The Lesser Arts

Hereafter I hope in another lecture to have the pleasure of layingbefore you an historical survey of the lesser, or as they are calledthe Decorative Arts, and I must confess it would have beenpleasanter to me to have begun my talk with you by entering at onceupon the subject of the history of this great industry; but, as Ihave something to say in a third lecture about various mattersconnected with the practice of Decoration among ourselves in thesedays, I feel that I should be in a false position before you, andone that might lead to confusion, or overmuch explanation, if I didnot let you know what I think on the nature and scope of these arts,on their condition at the present time, and their outlook in timesto come. In doing this it is like enough that I shall say thingswith which you will very much disagree; I must ask you thereforefrom the outset to believe that whatever I may blame or whatever Imay praise, I neither, when I think of what history has been, aminclined to lament the past, to despise the present, or despair ofthe future; that I believe all the change and stir about us is asign of the world's life, and that it will lead--by ways, indeed, ofwhich we have no guess--to the bettering of all mankind.Now as to the scope and nature of these Arts I have to say, thatthough when I come more into the details of my subject I shall notmeddle much with the great art of Architecture, and less still withthe great arts commonly called Sculpture and Painting, yet I cannotin my own mind quite sever them from those lesser so-calledDecorative Arts, which I have to speak about: it is only in lattertimes, and under the most intricate conditions of life, that theyhave fallen apart from one another; and I hold that, when they areso parted, it is ill for the Arts altogether: the lesser onesbecome trivial, mechanical, unintelligent, incapable of resistingthe changes pressed upon them by fashion or dishonesty; while thegreater, however they may be practised for a while by men of greatminds and wonder-working hands, unhelped by the lesser, unhelped byeach other, are sure to lose their dignity of popular arts, andbecome nothing but dull adjuncts to unmeaning pomp, or ingenioustoys for a few rich and idle men.However, I have not undertaken to talk to you of Architecture,Sculpture, and Painting, in the narrower sense of those words,since, most unhappily as I think, these master-arts, these arts morespecially of the intellect, are at the present day divorced fromdecoration in its narrower sense. Our subject is that great body ofart, by means of which men have at all times more or less striven tobeautify the familiar matters of everyday life: a wide subject, agreat industry; both a great part of the history of the world, and amost helpful instrument to the study of that history.A very great industry indeed, comprising the crafts of house-building, painting, joinery and carpentry, smiths' work, pottery andglass-making, weaving, and many others: a body of art mostimportant to the public in general, but still more so to ushandicraftsmen; since there is scarce anything that they use, andthat we fashion, but it has always been thought to be unfinishedtill it has had some touch or other of decoration about it. True itis that in many or most cases we have got so used to this ornament,that we look upon it as if it had grown of itself, and note it nomore than the mosses on the dry sticks with which we light ourfires. So much the worse! for there IS the decoration, or somepretence of it, and it has, or ought to have, a use and a meaning.For, and this is at the root of the whole matter, everything made byman's hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly;beautiful if it is in accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if itis discordant with Nature, and thwarts her; it cannot beindifferent: we, for our parts, are busy or sluggish, eager orunhappy, and our eyes are apt to get dulled to this eventfulness ofform in those things which we are always looking at. Now it is oneof the chief uses of decoration, the chief part of its alliance withnature, that it has to sharpen our dulled senses in this matter:for this end are those wonders of intricate patterns interwoven,those strange forms invented, which men have so long delighted in:forms and intricacies that do not necessarily imitate nature, but inwhich the hand of the craftsman is guided to work in the way thatshe does, till the web, the cup, or the knife, look as natural, nayas lovely, as the green field, the river bank, or the mountainflint.To give people pleasure in the things they must perforce USE, thatis one great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in thethings they must perforce MAKE, that is the other use of it.Does not our subject look important enough now? I say that withoutthese arts, our rest would be vacant and uninteresting, our labourmere endurance, mere wearing away of body and mind.As for that last use of these arts, the giving us pleasure in ourwork, I scarcely know how to speak strongly enough of it; and yet ifI did not know the value of repeating a truth again and again, Ishould have to excuse myself to you for saying any more about this,when I remember how a great man now living has spoken of it: I meanmy friend Professor John Ruskin: if you read the chapter in the 2ndvol. of his Stones of Venice entitled, 'On the Nature of Gothic, andthe Office of the Workman therein,' you will read at once the truestand the most eloquent words that can possibly be said on thesubject. What I have to say upon it can scarcely be more than anecho of his words, yet I repeat there is some use in reiterating atruth, lest it be forgotten; so I will say this much further: weall know what people have said about the curse of labour, and whatheavy and grievous nonsense are the more part of their wordsthereupon; whereas indeed the real curses of craftsmen have been thecurse of stupidity, and the curse of injustice from within and fromwithout: no, I cannot suppose there is anybody here who would thinkit either a good life, or an amusing one, to sit with one's handsbefore one doing nothing--to live like a gentleman, as fools callit.Nevertheless there IS dull work to be done, and a weary business itis setting men about such work, and seeing them through it, and Iwould rather do the work twice over with my own hands than have sucha job: but now only let the arts which we are talking of beautifyour labour, and be widely spread, intelligent, well understood bothby the maker and the user, let them grow in one word POPULAR, andthere will be pretty much an end of dull work and its wearingslavery; and no man will any longer have an excuse for talking aboutthe curse of labour, no man will any longer have an excuse forevading the blessing of labour. I believe there is nothing thatwill aid the world's progress so much as the attainment of this; Iprotest there is nothing in the world that I desire so much as this,wrapped up, as I am sure it is, with changes political and social,that in one way or another we all desire.Now if the objection be made, that these arts have been thehandmaids of luxury, of tyranny, and of superstition, I must needssay that it is true in a sense; they have been so used, as manyother excellent things have been. But it is also true that, amongsome nations, their most vigorous and freest times have been thevery blossoming times of art: while at the same time, I must allowthat these decorative arts have flourished among oppressed peoples,who have seemed to have no hope of freedom: yet I do not think thatwe shall be wrong in thinking that at such times, among suchpeoples, art, at least, was free; when it has not been, when it hasreally been gripped by superstition, or by luxury, it hasstraightway begun to sicken under that grip. Nor must you forgetthat when men say popes, kings, and emperors built such and suchbuildings, it is a mere way of speaking. You look in your history-books to see who built Westminster Abbey, who built St. Sophia atConstantinople, and they tell you Henry III., Justinian the Emperor.Did they? or, rather, men like you and me, handicraftsmen, who haveleft no names behind them, nothing but their work?Now as these arts call people's attention and interest to thematters of everyday life in the present, so also, and that I thinkis no little matter, they call our attention at every step to thathistory, of which, I said before, they are so great a part; for nonation, no state of society, however rude, has been wholly withoutthem: nay, there are peoples not a few, of whom we know scarceanything, save that they thought such and such forms beautiful. Sostrong is the bond between history and decoration, that in thepractice of the latter we cannot, if we would, wholly shake off theinfluence of past times over what we do at present. I do not thinkit is too much to say that no man, however original he may be, cansit down to-day and draw the ornament of a cloth, or the form of anordinary vessel or piece of furniture, that will be other than adevelopment or a degradation of forms used hundreds of years ago;and these, too, very often, forms that once had a serious meaning,though they are now become little more than a habit of the hand;forms that were once perhaps the mysterious symbols of worships andbeliefs now little remembered or wholly forgotten. Those who havediligently followed the delightful study of these arts are able asif through windows to look upon the life of the past:- the veryfirst beginnings of thought among nations whom we cannot even name;the terrible empires of the ancient East; the free vigour and gloryof Greece; the heavy weight, the firm grasp of Rome; the fall of hertemporal Empire which spread so wide about the world all that goodand evil which men can never forget, and never cease to feel; theclashing of East and West, South and North, about her rich andfruitful daughter Byzantium; the rise, the dissensions, and thewaning of Islam; the wanderings of Scandinavia; the Crusades; thefoundation of the States of modern Europe; the struggles of freethought with ancient dying system--with all these events and theirmeaning is the history of popular art interwoven; with all this, Isay, the careful student of decoration as an historical industrymust be familiar. When I think of this, and the usefulness of allthis knowledge, at a time when history has become so earnest a studyamongst us as to have given us, as it were, a new sense: at a timewhen we so long to know the reality of all that has happened, andare to be put off no longer with the dull records of the battles andintrigues of kings and scoundrels,--I say when I think of all this,I hardly know how to say that this interweaving of the DecorativeArts with the history of the past is of less importance than theirdealings with the life of the present: for should not thesememories also be a part of our daily life?And now let me recapitulate a little before I go further, before webegin to look into the condition of the arts at the present day.These arts, I have said, are part of a great system invented for theexpression of a man's delight in beauty: all peoples and times haveused them; they have been the joy of free nations, and the solace ofoppressed nations; religion has used and elevated them, has abusedand degraded them; they are connected with all history, and areclear teachers of it; and, best of all, they are the sweeteners ofhuman labour, both to the handicraftsman, whose life is spent inworking in them, and to people in general who are influenced by thesight of them at every turn of the day's work: they make our toilhappy, our rest fruitful.And now if all I have said seems to you but mere open-mouthed praiseof these arts, I must say that it is not for nothing that what Ihave hitherto put before you has taken that form.It is because I must now ask you this question: All these goodthings--will you have them? will you cast them from you?Are you surprised at my question--you, most of whom, like myself,are engaged in the actual practice of the arts that are, or ought tobe, popular?In explanation, I must somewhat repeat what I have already said.Time was when the mystery and wonder of handicrafts were wellacknowledged by the world, when imagination and fancy mingled withall things made by man; and in those days all handicraftsmen wereARTISTS, as we should now call them. But the thought of man becamemore intricate, more difficult to express; art grew a heavier thingto deal with, and its labour was more divided among great men,lesser men, and little men; till that art, which was once scarcemore than a rest of body and soul, as the hand cast the shuttle orswung the hammer, became to some men so serious labour, that theirworking lives have been one long tragedy of hope and fear, joy andtrouble. This was the growth of art: like all growth, it was goodand fruitful for awhile; like all fruitful growth, it grew intodecay; like all decay of what was once fruitful, it will grow intosomething new.Into decay; for as the arts sundered into the greater and thelesser, contempt on one side, carelessness on the other arose, bothbegotten of ignorance of that PHILOSOPHY of the Decorative Arts, ahint of which I have tried just now to put before you. The artistcame out from the handicraftsmen, and left them without hope ofelevation, while he himself was left without the help ofintelligent, industrious sympathy. Both have suffered; the artistno less than the workman. It is with art as it fares with a companyof soldiers before a redoubt, when the captain runs forward full ofhope and energy, but looks not behind him to see if his men arefollowing, and they hang back, not knowing why they are broughtthere to die. The captain's life is spent for nothing, and his menare sullen prisoners in the redoubt of Unhappiness and Brutality.I must in plain words say of the Decorative Arts, of all the arts,that it is not so much that we are inferior in them to all who havegone before us, but rather that they are in a state of anarchy anddisorganisation, which makes a sweeping change necessary andcertain.So that again I ask my question, All that good fruit which the artsshould bear, will you have it? will you cast it from you? Shallthat sweeping change that must come, be the change of loss or ofgain?We who believe in the continuous life of the world, surely we arebound to hope that the change will bring us gain and not loss, andto strive to bring that gain about.Yet how the world may answer my question, who can say? A man in hisshort life can see but a little way ahead, and even in minewonderful and unexpected things have come to pass. I must needs saythat therein lies my hope rather than in all I see going on roundabout us. Without disputing that if the imaginative arts perish,some new thing, at present unguessed of, MAY be put forward tosupply their loss in men's lives, I cannot feel happy in thatprospect, nor can I believe that mankind will endure such a loss forever: but in the meantime the present state of the arts and theirdealings with modern life and progress seem to me to point, inappearance at least, to this immediate future; that the world, whichhas for a long time busied itself about other matters than the arts,and has carelessly let them sink lower and lower, till many notuncultivated men, ignorant of what they once were, and hopeless ofwhat they might yet be, look upon them with mere contempt; that theworld, I say, thus busied and hurried, will one day wipe the slate,and be clean rid in her impatience of the whole matter with all itstangle and trouble.And then--what then?Even now amid the squalor of London it is hard to imagine what itwill be. Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, with the crowd oflesser arts that belong to them, these, together with Music andPoetry, will be dead and forgotten, will no longer excite or amusepeople in the least: for, once more, we must not deceive ourselves;the death of one art means the death of all; the only difference intheir fate will be that the luckiest will be eaten the last--theluckiest, or the unluckiest: in all that has to do with beauty theinvention and ingenuity of man will have come to a dead stop; andall the while Nature will go on with her eternal recurrence oflovely changes--spring, summer, autumn, and winter; sunshine, rain,and snow; storm and fair weather; dawn, noon, and sunset; day andnight--ever bearing witness against man that he has deliberatelychosen ugliness instead of beauty, and to live where he is strongestamidst squalor or blank emptiness.You see, sirs, we cannot quite imagine it; any more, perhaps, thanour forefathers of ancient London, living in the pretty, carefullywhitened houses, with the famous church and its huge spire risingabove them,--than they, passing about the fair gardens running downto the broad river, could have imagined a whole county or morecovered over with hideous hovels, big, middle-sized, and little,which should one day be called London.Sirs, I say that this dead blank of the arts that I more than dreadis difficult even now to imagine; yet I fear that I must say that ifit does not come about, it will be owing to some turn of eventswhich we cannot at present foresee: but I hold that if it doeshappen, it will only last for a time, that it will be but a burningup of the gathered weeds, so that the field may bear moreabundantly. I hold that men would wake up after a while, and lookround and find the dulness unbearable, and begin once moreinventing, imitating, and imagining, as in earlier days.That faith comforts me, and I can say calmly if the blank space musthappen, it must, and amidst its darkness the new seed must sprout.So it has been before: first comes birth, and hope scarcelyconscious of itself; then the flower and fruit of mastery, with hopemore than conscious enough, passing into insolence, as decay followsripeness; and then--the new birth again.Meantime it is the plain duty of all who look seriously on the artsto do their best to save the world from what at the best will be aloss, the result of ignorance and unwisdom; to prevent, in fact,that most discouraging of all changes, the supplying the place of anextinct brutality by a new one; nay, even if those who really carefor the arts are so weak and few that they can do nothing else, itmay be their business to keep alive some tradition, some memory ofthe past, so that the new life when it comes may not waste itselfmore than enough in fashioning wholly new forms for its new spirit.To what side then shall those turn for help, who really understandthe gain of a great art in the world, and the loss of peace and goodlife that must follow from the lack of it? I think that they mustbegin by acknowledging that the ancient art, the art of unconsciousintelligence, as one should call it, which began without a date, atleast so long ago as those strange and masterly scratchings onmammoth-bones and the like found but the other day in the drift--that this art of unconscious intelligence is all but dead; that whatlittle of it is left lingers among half-civilised nations, and isgrowing coarser, feebler, less intelligent year by year; nay, it ismostly at the mercy of some commercial accident, such as the arrivalof a few shiploads of European dye-stuffs or a few dozen orders fromEuropean merchants: this they must recognise, and must hope to seein time its place filled by a new art of conscious intelligence, thebirth of wiser, simpler, freer ways of life than the world leadsnow, than the world has ever led.I said, TO SEE this in time; I do not mean to say that our own eyeswill look upon it: it may be so far off, as indeed it seems tosome, that many would scarcely think it worth while thinking of:but there are some of us who cannot turn our faces to the wall, orsit deedless because our hope seems somewhat dim; and, indeed, Ithink that while the signs of the last decay of the old art with allthe evils that must follow in its train are only too obvious aboutus, so on the other hand there are not wanting signs of the new dawnbeyond that possible night of the arts, of which I have beforespoken; this sign chiefly, that there are some few at least who areheartily discontented with things as they are, and crave forsomething better, or at least some promise of it--this best ofsigns: for I suppose that if some half-dozen men at any timeearnestly set their hearts on something coming about which is notdiscordant with nature, it will come to pass one day or other;because it is not by accident that an idea comes into the heads of afew; rather they are pushed on, and forced to speak or act bysomething stirring in the heart of the world which would otherwisebe left without expression.By what means then shall those work who long for reform in the arts,and who shall they seek to kindle into eager desire for possessionof beauty, and better still, for the development of the faculty thatcreates beauty?People say to me often enough: If you want to make your art succeedand flourish, you must make it the fashion: a phrase which Iconfess annoys me; for they mean by it that I should spend one dayover my work to two days in trying to convince rich, and supposedinfluential people, that they care very much for what they really donot care in the least, so that it may happen according to theproverb: Bell-wether took the leap, and we all went over. Well,such advisers are right if they are content with the thing lastingbut a little while; say till you can make a little money--if youdon't get pinched by the door shutting too quickly: otherwise theyare wrong: the people they are thinking of have too many strings totheir bow, and can turn their backs too easily on a thing thatfails, for it to be safe work trusting to their whims: it is nottheir fault, they cannot help it, but they have no chance ofspending time enough over the arts to know anything practical ofthem, and they must of necessity be in the hands of those who spendtheir time in pushing fashion this way and that for their ownadvantage.Sirs, there is no help to be got out of these latter, or those wholet themselves be led by them: the only real help for thedecorative arts must come from those who work in them; nor must theybe led, they must lead.You whose hands make those things that should be works of art, youmust be all artists, and good artists too, before the public atlarge can take real interest in such things; and when you havebecome so, I promise you that you shall lead the fashion; fashionshall follow your hands obediently enough.That is the only way in which we can get a supply of intelligentpopular art: a few artists of the kind so-called now, what can theydo working in the teeth of difficulties thrown in their way by whatis called Commerce, but which should be called greed of money?working helplessly among the crowd of those who are ridiculouslycalled manufacturers, i.e. handicraftsmen, though the more part ofthem never did a stroke of hand-work in their lives, and are nothingbetter than capitalists and salesmen. What can these grains of sanddo, I say, amidst the enormous mass of work turned out every yearwhich professes in some way to be decorative art, but the decorationof which no one heeds except the salesmen who have to do with it,and are hard put to it to supply the cravings of the public forsomething new, not for something pretty?The remedy, I repeat, is plain if it can be applied; thehandicraftsman, left behind by the artist when the arts sundered,must come up with him, must work side by side with him: apart fromthe difference between a great master and a scholar, apart from thedifferences of the natural bent of men's minds, which would make oneman an imitative, and another an architectural or decorative artist,there should be no difference between those employed on strictlyornamental work; and the body of artists dealing with this shouldquicken with their art all makers of things into artists also, inproportion to the necessities and uses of the things they wouldmake.I know what stupendous difficulties, social and economical, thereare in the way of this; yet I think that they seem to be greaterthan they are: and of one thing I am sure, that no real livingdecorative art is possible if this is impossible.It is not impossible, on the contrary it is certain to come about,if you are at heart desirous to quicken the arts; if the world will,for the sake of beauty and decency, sacrifice some of the things itis so busy over (many of which I think are not very worthy of itstrouble), art will begin to grow again; as for those difficultiesabove mentioned, some of them I know will in any case melt awaybefore the steady change of the relative conditions of men; therest, reason and resolute attention to the laws of nature, which arealso the laws of art, will dispose of little by little: once more,the way will not be far to seek, if the will be with us.Yet, granted the will, and though the way lies ready to us, we mustnot be discouraged if the journey seem barren enough at first, nay,not even if things seem to grow worse for a while: for it isnatural enough that the very evil which has forced on the beginningof reform should look uglier, while on the one hand life and wisdomare building up the new, and on the other folly and deadness arehugging the old to them.In this, as in all other matters, lapse of time will be neededbefore things seem to straighten, and the courage and patience thatdoes not despise small things lying ready to be done; and care andwatchfulness, lest we begin to build the wall ere the footings arewell in; and always through all things much humility that is noteasily cast down by failure, that seeks to be taught, and is readyto learn.For your teachers, they must be Nature and History: as for thefirst, that you must learn of it is so obvious that I need not dwellupon that now: hereafter, when I have to speak more of matters ofdetail, I may have to speak of the manner in which you must learn ofNature. As to the second, I do not think that any man but one ofthe highest genius, could do anything in these days without muchstudy of ancient art, and even he would be much hindered if helacked it. If you think that this contradicts what I said about thedeath of that ancient art, and the necessity I implied for an artthat should be characteristic of the present day, I can only saythat, in these times of plenteous knowledge and meagre performance,if we do not study the ancient work directly and learn to understandit, we shall find ourselves influenced by the feeble work all roundus, and shall be copying the better work through the copyists andWITHOUT understanding it, which will by no means bring aboutintelligent art. Let us therefore study it wisely, be taught by it,kindled by it; all the while determining not to imitate or repeatit; to have either no art at all, or an art which we have made ourown.Yet I am almost brought to a stand-still when bidding you to studynature and the history of art, by remembering that this is London,and what it is like: how can I ask working-men passing up and downthese hideous streets day by day to care about beauty? If it werepolitics, we must care about that; or science, you could wrapyourselves up in the study of facts, no doubt, without much caringwhat goes on about you--but beauty! do you not see what terribledifficulties beset art, owing to a long neglect of art--and neglectof reason, too, in this matter? It is such a heavy question by whateffort, by what dead-lift, you can thrust this difficulty from you,that I must perforce set it aside for the present, and must at leasthope that the study of history and its monuments will help yousomewhat herein. If you can really fill your minds with memories ofgreat works of art, and great times of art, you will, I think, beable to a certain extent to look through the aforesaid uglysurroundings, and will be moved to discontent of what is carelessand brutal now, and will, I hope, at last be so much discontentedwith what is bad, that you will determine to bear no longer thatshort-sighted, reckless brutality of squalor that so disgraces ourintricate civilisation.Well, at any rate, London is good for this, that it is well off formuseums,--which I heartily wish were to be got at seven days in theweek instead of six, or at least on the only day on which anordinarily busy man, one of the taxpayers who support them, can as arule see them quietly,--and certainly any of us who may have anynatural turn for art must get more help from frequenting them thanone can well say. It is true, however, that people need somepreliminary instruction before they can get all the good possible tobe got from the prodigious treasures of art possessed by the countryin that form: there also one sees things in a piecemeal way: norcan I deny that there is something melancholy about a museum, such atale of violence, destruction, and carelessness, as its treasuredscraps tell us.But moreover you may sometimes have an opportunity of studyingancient art in a narrower but a more intimate, a more kindly form,the monuments of our own land. Sometimes only, since we live in themiddle of this world of brick and mortar, and there is little elseleft us amidst it, except the ghost of the great church atWestminster, ruined as its exterior is by the stupidity of therestoring architect, and insulted as its glorious interior is by thepompous undertakers' lies, by the vainglory and ignorance of thelast two centuries and a half--little besides that and the matchlessHall near it: but when we can get beyond that smoky world, there,out in the country we may still see the works of our fathers yetalive amidst the very nature they were wrought into, and of whichthey are so completely a part: for there indeed if anywhere, in theEnglish country, in the days when people cared about such things,was there a full sympathy between the works of man, and the landthey were made for:- the land is a little land; too much shut upwithin the narrow seas, as it seems, to have much space for swellinginto hugeness: there are no great wastes overwhelming in theirdreariness, no great solitudes of forests, no terrible untroddenmountain-walls: all is measured, mingled, varied, gliding easilyone thing into another: little rivers, little plains; swelling,speedily-changing uplands, all beset with handsome orderly trees;little hills, little mountains, netted over with the walls of sheep-walks: all is little; yet not foolish and blank, but seriousrather, and abundant of meaning for such as choose to seek it: itis neither prison nor palace, but a decent home.All which I neither praise nor blame, but say that so it is: somepeople praise this homeliness overmuch, as if the land were the veryaxle-tree of the world; so do not I, nor any unblinded by pride inthemselves and all that belongs to them: others there are who scornit and the tameness of it: not I any the more: though it wouldindeed be hard if there were nothing else in the world, no wonders,no terrors, no unspeakable beauties: yet when we think what a smallpart of the world's history, past, present, and to come, is thisland we live in, and how much smaller still in the history of thearts, and yet how our forefathers clung to it, and with what careand pains they adorned it, this unromantic, uneventful-looking landof England, surely by this too our hearts may be touched, and ourhope quickened.For as was the land, such was the art of it while folk yet troubledthemselves about such things; it strove little to impress peopleeither by pomp or ingenuity: not unseldom it fell into commonplace,rarely it rose into majesty; yet was it never oppressive, never aslave's nightmare nor an insolent boast: and at its best it had aninventiveness, an individuality that grander styles have neveroverpassed: its best too, and that was in its very heart, was givenas freely to the yeoman's house, and the humble village church, asto the lord's palace or the mighty cathedral: never coarse, thoughoften rude enough, sweet, natural and unaffected, an art of peasantsrather than of merchant-princes or courtiers, it must be a hardheart, I think, that does not love it: whether a man has been bornamong it like ourselves, or has come wonderingly on its simplicityfrom all the grandeur over-seas. A peasant art, I say, and it clungfast to the life of the people, and still lived among the cottagersand yeomen in many parts of the country while the big houses werebeing built 'French and fine': still lived also in many a quaintpattern of loom and printing-block, and embroiderer's needle, whileover-seas stupid pomp had extinguished all nature and freedom, andart was become, in France especially, the mere expression of thatsuccessful and exultant rascality, which in the flesh no long timeafterwards went down into the pit for ever.Such was the English art, whose history is in a sense at your doors,grown scarce indeed, and growing scarcer year by year, not onlythrough greedy destruction, of which there is certainly less thanthere used to be, but also through the attacks of another foe,called nowadays 'restoration.'I must not make a long story about this, but also I cannot quitepass it over, since I have pressed on you the study of these ancientmonuments. Thus the matter stands: these old buildings have beenaltered and added to century after century, often beautifully,always historically; their very value, a great part of it, lay inthat: they have suffered almost always from neglect also, oftenfrom violence (that latter a piece of history often far fromuninteresting), but ordinary obvious mending would almost alwayshave kept them standing, pieces of nature and of history.But of late years a great uprising of ecclesiastical zeal,coinciding with a great increase of study, and consequently ofknowledge of mediaeval architecture, has driven people into spendingtheir money on these buildings, not merely with the purpose ofrepairing them, of keeping them safe, clean, and wind and water-tight, but also of 'restoring' them to some ideal state ofperfection; sweeping away if possible all signs of what has befallenthem at least since the Reformation, and often since dates muchearlier: this has sometimes been done with much disregard of artand entirely from ecclesiastical zeal, but oftener it has been wellmeant enough as regards art: yet you will not have listened to whatI have said to-night if you do not see that from my point of viewthis restoration must be as impossible to bring about, as theattempt at it is destructive to the buildings so dealt with: Iscarcely like to think what a great part of them have been madenearly useless to students of art and history: unless you knew agreat deal about architecture you perhaps would scarce understandwhat terrible damage has been done by that dangerous 'littleknowledge' in this matter: but at least it is easy to beunderstood, that to deal recklessly with valuable (and national)monuments which, when once gone, can never be replaced by anysplendour of modern art, is doing a very sorry service to the State.You will see by all that I have said on this study of ancient artthat I mean by education herein something much wider than theteaching of a definite art in schools of design, and that it must besomething that we must do more or less for ourselves: I mean by ita systematic concentration of our thoughts on the matter, a studyingof it in all ways, careful and laborious practice of it, and adetermination to do nothing but what is known to be good inworkmanship and design.Of course, however, both as an instrument of that study we have beenspeaking of, as well as of the practice of the arts, allhandicraftsmen should be taught to draw very carefully; as indeedall people should be taught drawing who are not physically incapableof learning it: but the art of drawing so taught would not be theart of designing, but only a means towards THIS end, GENERALCAPABILITY IN DEALING WITH THE ARTS,For I wish specially to impress this upon you, that DESIGNING cannotbe taught at all in a school: continued practice will help a manwho is naturally a designer, continual notice of nature and of art:no doubt those who have some faculty for designing are stillnumerous, and they want from a school certain technical teaching,just as they want tools: in these days also, when the best school,the school of successful practice going on around you, is at such alow ebb, they do undoubtedly want instruction in the history of thearts: these two things schools of design can give: but the royalroad of a set of rules deduced from a sham science of design, thatis itself not a science but another set of rules, will leadnowhere;--or, let us rather say, to beginning again.As to the kind of drawing that should be taught to men engaged inornamental work, there is only ONE BEST way of teaching drawing, andthat is teaching the scholar to draw the human figure: both becausethe lines of a man's body are much more subtle than anything else,and because you can more surely be found out and set right if you gowrong. I do think that such teaching as this, given to all peoplewho care for it, would help the revival of the arts very much: thehabit of discriminating between right and wrong, the sense ofpleasure in drawing a good line, would really, I think, be educationin the due sense of the word for all such people as had the germs ofinvention in them; yet as aforesaid, in this age of the world itwould be mere affectation to pretend to shut one's eyes to the artof past ages: that also we must study. If other circumstances,social and economical, do not stand in our way, that is to say, ifthe world is not too busy to allow us to have Decorative Arts atall, these two are the DIRECT means by which we shall get them; thatis, general cultivation of the powers of the mind, generalcultivation of the powers of the eye and hand.Perhaps that seems to you very commonplace advice and a veryroundabout road; nevertheless 'tis a certain one, if by any road youdesire to come to the new art, which is my subject to-night: if youdo not, and if those germs of invention, which, as I said just now,are no doubt still common enough among men, are left neglected andundeveloped, the laws of Nature will assert themselves in this as inother matters, and the faculty of design itself will gradually fadefrom the race of man. Sirs, shall we approach nearer to perfectionby casting away so large a part of that intelligence which makes usMEN?And now before I make an end, I want to call your attention tocertain things, that, owing to our neglect of the arts for otherbusiness, bar that good road to us and are such an hindrance, that,till they are dealt with, it is hard even to make a beginning of ourendeavour. And if my talk should seem to grow too serious for oursubject, as indeed I think it cannot do, I beg you to remember whatI said earlier, of how the arts all hang together. Now there is oneart of which the old architect of Edward the Third's time wasthinking--he who founded New College at Oxford, I mean--when he tookthis for his motto: 'Manners maketh man:' he meant by manners theart of morals, the art of living worthily, and like a man. I mustneeds claim this art also as dealing with my subject.There is a great deal of sham work in the world, hurtful to thebuyer, more hurtful to the seller, if he only knew it, most hurtfulto the maker: how good a foundation it would be towards gettinggood Decorative Art, that is ornamental workmanship, if we craftsmenwere to resolve to turn out nothing but excellent workmanship in allthings, instead of having, as we too often have now, a very lowaverage standard of work, which we often fall below.I do not blame either one class or another in this matter, I blameall: to set aside our own class of handicraftsmen, of whoseshortcomings you and I know so much that we need talk no more aboutit, I know that the public in general are set on having thingscheap, being so ignorant that they do not know when they get themnasty also; so ignorant that they neither know nor care whether theygive a man his due: I know that the manufacturers (so called) areso set on carrying out competition to its utmost, competition ofcheapness, not of excellence, that they meet the bargain-huntershalf way, and cheerfully furnish them with nasty wares at the cheaprate they are asked for, by means of what can be called by noprettier name than fraud. England has of late been too much busiedwith the counting-house and not enough with the workshop: with theresult that the counting-house at the present moment is ratherbarren of orders.I say all classes are to blame in this matter, but also I say thatthe remedy lies with the handicraftsmen, who are not ignorant ofthese things like the public, and who have no call to be greedy andisolated like the manufacturers or middlemen; the duty and honour ofeducating the public lies with them, and they have in them the seedsof order and organisation which make that duty the easier.When will they see to this and help to make men of us all byinsisting on this most weighty piece of manners; so that we mayadorn life with the pleasure of cheerfully BUYING goods at their dueprice; with the pleasure of SELLING goods that we could be proud ofboth for fair price and fair workmanship: with the pleasure ofworking soundly and without haste at MAKING goods that we could beproud of?--much the greatest pleasure of the three is that last,such a pleasure as, I think, the world has none like it.You must not say that this piece of manners lies out of my subject:it is essentially a part of it and most important: for I am biddingyou learn to be artists, if art is not to come to an end amongst us:and what is an artist but a workman who is determined that, whateverelse happens, his work shall be excellent? or, to put it in anotherway: the decoration of workmanship, what is it but the expressionof man's pleasure in successful labour? But what pleasure can therebe in BAD work, in unsuccessful labour; why should we decorate THAT?and how can we bear to be always unsuccessful in our labour?As greed of unfair gain, wanting to be paid for what we have notearned, cumbers our path with this tangle of bad work, of sham work,so the heaped-up money which this greed has brought us (for greedwill have its way, like all other strong passions), this money, Isay, gathered into heaps little and big, with all the falsedistinction which so unhappily it yet commands amongst us, hasraised up against the arts a barrier of the love of luxury and show,which is of all obvious hindrances the worst to overpass: thehighest and most cultivated classes are not free from the vulgarityof it, the lower are not free from its pretence. I beg you toremember both as a remedy against this, and as explaining exactlywhat I mean, that nothing can be a work of art which is not useful;that is to say, which does not minister to the body when well undercommand of the mind, or which does not amuse, soothe, or elevate themind in a healthy state. What tons upon tons of unutterable rubbishpretending to be works of art in some degree would this maxim clearout of our London houses, if it were understood and acted upon! Tomy mind it is only here and there (out of the kitchen) that you canfind in a well-to-do house things that are of any use at all: as arule all the decoration (so called) that has got there is there forthe sake of show, not because anybody likes it. I repeat, thisstupidity goes through all classes of society: the silk curtains inmy Lord's drawing-room are no more a matter of art to him than thepowder in his footman's hair; the kitchen in a country farmhouse ismost commonly a pleasant and homelike place, the parlour dreary anduseless.Simplicity of life, begetting simplicity of taste, that is, a lovefor sweet and lofty things, is of all matters most necessary for thebirth of the new and better art we crave for; simplicity everywhere,in the palace as well as in the cottage.Still more is this necessary, cleanliness and decency everywhere, inthe cottage as well as in the palace: the lack of that is a seriouspiece of MANNERS for us to correct: that lack and all theinequalities of life, and the heaped-up thoughtlessness and disorderof so many centuries that cause it: and as yet it is only a veryfew men who have begun to think about a remedy for it in its widestrange: even in its narrower aspect, in the defacements of our bigtowns by all that commerce brings with it, who heeds it? who triesto control their squalor and hideousness? there is nothing butthoughtlessness and recklessness in the matter: the helplessness ofpeople who don't live long enough to do a thing themselves, and havenot manliness and foresight enough to begin the work, and pass it onto those that shall come after them.Is money to be gathered? cut down the pleasant trees among thehouses, pull down ancient and venerable buildings for the money thata few square yards of London dirt will fetch; blacken rivers, hidethe sun and poison the air with smoke and worse, and it's nobody'sbusiness to see to it or mend it: that is all that modern commerce,the counting-house forgetful of the workshop, will do for us herein.And Science--we have loved her well, and followed her diligently,what will she do? I fear she is so much in the pay of the counting-house, the counting-house and the drill-sergeant, that she is toobusy, and will for the present do nothing. Yet there are matterswhich I should have thought easy for her; say for example teachingManchester how to consume its own smoke, or Leeds how to get rid ofits superfluous black dye without turning it into the river, whichwould be as much worth her attention as the production of theheaviest of heavy black silks, or the biggest of useless guns.Anyhow, however it be done, unless people care about carrying ontheir business without making the world hideous, how can they careabout Art? I know it will cost much both of time and money tobetter these things even a little; but I do not see how these can bebetter spent than in making life cheerful and honourable for othersand for ourselves; and the gain of good life to the country at largethat would result from men seriously setting about the bettering ofthe decency of our big towns would be priceless, even if nothingspecially good befell the arts in consequence: I do not know thatit would; but I should begin to think matters hopeful if men turnedtheir attention to such things, and I repeat that, unless they doso, we can scarcely even begin with any hope our endeavours for thebettering of the arts.Unless something or other is done to give all men some pleasure forthe eyes and rest for the mind in the aspect of their own and theirneighbours' houses, until the contrast is less disgraceful betweenthe fields where beasts live and the streets where men live, Isuppose that the practice of the arts must be mainly kept in thehands of a few highly cultivated men, who can go often to beautifulplaces, whose education enables them, in the contemplation of thepast glories of the world, to shut out from their view the everydaysqualors that the most of men move in. Sirs, I believe that art hassuch sympathy with cheerful freedom, open-heartedness and reality,so much she sickens under selfishness and luxury, that she will notlive thus isolated and exclusive. I will go further than this andsay that on such terms I do not wish her to live. I protest that itwould be a shame to an honest artist to enjoy what he had huddled upto himself of such art, as it would be for a rich man to sit and eatdainty food amongst starving soldiers in a beleaguered fort.I do not want art for a few, any more than education for a few, orfreedom for a few.No, rather than art should live this poor thin life among a fewexceptional men, despising those beneath them for an ignorance forwhich they themselves are responsible, for a brutality that theywill not struggle with,--rather than this, I would that the worldshould indeed sweep away all art for awhile, as I said before Ithought it possible she might do; rather than the wheat should rotin the miser's granary, I would that the earth had it, that it mightyet have a chance to quicken in the dark.I have a sort of faith, though, that this clearing way of all artwill not happen, that men will get wiser, as well as more learned;that many of the intricacies of life, on which we now prideourselves more than enough, partly because they are new, partlybecause they have come with the gain of better things, will be castaside as having played their part, and being useful no longer. Ihope that we shall have leisure from war,--war commercial, as wellas war of the bullet and the bayonet; leisure from the knowledgethat darkens counsel; leisure above all from the greed of money, andthe craving for that overwhelming distinction that money now brings:I believe that as we have even now partly achieved LIBERTY, so weshall one day achieve EQUALITY, which, and which only, meansFRATERNITY, and so have leisure from poverty and all its griping,sordid cares.Then having leisure from all these things, amidst renewed simplicityof life we shall have leisure to think about our work, that faithfuldaily companion, which no man any longer will venture to call theCurse of labour: for surely then we shall be happy in it, each inhis place, no man grudging at another; no one bidden to be any man'sSERVANT, every one scorning to be any man's MASTER: men will thenassuredly be happy in their work, and that happiness will assuredlybring forth decorative, noble, POPULAR art.That art will make our streets as beautiful as the woods, aselevating as the mountain-sides: it will be a pleasure and a rest,and not a weight upon the spirits to come from the open country intoa town; every man's house will be fair and decent, soothing to hismind and helpful to his work: all the works of man that we liveamongst and handle will be in harmony with nature, will bereasonable and beautiful: yet all will be simple and inspiriting,not childish nor enervating; for as nothing of beauty and splendourthat man's mind and hand may compass shall be wanting from ourpublic buildings, so in no private dwelling will there be any signsof waste, pomp, or insolence, and every man will have his share ofthe BEST.It is a dream, you may say, of what has never been and never willbe; true, it has never been, and therefore, since the world is aliveand moving yet, my hope is the greater that it one day will be:true, it is a dream; but dreams have before now come about of thingsso good and necessary to us, that we scarcely think of them morethan of the daylight, though once people had to live without them,without even the hope of them.Anyhow, dream as it is, I pray you to pardon my setting it beforeyou, for it lies at the bottom of all my work in the DecorativeArts, nor will it ever be out of my thoughts: and I am here withyou to-night to ask you to help me in realising this dream, thisHOPE.