynot to the great masters, that perfection seemed to be gained: and,perfection being gained, what are you to do?--you can go no further,you must aim at standing still--which you cannot do.Art by no means stood still in those latter days of the Renaissance,but took the downward road with terrible swiftness, and tumbled downat the bottom of the hill, where as if bewitched it lay long ingreat content, believing itself to be the art of Michael Angelo,while it was the art of men whom nobody remembers but those who wantto sell their pictures.Thus it fared with the more individual forms of art. As to the artof the people; in countries and places where the greater art hadflourished most, it went step by step on the downward path withthat: in more out-of-the-way places, England for instance, it stillfelt the influence of the life of its earlier and happy days, and ina way lived on a while; but its life was so feeble, and, so to say,illogical, that it could not resist any change in externalcircumstances, still less could it give birth to anything new; andbefore this century began, its last flicker had died out. Still,while it was living, in whatever dotage, it did imply somethinggoing on in those matters of daily use that we have been thinkingof, and doubtless satisfied some cravings for beauty: and when itwas dead, for a long time people did not know it, or what had takenits place, crept so to say into its dead body--that pretence of art,to wit, which is done with machines, though sometimes the machinesare called men, and doubtless are so out of working hours:nevertheless long before it was quite dead it had fallen so low thatthe whole subject was usually treated with the utmost contempt byevery one who had any pretence of being a sensible man, and in shortthe whole civilised world had forgotten that there had ever been anart MADE BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE AS A JOY FOR THE MAKER AND THEUSER.But now it seems to me that the very suddenness of the change oughtto comfort us, to make us look upon this break in the continuity ofthe golden chain as an accident only, that itself cannot last: forthink how many thousand years it may be since that primeval mangraved with a flint splinter on a bone the story of the mammoth hehad seen, or told us of the slow uplifting of the heavily-hornedheads of the reindeer that he stalked: think I say of the space oftime from then till the dimming of the brightness of the ItalianRenaissance! whereas from that time till popular art died unnoticedand despised among ourselves is just but two hundred years.Strange too, that very death is contemporaneous with new-birth ofsomething at all events; for out of all despair sprang a new time ofhope lighted by the torch of the French Revolution: and things thathave languished with the languishing of art, rose afresh and surelyheralded its new birth: in good earnest poetry was born again, andthe English Language, which under the hands of sycophantic verse-makers had been reduced to a miserable jargon, whose meaning, if ithave a meaning, cannot be made out without translation, flowedclear, pure, and simple, along with the music of Blake andColeridge: take those names, the earliest in date among ourselves,as a type of the change that has happened in literature since thetime of George II.With that literature in which romance, that is to say humanity, wasre-born, there sprang up also a feeling for the romance of externalnature, which is surely strong in us now, joined with a longing toknow something real of the lives of those who have gone before us;of these feelings united you will find the broadest expression inthe pages of Walter Scott: it is curious as showing how sometimesone art will lag behind another in a revival, that the man who wrotethe exquisite and wholly unfettered naturalism of the Heart ofMidlothian, for instance, thought himself continually bound to seemto feel ashamed of, and to excuse himself for, his love of GothicArchitecture: he felt that it was romantic, and he knew that itgave him pleasure, but somehow he had not found out that it was art,having been taught in many ways that nothing could be art that wasnot done by a named man under academical rules.I need not perhaps dwell much on what of change has been since: youknow well that one of the master-arts, the art of painting, has beenrevolutionised. I have a genuine difficulty in speaking to you ofmen who are my own personal friends, nay my masters: still, since Icannot quite say nothing of them I must say the plain truth, whichis this; never in the whole history of art did any set of men comenearer to the feat of making something out of nothing than thatlittle knot of painters who have raised English art from what itwas, when as a boy I used to go to the Royal Academy Exhibition, towhat it is now.It would be ungracious indeed for me who have been so much taught byhim, that I cannot help feeling continually as I speak that I amechoing his words, to leave out the name of John Ruskin from anaccount of what has happened since the tide, as we hope, began toturn in the direction of art. True it is, that his unequalled styleof English and his wonderful eloquence would, whatever its subject-matter, have gained him some sort of a hearing in a time that hasnot lost its relish for literature; but surely the influence that hehas exercised over cultivated people must be the result of thatstyle and that eloquence expressing what was already stirring inmen's minds; he could not have written what he has done unlesspeople were in some sort ready for it; any more than those painterscould have begun their crusade against the dulness and incompetencythat was the rule in their art thirty years ago unless they had somehope that they would one day move people to understand them.Well, we find that the gains since the turning-point of the tide arethese: that there are some few artists who have, as it were, caughtup the golden chain dropped two hundred years ago, and that thereare a few highly cultivated people who can understand them; and thatbeyond these there is a vague feeling abroad among people of thesame degree, of discontent at the ignoble ugliness that surroundsthem.That seems to me to mark the advance that we have made since thelast of popular art came to an end amongst us, and I do not say,considering where we then were, that it is not a great advance, forit comes to this, that though the battle is still to win, there arethose who are ready for the battle.Indeed it would be a strange shame for this age if it were not so:for as every age of the world has its own troubles to confuse it,and its own follies to cumber it, so has each its own work to do,pointed out to it by unfailing signs of the times; and it is unmanlyand stupid for the children of any age to say: We will not set ourhands to the work; we did not make the troubles, we will not wearyourselves seeking a remedy for them: so heaping up for their sons aheavier load than they can lift without such struggles as will woundand cripple them sorely. Not thus our fathers served us, who,working late and early, left us at last that seething mass of peopleso terribly alive and energetic, that we call modern Europe; notthus those served us, who have made for us these present days, sofruitful of change and wondering expectation.The century that is now beginning to draw to an end, if people wereto take to nicknaming centuries, would be called the Century ofCommerce; and I do not think I undervalue the work that it has done:it has broken down many a prejudice and taught many a lesson thatthe world has been hitherto slow to learn: it has made it possiblefor many a man to live free, who would in other times have been aslave, body or soul, or both: if it has not quite spread peace andjustice through the world, as at the end of its first half we fondlyhoped it would, it has at least stirred up in many fresh cravingsfor peace and justice: its work has been good and plenteous, butmuch of it was roughly done, as needs was; recklessness has commonlygone with its energy, blindness too often with its haste: so thatperhaps it may be work enough for the next century to repair theblunders of that recklessness, to clear away the rubbish which thathurried work has piled up; nay even we in the second half of itslast quarter may do something towards setting its house in order.You, of this great and famous town, for instance, which has had somuch to do with the Century of Commerce, your gains are obvious toall men, but the price you have paid for them is obvious to many--surely to yourselves most of all: I do not say that they are notworth the price; I know that England and the world could very illafford to exchange the Birmingham of to-day for the Birmingham ofthe year 1700: but surely if what you have gained be more than amockery, you cannot stop at those gains, or even go on always pilingup similar ones. Nothing can make me believe that the presentcondition of your Black Country yonder is an unchangeable necessityof your life and position: such miseries as this were begun andcarried on in pure thoughtlessness, and a hundredth part of theenergy that was spent in creating them would get rid of them: I dothink if we were not all of us too prone to acquiesce in the basebyword 'after me the deluge,' it would soon be something more thanan idle dream to hope that your pleasant midland hills and fieldsmight begin to become pleasant again in some way or other, evenwithout depopulating them; or that those once lovely valleys ofYorkshire in the 'heavy woollen district,' with their sweeping hill-sides and noble rivers, should not need the stroke of ruin to makethem once more delightful abodes of men, instead of the dog-holesthat the Century of Commerce has made them.Well, people will not take the trouble or spend the money necessaryto beginning this sort of reforms, because they do not feel theevils they live amongst, because they have degraded themselves intosomething less than men; they are unmanly because they have ceasedto have their due share of art.For again I say that therein rich people have defrauded themselvesas well as the poor: you will see a refined and highly educated mannowadays, who has been to Italy and Egypt, and where not, who cantalk learnedly enough (and fantastically enough sometimes) aboutart, and who has at his fingers' ends abundant lore concerning theart and literature of past days, sitting down without signs ofdiscomfort in a house, that with all its surroundings is justbrutally vulgar and hideous: all his education has not done morefor him than that.The truth is, that in art, and in other things besides, the labourededucation of a few will not raise even those few above the reach ofthe evils that beset the ignorance of the great mass of thepopulation: the brutality of which such a huge stock has beenaccumulated lower down, will often show without much peeling throughthe selfish refinement of those who have let it accumulate. Thelack of art, or rather the murder of art, that curses our streetsfrom the sordidness of the surroundings of the lower classes, hasits exact counterpart in the dulness and vulgarity of those of themiddle classes, and the double-distilled dulness, and scarcely lessvulgarity of those of the upper classes.I say this is as it should be; it is just and fair as far as itgoes; and moreover the rich with their leisure are the more like tomove if they feel the pinch themselves.But how shall they and we, and all of us, move? What is the remedy?What remedy can there be for the blunders of civilisation butfurther civilisation? You do not by any accident think that we havegone as far in that direction as it is possible to go, do you?--evenin England, I mean?When some changes have come to pass, that perhaps will be speedierthan most people think, doubtless education will both grow inquality and in quantity; so that it may be, that as the nineteenthcentury is to be called the Century of Commerce, the twentieth maybe called the Century of Education. But that education does not endwhen people leave school is now a mere commonplace; and how then canyou really educate men who lead the life of machines, who only thinkfor the few hours during which they are not at work, who in shortspend almost their whole lives in doing work which is not proper fordeveloping them body and mind in some worthy way? You cannoteducate, you cannot civilise men, unless you can give them a sharein art.Yes, and it is hard indeed as things go to give most men that share;for they do not miss it, or ask for it, and it is impossible asthings are that they should either miss or ask for it. Neverthelesseverything has a beginning, and many great things have had verysmall ones; and since, as I have said, these ideas are alreadyabroad in more than one form, we must not be too much discouraged atthe seemingly boundless weight we have to lift.After all, we are only bound to play our own parts, and do our ownshare of the lifting, and as in no case that share can be great, soalso in all cases it is called for, it is necessary. Therefore letus work and faint not; remembering that though it be natural, andtherefore excusable, amidst doubtful times to feel doubts of successoppress us at whiles, yet not to crush those doubts, and work as ifwe had them not, is simple cowardice, which is unforgivable. No manhas any right to say that all has been done for nothing, that allthe faithful unwearying strife of those that have gone before usshall lead us nowhither; that mankind will but go round and round ina circle for ever: no man has a right to say that, and then get upmorning after morning to eat his victuals and sleep a-nights, allthe while making other people toil to keep his worthless life a-going.Be sure that some way or other will be found out of the tangle, evenwhen things seem most tangled, and be no less sure that some usewill then have come of our work, if it has been faithful, andtherefore unsparingly careful and thoughtful.So once more I say, if in any matters civilisation has gone astray,the remedy lies not in standing still, but in more completecivilisation.Now whatever discussion there may be about that often used and oftenmisused word, I believe all who hear me will agree with me inbelieving from their hearts, and not merely in saying inconventional phrase, that the civilisation which does not carry thewhole people with it, is doomed to fall, and give place to one whichat least aims at doing so.We talk of the civilisation of the ancient peoples, of the classicaltimes, well, civilised they were no doubt, some of their folk atleast: an Athenian citizen for instance led a simple, dignified,almost perfect life; but there were drawbacks to happiness perhapsin the lives of his slaves: and the civilisation of the ancientswas founded on slavery.Indeed that ancient society did give a model to the world, andshowed us for ever what blessings are freedom of life and thought,self-restraint and a generous education: all those blessings theancient free peoples set forth to the world--and kept them tothemselves.Therefore no tyrant was too base, no pretext too hollow, forenslaving the grandsons of the men of Salamis and Thermopylae:therefore did the descendants of those stern and self-restrainedRomans, who were ready to give up everything, and life as the leastof things, to the glory of their commonweal, produce monsters oflicense and reckless folly. Therefore did a little knot of Galileanpeasants overthrow the Roman Empire.Ancient civilisation was chained to slavery and exclusiveness, andit fell; the barbarism that took its place has delivered us fromslavery and grown into modern civilisation; and that in its turn hasbefore it the choice of never-ceasing growth, or destruction by thatwhich has in it the seeds of higher growth.There is an ugly word for a dreadful fact, which I must make bold touse--the residuum: that word since the time I first saw it used,has had a terrible significance to me, and I have felt from my heartthat if this residuum were a necessary part of modern civilisation,as some people openly, and many more tacitly, assume that it is,then this civilisation carries with it the poison that shall one daydestroy it, even as its elder sister did: if civilisation is to gono further than this, it had better not have gone so far: if itdoes not aim at getting rid of this misery and giving some share inthe happiness and dignity of life to ALL the people that it hascreated, and which it spends such unwearying energy in creating, itis simply an organised injustice, a mere instrument for oppression,so much the worse than that which has gone before it, as itspretensions are higher, its slavery subtler, its mastery harder tooverthrow, because supported by such a dense mass of commonplacewell-being and comfort.Surely this cannot be: surely there is a distinct feeling abroad ofthis injustice: so that if the residuum still clogs all the effortsof modern civilisation to rise above mere population-breeding andmoney-making, the difficulty of dealing with it is the legacy, firstof the ages of violence and almost conscious brutal injustice, andnext of the ages of thoughtlessness, of hurry and blindness; surelyall those who think at all of the future of the world are at work inone way or other in striving to rid it of this shame.That to my mind is the meaning of what we call National Education,which we have begun, and which is doubtless already bearing itsfruits, and will bear greater, when all people are educated, notaccording to the money which they or their parents possess, butaccording to the capacity of their minds.What effect that will have upon the future of the arts, I cannotsay, but one would surely think a very great effect; for it willenable people to see clearly many things which are now as completelyhidden from them as if they were blind in body and idiotic in mind:and this, I say, will act not only upon those who most directly feelthe evils of ignorance, but also upon those who feel themindirectly,--upon us, the educated: the great wave of risingintelligence, rife with so many natural desires and aspirations,will carry all classes along with it, and force us all to see thatmany things which we have been used to look upon as necessary andeternal evils are merely the accidental and temporary growths ofpast stupidity, and can be escaped from by due effort, and theexercise of courage, goodwill, and forethought.And among those evils, I do, and must always, believe will fall thatone which last year I told you that I accounted the greatest of allevils, the heaviest of all slaveries; that evil of the greater partof the population being engaged for by far the most part of theirlives in work, which at the best cannot interest them, or developtheir best faculties, and at the worst (and that is the commonest,too) is mere unmitigated slavish toil, only to be wrung out of themby the sternest compulsion, a toil which they shirk all they can--small blame to them. And this toil degrades them into less thanmen: and they will some day come to know it, and cry out to be mademen again, and art only can do it, and redeem them from thisslavery; and I say once more that this is her highest and mostglorious end and aim; and it is in her struggle to attain to it thatshe will most surely purify herself, and quicken her own aspirationstowards perfection.But we--in the meantime we must not sit waiting for obvious signs ofthese later and glorious days to show themselves on earth, and inthe heavens, but rather turn to the commonplace, and maybe oftendull work of fitting ourselves in detail to take part in them if weshould live to see one of them; or in doing our best to make thepath smooth for their coming, if we are to die before they are here.What, therefore, can we do, to guard traditions of time past that wemay not one day have to begin anew from the beginning with none toteach us? What are we to do, that we may take heed to, and spreadthe decencies of life, so that at the least we may have a fieldwhere it will be possible for art to grow when men begin to long forit: what finally can we do, each of us, to cherish some germ ofart, so that it may meet with others, and spread and grow little bylittle into the thing that we need?Now I cannot pretend to think that the first of these duties is amatter of indifference to you, after my experience of theenthusiastic meeting that I had the honour of addressing here lastautumn on the subject of the (so called) restoration of St. Mark'sat Venice; you thought, and most justly thought, it seems to me,that the subject was of such moment to art in general, that it was asimple and obvious thing for men who were anxious on the matter toaddress themselves to those who had the decision of it in theirhands; even though the former were called Englishmen, and the latterItalians; for you felt that the name of lovers of art would coverthose differences: if you had any misgivings, you remembered thatthere was but one such building in the world, and that it was worthwhile risking a breach of etiquette, if any words of ours could doanything towards saving it; well, the Italians were, some of them,very naturally, though surely unreasonably, irritated, for a time,and in some of their prints they bade us look at home; that was noargument in favour of the wisdom of wantonly rebuilding St. Mark'sfacade: but certainly those of us who have not yet looked at homein this matter had better do so speedily, late and over late thoughit be: for though we have no golden-pictured interiors like St.Mark's Church at home, we still have many buildings which are bothworks of ancient art and monuments of history: and just think whatis happening to them, and note, since we profess to recognise theirvalue, how helpless art is in the Century of Commerce!In the first place, many and many a beautiful and ancient buildingis being destroyed all over civilised Europe as well as in England,because it is supposed to interfere with the convenience of thecitizens, while a little forethought might save it without trenchingon that convenience; {6} but even apart from that, I say that if weare not prepared to put up with a little inconvenience in ourlifetimes for the sake of preserving a monument of art which willelevate and educate, not only ourselves, but our sons, and our sons'sons, it is vain and idle of us to talk about art--or educationeither. Brutality must be bred of such brutality.The same thing may be said about enlarging, or otherwise alteringfor convenience' sake, old buildings still in use for something liketheir original purposes: in almost all such cases it is reallynothing more than a question of a little money for a new site: andthen a new building can be built exactly fitted for the uses it isneeded for, with such art about it as our own days can furnish;while the old monument is left to tell its tale of change andprogress, to hold out example and warning to us in the practice ofthe arts: and thus the convenience of the public, the progress ofmodern art, and the cause of education, are all furthered at once atthe cost of a little money.Surely if it be worth while troubling ourselves about the works ofart of to-day, of which any amount almost can be done, since we areyet alive, it is worth while spending a little care, forethought,and money in preserving the art of bygone ages, of which (woe worththe while!) so little is left, and of which we can never have anymore, whatever good-hap the world may attain to.No man who consents to the destruction or the mutilation of anancient building has any right to pretend that he cares about art;or has any excuse to plead in defence of his crime againstcivilisation and progress, save sheer brutal ignorance.But before I leave this subject I must say a word or two about thecurious invention of our own days called Restoration, a method ofdealing with works of bygone days which, though not so degrading inits spirit as downright destruction, is nevertheless little betterin its results on the condition of those works of art; it is obviousthat I have no time to argue the question out to-night, so I willonly make these assertions:That ancient buildings, being both works of art and monuments ofhistory, must obviously be treated with great care and delicacy:that the imitative art of to-day is not, and cannot be the samething as ancient art, and cannot replace it; and that therefore ifwe superimpose this work on the old, we destroy it both as art andas a record of history: lastly, that the natural weathering of thesurface of a building is beautiful, and its loss disastrous.Now the restorers hold the exact contrary of all this: they thinkthat any clever architect to-day can deal off-hand successfully withthe ancient work; that while all things else have changed about ussince (say) the thirteenth century, art has not changed, and thatour workmen can turn out work identical with that of the thirteenthcentury; and, lastly, that the weather-beaten surface of an ancientbuilding is worthless, and to be got rid of wherever possible.You see the question is difficult to argue, because there seem to beno common grounds between the restorers and the anti-restorers: Iappeal therefore to the public, and bid them note, that though ouropinions may be wrong, the action we advise is not rash: let thequestion be shelved awhile: if, as we are always pressing onpeople, due care be taken of these monuments, so that they shall notfall into disrepair, they will be always there to 'restore' wheneverpeople think proper and when we are proved wrong; but if it shouldturn out that we are right, how can the 'restored' buildings berestored? I beg of you therefore to let the question be shelved,till art has so advanced among us, that we can deal authoritativelywith it, till there is no longer any doubt about the matter.Surely these monuments of our art and history, which, whatever thelawyers may say, belong not to a coterie, or to a rich man here andthere, but to the nation at large, are worth this delay: surely thelast relics of the life of the 'famous men and our fathers thatbegat us' may justly claim of us the exercise of a little patience.It will give us trouble no doubt, all this care of our possessions:but there is more trouble to come; for I must now speak of somethingelse, of possessions which should be common to all of us, of thegreen grass, and the leaves, and the waters, of the very light andair of heaven, which the Century of Commerce has been too busy topay any heed to. And first let me remind you that I am supposingevery one here present professes to care about art.Well, there are some rich men among us whom we oddly enough callmanufacturers, by which we mean capitalists who pay other men toorganise manufacturers; these gentlemen, many of whom buy picturesand profess to care about art, burn a deal of coal: there is an Actin existence which was passed to prevent them sometimes and in someplaces from pouring a dense cloud of smoke over the world, and, tomy thinking, a very lame and partial Act it is: but nothing hindersthese lovers of art from being a law to themselves, and making it apoint of honour with them to minimise the smoke nuisance as far astheir own works are concerned; and if they don't do so, when meremoney, and even a very little of that, is what it will cost them, Isay that their love of art is a mere pretence: how can you careabout the image of a landscape when you show by your deeds that youdon't care for the landscape itself? or what right have you to shutyourself up with beautiful form and colour when you make itimpossible for other people to have any share in these things?Well, and as to the smoke Act itself: I don't know what heed youpay to it in Birmingham, {7} but I have seen myself what heed ispaid to it in other places; Bradford for instance: though close bythem at Saltaire they have an example which I should have thoughtmight have shamed them; for the huge chimney there which serves theacres of weaving and spinning sheds of Sir Titus Salt and hisbrothers is as guiltless of smoke as an ordinary kitchen chimney.Or Manchester: a gentleman of that city told me that the smoke Actwas a mere dead letter there: well, they buy pictures in Manchesterand profess to wish to further the arts: but you see it must beidle pretence as far as their rich people are concerned: they onlywant to talk about it, and have themselves talked of.I don't know what you are doing about this matter here; but you mustforgive my saying, that unless you are beginning to think of someway of dealing with it, you are not beginning yet to pave your wayto success in the arts.Well, I have spoken of a huge nuisance, which is a type of the worstnuisances of what an ill-tempered man might be excused for callingthe Century of Nuisances, rather than the Century of Commerce. Iwill now leave it to the consciences of the rich and influentialamong us, and speak of a minor nuisance which it is in the power ofevery one of us to abate, and which, small as it is, is sovexatious, that if I can prevail on a score of you to take heed toit by what I am saying, I shall think my evening's work a good one.Sandwich-papers I mean--of course you laugh: but come now, don'tyou, civilised as you are in Birmingham, leave them all about theLickey hills and your public gardens and the like? If you don't Ireally scarcely know with what words to praise you. When weLondoners go to enjoy ourselves at Hampton Court, for instance, wetake special good care to let everybody know that we have hadsomething to eat: so that the park just outside the gates (and abeautiful place it is) looks as if it had been snowing dirty paper.I really think you might promise me one and all who are here presentto have done with this sluttish habit, which is the type of manyanother in its way, just as the smoke nuisance is. I mean suchthings as scrawling one's name on monuments, tearing down treeboughs, and the like.I suppose 'tis early days in the revival of the arts to expressone's disgust at the daily increasing hideousness of the posterswith which all our towns are daubed. Still we ought to be disgustedat such horrors, and I think make up our minds never to buy any ofthe articles so advertised. I can't believe they can be worth muchif they need all that shouting to sell them.Again, I must ask what do you do with the trees on a site that isgoing to be built over? do you try to save them, to adapt yourhouses at all to them? do you understand what treasures they are ina town or a suburb? or what a relief they will be to the hideousdog-holes which (forgive me!) you are probably going to build intheir places? I ask this anxiously, and with grief in my soul, forin London and its suburbs we always {8} begin by clearing a sitetill it is as bare as the pavement: I really think that almostanybody would have been shocked, if I could have shown him some ofthe trees that have been wantonly murdered in the suburb in which Ilive (Hammersmith to wit), amongst them some of those magnificentcedars, for which we along the river used to be famous once.But here again see how helpless those are who care about art ornature amidst the hurry of the Century of Commerce.Pray do not forget, that any one who cuts down a tree wantonly orcarelessly, especially in a great town or its suburbs, need make nopretence of caring about art.What else can we do to help to educate ourselves and others in thepath of art, to be on the road to attaining an ART MADE BY THEPEOPLE AND FOR THE PEOPLE AS A JOY TO THE MAKER AND THE USER?Why, having got to understand something of what art was, having gotto look upon its ancient monuments as friends that can tell ussomething of times bygone, and whose faces we do not wish to alter,even though they be worn by time and grief: having got to spendmoney and trouble upon matters of decency, great and little; havingmade it clear that we really do care about nature even in thesuburbs of a big town--having got so far, we shall begin to think ofthe houses in which we live.For I must tell you that unless you are resolved to have good andrational architecture, it is, once again, useless your thinkingabout art at all.I have spoken of the popular arts, but they might all be summed upin that one word Architecture; they are all parts of that greatwhole, and the art of house-building begins it all: if we did notknow how to dye or to weave; if we had neither gold, nor silver, norsilk; and no pigments to paint with, but half-a-dozen ochres andumbers, we might yet frame a worthy art that would lead toeverything, if we had but timber, stone, and lime, and a few cuttingtools to make these common things not only shelter us from wind andweather, but also express the thoughts and aspirations that stir inus.Architecture would lead us to all the arts, as it did with earliermen: but if we despise it and take no note of how we are housed,the other arts will have a hard time of it indeed.Now I do not think the greatest of optimists would deny that, takingus one and all, we are at present housed in a perfectly shamefulway, and since the greatest part of us have to live in housesalready built for us, it must be admitted that it is rather hard toknow what to do, beyond waiting till they tumble about our ears.Only we must not lay the fault upon the builders, as some peopleseem inclined to do: they are our very humble servants, and willbuild what we ask for; remember, that rich men are not obliged tolive in ugly houses, and yet you see they do; which the builders maybe well excused for taking as a sign of what is wanted.Well, the point is, we must do what we can, and make peopleunderstand what we want them to do for us, by letting them see whatwe do for ourselves.Hitherto, judging us by that standard, the builders may well say,that we want the pretence of a thing rather than the thing itself;that we want a show of petty luxury if we are unrich, a show ofinsulting stupidity if we are rich: and they are quite clear thatas a rule we want to get something that shall look as if it costtwice as much as it really did.You cannot have Architecture on those terms: simplicity andsolidity are the very first requisites of it: just think if it isnot so: How we please ourselves with an old building by thinking ofall the generations of men that have passed through it! do we notremember how it has received their joy, and borne their sorrow, andnot even their folly has left sourness upon it? it still looks askind to us as it did to them. And the converse of this we ought tofeel when we look at a newly-built house if it were as it should be:we should feel a pleasure in thinking how he who had built it hadleft a piece of his soul behind him to greet the new-comers oneafter another long and long after he was gone:- but what sentimentcan an ordinary modern house move in us, or what thought--save ahope that we may speedily forget its base ugliness?But if you ask me how we are to pay for this solidity and extraexpense, that seems to me a reasonable question; for you mustdismiss at once as a delusion the hope that has been sometimescherished, that you can have a building which is a work of art, andis therefore above all things properly built, at the same price as abuilding which only pretends to be this: never forget when peopletalk about cheap art in general, by the way, that all art coststime, trouble, and thought, and that money is only a counter torepresent these things.However, I must try to answer the question I have supposed put, howare we to pay for decent houses?It seems to me that, by a great piece of good luck, the way to payfor them is by doing that which alone can produce popular art amongus: living a simple life, I mean. Once more I say that thegreatest foe to art is luxury, art cannot live in its atmosphere.When you hear of the luxuries of the ancients, you must rememberthat they were not like our luxuries, they were rather indulgence inpieces of extravagant folly than what we to-day call luxury; whichperhaps you would rather call comfort: well I accept the word, andsay that a Greek or Roman of the luxurious time would stareastonished could he be brought back again, and shown the comforts ofa well-to-do middle-class house.But some, I know, think that the attainment of these very comfortsis what makes the difference between civilisation anduncivilisation, that they are the essence of civilisation. Is it soindeed? Farewell my hope then!--I had thought that civilisationmeant the attainment of peace and order and freedom, of goodwillbetween man and man, of the love of truth and the hatred ofinjustice, and by consequence the attainment of the good life whichthese things breed, a life free from craven fear, but full ofincident: that was what I thought it meant, not more stuffed chairsand more cushions, and more carpets and gas, and more dainty meatand drink--and therewithal more and sharper differences betweenclass and class.If that be what it is, I for my part wish I were well out of it, andliving in a tent in the Persian desert, or a turf hut on the Icelandhill-side. But however it be, and I think my view is the true view,I tell you that art abhors that side of civilisation, she cannotbreathe in the houses that lie under its stuffy slavery.Believe me, if we want art to begin at home, as it must, we mustclear our houses of troublesome superfluities that are for ever inour way: conventional comforts that are no real comforts, and dobut make work for servants and doctors: if you want a golden rulethat will fit everybody, this is it:'HAVE NOTHING IN YOUR HOUSES THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW TO BE USEFUL ORBELIEVE TO BE BEAUTIFUL.'And if we apply that rule strictly, we shall in the first place showthe builders and such-like servants of the public what we reallywant, we shall create a demand for real art, as the phrase goes; andin the second place, we shall surely have more money to pay fordecent houses.Perhaps it will not try your patience too much if I lay before youmy idea of the fittings necessary to the sitting-room of a healthyperson: a room, I mean, in which he would not have to cook in much,or sleep in generally, or in which he would not have to do any verylitter-making manual work.First a book-case with a great many books in it: next a table thatwill keep steady when you write or work at it: then several chairsthat you can move, and a bench that you can sit or lie upon: next acupboard with drawers: next, unless either the book-case or thecupboard be very beautiful with painting or carving, you will wantpictures or engravings, such as you can afford, only not stop-gaps,but real works of art on the wall; or else the wall itself must beornamented with some beautiful and restful pattern: we shall alsowant a vase or two to put flowers in, which latter you must havesometimes, especially if you live in a town. Then there will be thefireplace of course, which in our climate is bound to be the chiefobject in the room.That is all we shall want, especially if the floor be good; if it benot, as, by the way, in a modern house it is pretty certain not tobe, I admit that a small carpet which can be bundled out of the roomin two minutes will be useful, and we must also take care that it isbeautiful, or it will annoy us terribly.Now unless we are musical, and need a piano (in which case, as faras beauty is concerned, we are in a bad way), that is quite all wewant: and we can add very little to these necessaries withouttroubling ourselves, and hindering our work, our thought, and ourrest.If these things were done at the least cost for which they could bedone well and solidly, they ought not to cost much; and they are sofew, that those that could afford to have them at all, could affordto spend some trouble to get them fitting and beautiful: and allthose who care about art ought to take great trouble to do so, andto take care that there be no sham art amongst them, nothing that ithas degraded a man to make or sell. And I feel sure, that if allwho care about art were to take this pains, it would make a greatimpression upon the public.This simplicity you may make as costly as you please or can, on theother hand: you may hang your walls with tapestry instead ofwhitewash or paper; or you may cover them with mosaic, or have themfrescoed by a great painter: all this is not luxury, if it be donefor beauty's sake, and not for show: it does not break our goldenrule: HAVE NOTHING IN YOUR HOUSES WHICH YOU DO NOT KNOW TO BEUSEFUL OR BELIEVE TO BE BEAUTIFUL.All art starts from this simplicity; and the higher the art rises,the greater the simplicity. I have been speaking of the fittings ofa dwelling-house--a place in which we eat and drink, and passfamiliar hours; but when you come to places which people want tomake more specially beautiful because of the solemnity or dignity oftheir uses, they will be simpler still, and have little in them savethe bare walls made as beautiful as may be. St. Mark's at Venicehas very little furniture in it, much less than most Roman Catholicchurches: its lovely and stately mother St. Sophia ofConstantinople had less still, even when it was a Christian church:but we need not go either to Venice or Stamboul to take note ofthat: go into one of our own mighty Gothic naves (do any of youremember the first time you did so?) and note how the huge freespace satisfies and elevates you, even now when window and wall arestripped of ornament: then think of the meaning of simplicity, andabsence of encumbering gew-gaws.Now after all, for us who are learning art, it is not far to seekwhat is the surest way to further it; that which most breeds art isart; every piece of work that we do which is well done, is so muchhelp to the cause; every piece of pretence and half-heartedness isso much hurt to it. Most of you who take to the practice of art canfind out in no very long time whether you have any gifts for it ornot: if you have not, throw the thing up, or you will have awretched time of it yourselves, and will be damaging the cause bylaborious pretence: but if you have gifts of any kind, you arehappy indeed beyond most men; for your pleasure is always with you,nor can you be intemperate in the enjoyment of it, and as you useit, it does not lessen, but grows: if you are by chance weary of itat night, you get up in the morning eager for it; or if perhaps inthe morning it seems folly to you for a while, yet presently, whenyour hand has been moving a little in its wonted way, fresh hope hassprung up beneath it and you are happy again. While others aregetting through the day like plants thrust into the earth, whichcannot turn this way or that but as the wind blows them, you knowwhat you want, and your will is on the alert to find it, and you,whatever happens, whether it be joy or grief, are at least alive.Now when I spoke to you last year, after I had sat down I was halfafraid that I had on some points said too much, that I had spokentoo bitterly in my eagerness; that a rash word might havediscouraged some of you; I was very far from meaning that: what Iwanted to do, what I want to do to-night is to put definitely beforeyou a cause for which to strive.That cause is the Democracy of Art, the ennobling of daily andcommon work, which will one day put hope and pleasure in the placeof fear and pain, as the forces which move men to labour and keepthe world a-going.If I have enlisted any one in that cause, rash as my words may havebeen, or feeble as they may have been, they have done more good thanharm; nor do I believe that any words of mine can discourage any whohave joined that cause or are ready to do so: their way is tooclear before them for that, and every one of us can help the causewhether he be great or little.I know indeed that men, wearied by the pettiness of the details ofthe strife, their patience tried by hope deferred, will at whiles,excusably enough, turn back in their hearts to other days, when ifthe issues were not clearer, the means of trying them were simpler;when, so stirring were the times, one might even have atoned formany a blunder and backsliding by visibly dying for the cause. Tohave breasted the Spanish pikes at Leyden, to have drawn sword withOliver: that may well seem to us at times amidst the tangles of to-day a happy fate: for a man to be able to say, I have lived like afool, but now I will cast away fooling for an hour, and die like aman--there is something in that certainly: and yet 'tis clear thatfew men can be so lucky as to die for a cause, without having firstof all lived for it. And as this is the most that can be asked fromthe greatest man that follows a cause, so it is the least that canbe taken from the smallest.So to us who have a Cause at heart, our highest ambition and oursimplest duty are one and the same thing: for the most part weshall be too busy doing the work that lies ready to our hands, tolet impatience for visibly great progress vex us much; but surelysince we are servants of a Cause, hope must be ever with us, andsometimes perhaps it will so quicken our vision that it will outrunthe slow lapse of time, and show us the victorious days whenmillions of those who now sit in darkness will be enlightened by anART MADE BY THE PEOPLE AND FOR THE PEOPLE, A JOY TO THE MAKER ANDTHE USER.