"A JOY FOR EVER"; (AND ITS PRICE IN THE MARKET): BEING THE SUBSTANCE (WITH ADDITIONS) OF TWO LECTURES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART, _Delivered at Manchester, July 10th and 13th, 1857. _

 BY

 JOHN RUSKIN, LL. D. , HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD. 

 "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. "--KEATS. 

 SIXTEENTH THOUSAND. LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD. 1904. [_All rights reserved_] Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. At the Ballantyne Press

PREFACE

TO THE RE-ISSUE OF 1880. 

The title of this book, --or, more accurately, of its subject;--for noauthor was ever less likely than I have lately become, to hope forperennial pleasure to his readers from what has cost himself the mostpains, --will be, perhaps, recognised by some as the last clause of theline chosen from Keats by the good folks of Manchester, to be written inletters of gold on the cornice, or Holy rood, of the great Exhibitionwhich inaugurated the career of so many, --since organized, by bothforeign governments and our own, to encourage the production of works ofart, which the producing nations, so far from intending to be their "joyfor ever, " only hope to sell as soon as possible. Yet the motto waschosen with uncomprehended felicity: for there never was, nor can be, any essential beauty possessed by a work of art, which is not based onthe conception of its honoured permanence, and local influence, as apart of appointed and precious furniture, either in the cathedral, thehouse, or the joyful thoroughfare, of nations which enter their gateswith thanksgiving, and their courts with praise. 

"Their" courts--or "His" courts;--in the mind of such races, theexpressions are synonymous: and the habits of life which recognise thedelightfulness, confess also the sacredness, of homes nested round theseat of a worship unshaken by insolent theory: themselves founded on anabiding affection for the past, and care for the future; and approachedby paths open only to the activities of honesty, and traversed only bythe footsteps of peace. 

The exposition of these truths, to which I have given the chief energyof my life, will be found in the following pages first undertakensystematically and in logical sequence; and what I have since written onthe political influence of the Arts has been little more than theexpansion of these first lectures, in the reprint of which not asentence is omitted or changed. 

The supplementary papers added contain, in briefest form, the aphorismsrespecting principles of art-teaching of which the attention I gave tothis subject during the continuance of my Professorship at Oxfordconfirms me in the earnest and contented re-assertion. 

JOHN RUSKIN, BRANTWOOD, _April 29th, 1880. _

PREFACE

TO THE 1857 EDITION. 

The greater part of the following treatise remains in the exact form inwhich it was read at Manchester; but the more familiar passages of it, which were trusted to extempore delivery, have been written with greaterexplicitness and fulness than I could give them in speaking; and aconsiderable number of notes are added, to explain the points whichcould not be sufficiently considered in the time I had at my disposal inthe lecture room. 

Some apology may be thought due to the reader, for an endeavour toengage his attention on a subject of which no profound study seemscompatible with the work in which I am usually employed. But profoundstudy is not, in this case, necessary either to writer or readers, while accurate study, up to a certain point, is necessary for us all. Political economy means, in plain English, nothing more than "citizen'seconomy"; and its first principles ought, therefore, to be understood byall who mean to take the responsibility of citizens, as those ofhousehold economy by all who take the responsibility of householders. Nor are its first principles in the least obscure: they are, many ofthem, disagreeable in their practical requirements, and people ingeneral pretend that they cannot understand, because they are unwillingto obey them: or rather, by habitual disobedience, destroy theircapacity of understanding them. But there is not one of the really greatprinciples of the science which is either obscure or disputable, --whichmight not be taught to a youth as soon as he can be trusted with anannual allowance, or to a young lady as soon as she is of age to betaken into counsel by the housekeeper. 

I might, with more appearance of justice, be blamed for thinking itnecessary to enforce what everybody is supposed to know. But this faultwill hardly be found with me, while the commercial events recorded dailyin our journals, and still more the explanations attempted to be givenof them, show that a large number of our so-called merchants are asignorant of the nature of money as they are reckless, unjust, andunfortunate in its employment. 

The statements of economical principles given in the text, though I knowthat most, if not all, of them are accepted by existing authorities onthe science, are not supported by references, because I have never readany author on political economy, except Adam Smith, twenty years ago. Whenever I have taken up any modern book upon this subject, I haveusually found it encumbered with inquiries into accidental or minorcommercial results, for the pursuit of which an ordinary reader couldhave no leisure, and by the complication of which, it seemed to me, theauthors themselves had been not unfrequently prevented from seeing tothe root of the business. 

Finally, if the reader should feel induced to blame me for too sanguinea statement of future possibilities in political practice, let himconsider how absurd it would have appeared in the days of Edward I. Ifthe present state of social economy had been then predicted asnecessary, or even described as possible. And I believe the advance fromthe days of Edward I. To our own, great as it is confessedly, consists, not so much in what we have actually accomplished, as in what we are nowenabled to conceive. 

CONTENTS. 

LECTURE I. PAGETHE DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION OF ART 1

_A Lecture delivered at Manchester, July 10th, 1857. _

LECTURE II. 

THE ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ART 70

_Continuation of the previous Lecture; deliveredJuly 13th, 1857. _

ADDENDA. 

NOTE 1. --"FATHERLY AUTHORITY" 151 " 2. --"RIGHT TO PUBLIC SUPPORT" 159 " 3. --"TRIAL SCHOOLS" 169 " 4. --"PUBLIC FAVOUR" 180 " 5. --"INVENTION OF NEW WANTS" 183 " 6. --"ECONOMY OF LITERATURE" 187 " 7. --"PILOTS OF THE STATE" 189 " 8. --"SILK AND PURPLE" 193

SUPPLEMENTARY ADDITIONAL PAPERS. 

EDUCATION IN ART 213

ART SCHOOL NOTES 229

SOCIAL POLICY 240

"A JOY FOR EVER. "

LECTURE I. 

THE DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION OF ART. 

_A Lecture delivered at Manchester, July 10, 1857. _

1. Among the various characteristics of the age in which we live, ascompared with other ages of this not yet _very_ experienced world, oneof the most notable appears to me to be the just and wholesome contemptin which we hold poverty. I repeat, the _just_ and _wholesome_ contempt;though I see that some of my hearers look surprised at the expression. Iassure them, I use it in sincerity; and I should not have ventured toask you to listen to me this evening, unless I had entertained aprofound respect for wealth--true wealth, that is to say; for, ofcourse, we ought to respect neither wealth nor anything else that isfalse of its kind: and the distinction between real and false wealth isone of the points on which I shall have a few words presently to say toyou. But true wealth I hold, as I said, in great honour; and sympathize, for the most part, with that extraordinary feeling of the present agewhich publicly pays this honour to riches. 

2. I cannot, however, help noticing how extraordinary it is, and howthis epoch of ours differs from all bygone epochs in having nophilosophical nor religious worshippers of the ragged godship ofpoverty. In the classical ages, not only were there people whovoluntarily lived in tubs, and who used gravely to maintain thesuperiority of tub-life to town-life, but the Greeks and Latins seem tohave looked on these eccentric, and I do not scruple to say, absurdpeople, with as much respect as we do upon large capitalists and landedproprietors; so that really, in those days, no one could be described aspurse proud, but only as empty-purse proud. And no less distinct thanthe honour which those curious Greek people pay to their conceited poor, is the disrespectful manner in which they speak of the rich; so thatone cannot listen long either to them, or to the Roman writers whoimitated them, without finding oneself entangled in all sorts ofplausible absurdities; hard upon being convinced of the uselessness ofcollecting that heavy yellow substance which we call gold, and ledgenerally to doubt all the most established maxims of political economy. 

3. Nor are matters much better in the Middle Ages. For the Greeks andRomans contented themselves with mocking at rich people, andconstructing merry dialogues between Charon and Diogenes or Menippus, inwhich the ferryman and the cynic rejoiced together as they saw kings andrich men coming down to the shore of Acheron, in lamenting andlamentable crowds, casting their crowns into the dark waters, andsearching, sometimes in vain, for the last coin out of all theirtreasures that could ever be of use to them. 

4. But these Pagan views of the matter were indulgent, compared withthose which were held in the Middle Ages, when wealth seems to have beenlooked upon by the best men not only as contemptible, but as criminal. The purse round the neck is, then, one of the principal signs ofcondemnation in the pictured Inferno; and the Spirit of Poverty isreverenced with subjection of heart, and faithfulness of affection, likethat of a loyal knight for his lady, or a loyal subject for his queen. And truly, it requires some boldness to quit ourselves of thesefeelings, and to confess their partiality or their error, which, nevertheless, we are certainly bound to do. For wealth is simply one ofthe greatest powers which can be entrusted to human hands: a power, notindeed to be envied, because it seldom makes us happy; but still less tobe abdicated or despised; while, in these days, and in this country, ithas become a power all the more notable, in that the possessions of arich man are not represented, as they used to be, by wedges of gold orcoffers of jewels, but by masses of men variously employed, over whosebodies and minds the wealth, according to its direction, exercisesharmful or helpful influence, and becomes, in that alternative, Mammoneither of Unrighteousness or of Righteousness. 

5. Now, it seemed to me that since, in the name you have given to thisgreat gathering of British pictures, you recognize them asTreasures--that is, I suppose, as part and parcel of the real wealth ofthe country--you might not be uninterested in tracing certain commercialquestions connected with this particular form of wealth. Most personsexpress themselves as surprised at its quantity; not having known beforeto what an extent good art had been accumulated in England: and it will, therefore, I should think, be held a worthy subject of consideration, what are the political interests involved in such accumulations, whatkind of labour they represent, and how this labour may in general beapplied and economized, so as to produce the richest results. 

6. Now, you must have patience with me, if in approaching the specialtyof this subject, I dwell a little on certain points of general politicalscience already known or established: for though thus, as I believe, established, some which I shall have occasion to rest arguments on arenot yet by any means universally accepted; and therefore, though I willnot lose time in any detailed defence of them, it is necessary that Ishould distinctly tell you in what form I receive, and wish to arguefrom them; and this the more, because there may perhaps be a part of myaudience who have not interested themselves in political economy, as itbears on ordinary fields of labour, but may yet wish to hear in what wayits principles can be applied to Art. I shall, therefore, take leave totrespass on your patience with a few elementary statements in theoutset, and with the expression of some general principles, here andthere, in the course of our particular inquiry. 

7. To begin, then, with one of these necessary truisms: all economy, whether of states, households, or individuals, may be defined to be theart of managing labour. The world is so regulated by the laws ofProvidence, that a man's labour, well applied, is always amplysufficient to provide him during his life with all things needful tohim, and not only with those, but with many pleasant objects of luxury;and yet farther, to procure him large intervals of healthful rest andserviceable leisure. And a nation's labour, well applied, is, in likemanner, amply sufficient to provide its whole population with good foodand comfortable habitation; and not with those only, but with goodeducation besides, and objects of luxury, art treasures, such as theseyou have around you now. But by those same laws of Nature andProvidence, if the labour of the nation or of the individual bemisapplied, and much more if it be insufficient, --if the nation or manbe indolent and unwise, --suffering and want result, exactly inproportion to the indolence and improvidence--to the refusal of labour, or to the misapplication of it. Wherever you see want, or misery, ordegradation, in this world about you, there, be sure, either industryhas been wanting, or industry has been in error. It is not accident, itis not Heaven-commanded calamity, it is not the original and inevitableevil of man's nature, which fill your streets with lamentation, and yourgraves with prey. It is only that, when there should have beenprovidence, there has been waste; when there should have been labour, there has been lasciviousness; and wilfulness, when there should havebeen subordination. [1]

[Note 1: Proverbs xiii. 23: "Much food is in the tillage of thepoor, but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment. "]

8. Now, we have warped the word "economy" in our English language into ameaning which it has no business whatever to bear. In our use of it, itconstantly signifies merely sparing or saving; economy of money meanssaving money--economy of time, sparing time, and so on. But that is awholly barbarous use of the word--barbarous in a double sense, for it isnot English, and it is bad Greek; barbarous in a treble sense, for it isnot English, it is bad Greek, and it is worse sense. Economy no moremeans saving money than it means spending money. It means, theadministration of a house; its stewardship; spending or saving, that is, whether money or time, or anything else, to the best possible advantage. In the simplest and clearest definition of it, economy, whether publicor private, means the wise management of labour; and it means thismainly in three senses: namely, first, _applying_ your labourrationally; secondly, _preserving_ its produce carefully; lastly, _distributing_ its produce seasonably. 

9. I say first, applying your labour rationally; that is, so as toobtain the most precious things you can, and the most lasting things, byit: not growing oats in land where you can grow wheat, nor putting fineembroidery on a stuff that will not wear. Secondly, preserving itsproduce carefully; that is to say, laying up your wheat wisely instorehouses for the time of famine, and keeping your embroiderywatchfully from the moth: and lastly, distributing its produceseasonably; that is to say, being able to carry your corn at once to theplace where the people are hungry, and your embroideries to the placeswhere they are gay; so fulfilling in all ways the Wise Man'sdescription, whether of the queenly housewife or queenly nation: "Sheriseth while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and aportion to her maidens. She maketh herself coverings of tapestry, herclothing is silk and purple. Strength and honour are in her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come. "

10. Now, you will observe that in this description of the perfecteconomist, or mistress of a household, there is a studied expression ofthe balanced division of her care between the two great objects ofutility and splendour: in her right hand, food and flax, for life andclothing; in her left hand, the purple and the needlework, for honourand for beauty. All perfect housewifery or national economy is known bythese two divisions; wherever either is wanting, the economy isimperfect. If the motive of pomp prevails, and the care of the nationaleconomist is directed only to the accumulation of gold, and of pictures, and of silk and marble, you know at once that the time must soon comewhen all these treasures shall be scattered and blasted in nationalruin. If, on the contrary, the element of utility prevails, and thenation disdains to occupy itself in any wise with the arts of beauty ordelight, not only a certain quantity of its energy calculated forexercise in those arts alone must be entirely wasted, which is badeconomy, but also the passions connected with the utilities of propertybecome morbidly strong, and a mean lust of accumulation merely for thesake of accumulation, or even of labour merely for the sake of labour, will banish at last the serenity and the morality of life, ascompletely, and perhaps more ignobly, than even the lavishness of pride, and the likeness of pleasure. And similarly, and much more visibly, inprivate and household economy, you may judge always of its perfectnessby its fair balance between the use and the pleasure of its possessions. You will see the wise cottager's garden trimly divided between itswell-set vegetables, and its fragrant flowers; you will see the goodhousewife taking pride in her pretty table-cloth, and her glitteringshelves, no less than in her well-dressed dish, and her full storeroom;the care in her countenance will alternate with gaiety, and though youwill reverence her in her seriousness, you will know her best by hersmile. 

11. Now, as you will have anticipated, I am going to address you, onthis and our succeeding evening, chiefly on the subject of that economywhich relates rather to the garden than the farm-yard. I shall ask youto consider with me the kind of laws by which we shall best distributethe beds of our national garden, and raise in it the sweetest successionof trees pleasant to the sight, and (in no forbidden sense) to bedesired to make us wise. But, before proceeding to open this specialtyof our subject, let me pause for a few moments to plead with you for theacceptance of that principle of government or authority which must be atthe root of all economy, whether for use or for pleasure. I said, a fewminutes ago, that a nation's labour, well applied, was amply sufficientto provide its whole population with good food, comfortable clothing, and pleasant luxury. But the good, instant, and constant application iseverything. We must not, when our strong hands are thrown out of work, look wildly about for want of something to do with them. If ever we feelthat want, it is a sign that all our household is out of order. Fancy afarmer's wife, to whom one or two of her servants should come at twelveo'clock at noon, crying that they had got nothing to do; that they didnot know what to do next: and fancy still farther, the said farmer'swife looking hopelessly about her rooms and yard, they being all thewhile considerably in disorder, not knowing where to set the sparehandmaidens to work, and at last complaining bitterly that she had beenobliged to give them their dinner for nothing. That's the type of thekind of political economy we practise too often in England. Would younot at once assert of such a mistress that she knew nothing of herduties? and would you not be certain, if the household were rightlymanaged, the mistress would be only too glad at any moment to have thehelp of any number of spare hands; that she would know in an instantwhat to set them to;--in an instant what part of to-morrow's work mightbe most serviceably forwarded, what part of next month's work mostwisely provided for, or what new task of some profitable kindundertaken; and when the evening came, and she dismissed her servants totheir recreation or their rest, or gathered them to the reading roundthe work-table, under the eaves in the sunset, would you not be sure tofind that none of them had been overtasked by her, just because none hadbeen left idle; that everything had been accomplished because all hadbeen employed; that the kindness of the mistress had aided her presenceof mind, and the slight labour had been entrusted to the weak, and theformidable to the strong; and that as none had been dishonoured byinactivity, so none had been broken by toil?

12. Now, the precise counterpart of such a household would be seen in anation in which political economy was rightly understood. You complainof the difficulty of finding work for your men. Depend upon it, the realdifficulty rather is to find men for your work. The serious question foryou is not how many you have to feed, but how much you have to do; itis our inactivity, not our hunger, that ruins us: let us never fear thatour servants should have a good appetite--our wealth is in theirstrength, not in their starvation. Look around this island of yours, andsee what you have to do in it. The sea roars against your harbourlesscliffs--you have to build the breakwater, and dig the port of refuge;the unclean pestilence ravins in your streets--you have to bring thefull stream from the hills, and to send the free winds through thethoroughfare; the famine blanches your lips and eats away yourflesh--you have to dig the moor and dry the marsh, to bid the morassgive forth instead of engulfing, and to wring the honey and oil out ofthe rock. These things, and thousands such, we have to do, and shallhave to do constantly, on this great farm of ours; for do not supposethat it is anything else than that. Precisely the same laws of economywhich apply to the cultivation of a farm or an estate, apply to thecultivation of a province or of an island. Whatever rebuke you wouldaddress to the improvident master of an ill-managed patrimony, precisely that rebuke we should address to ourselves, so far as weleave our population in idleness and our country in disorder. What wouldyou say to the lord of an estate who complained to you of his povertyand disabilities, and when you pointed out to him that his land was halfof it overrun with weeds, and that his fences were all in ruin, and thathis cattle-sheds were roofless, and his labourers lying under the hedgesfaint for want of food, he answered to you that it would ruin him toweed his land or to roof his sheds--that those were too costlyoperations for him to undertake, and that he knew not how to feed hislabourers nor pay them? Would you not instantly answer, that instead ofruining him to weed his fields, it would save him; that his inactivitywas his destruction, and that to set his labourers to work was to feedthem? Now, you may add acre to acre, and estate to estate, as far as youlike, but you will never reach a compass of ground which shall escapefrom the authority of these simple laws. The principles which are rightin the administration of a few fields, are right also in theadministration of a great country from horizon to horizon: idlenessdoes not cease to be ruinous because it is extensive, nor labour to beproductive because it is universal. 

13. Nay, but you reply, there is one vast difference between thenation's economy and the private man's: the farmer has full authorityover his labourers; he can direct them to do what is needed to be done, whether they like it or not; and he can turn them away if they refuse towork, or impede others in their working, or are disobedient, orquarrelsome. There _is_ this great difference; it is precisely thisdifference on which I wish to fix your attention, for it is preciselythis difference which you have to do away with. We know the necessity ofauthority in farm, or in fleet, or in army; but we commonly refuse toadmit it in the body of the nation. Let us consider this point a little. 

14. In the various awkward and unfortunate efforts which the French havemade at the development of a social system, they have at least statedone true principle, that of fraternity or brotherhood. Do not bealarmed; they got all wrong in their experiments, because they quiteforgot that this fact of fraternity implied another fact quite asimportant--that of paternity, or fatherhood. That is to say, if theywere to regard the nation as one family, the condition of unity in thatfamily consisted no less in their having a head, or a father, than intheir being faithful and affectionate members, or brothers. But we mustnot forget this, for we have long confessed it with our lips, though werefuse to confess it in our lives. For half an hour every Sunday weexpect a man in a black gown, supposed to be telling us truth, toaddress us as brethren, though we should be shocked at the notion of anybrotherhood existing among us out of church. And we can hardly read afew sentences on any political subject without running a chance ofcrossing the phrase "paternal government, " though we should be utterlyhorror-struck at the idea of governments claiming anything like afather's authority over us. Now, I believe those two formal phrases arein both instances perfectly binding and accurate, and that the image ofthe farm and its servants which I have hitherto used, as expressing awholesome national organization, fails only of doing so, not because itis too domestic, but because it is not domestic enough; because the realtype of a well-organized nation must be presented, not by a farmcultivated by servants who wrought for hire, and might be turned away ifthey refused to labour, but by a farm in which the master was a father, and in which all the servants were sons; which implied, therefore, inall its regulations, not merely the order of expediency, but the bondsof affection and responsibilities of relationship; and in which all actsand services were not only to be sweetened by brotherly concord, but tobe enforced by fatherly authority. [2]

[Note 2: See note 1st, in Addenda. ]

15. Observe, I do not mean in the least that we ought to place such anauthority in the hands of any one person, or of any class or body ofpersons. But I do mean to say that as an individual who conducts himselfwisely must make laws for himself which at some time or other may appearirksome or injurious, but which, precisely at the time they appear mostirksome, it is most necessary he should obey, so a nation which means toconduct itself wisely, must establish authority over itself, vestedeither in kings, councils, or laws, which it must resolve to obey, evenat times when the law or authority appears irksome to the body of thepeople, or injurious to certain masses of it. And this kind of nationallaw has hitherto been only judicial; contented, that is, with anendeavour to prevent and punish violence and crime: but, as we advancein our social knowledge, we shall endeavour to make our governmentpaternal as well as judicial; that is, to establish such laws andauthorities as may at once direct us in our occupations, protect usagainst our follies, and visit us in our distresses: a government whichshall repress dishonesty, as now it punishes theft; which shall show howthe discipline of the masses may be brought to aid the toils of peace, as discipline of the masses has hitherto knit the sinews of battle; agovernment which shall have its soldiers of the ploughshare as well asits soldiers of the sword, and which shall distribute more proudly itsgolden crosses of industry--golden as the glow of the harvest, than nowit grants its bronze crosses of honour--bronzed with the crimson ofblood. 

16. I have not, of course, time to insist on the nature or details ofgovernment of this kind; only I wish to plead for your several andfuture consideration of this one truth, that the notion of Disciplineand Interference lies at the very root of all human progress or power;that the "Let-alone" principle is, in all things which man has to dowith, the principle of death; that it is ruin to him, certain and total, if he lets his land alone--if he lets his fellow-men alone--if he letshis own soul alone. That his whole life, on the contrary, must, if it ishealthy life, be continually one of ploughing and pruning, rebuking andhelping, governing and punishing; and that therefore it is only in theconcession of some great principle of restraint and interference innational action that he can ever hope to find the secret of protectionagainst national degradation. I believe that the masses have a right toclaim education from their government; but only so far as theyacknowledge the duty of yielding obedience to their government. Ibelieve they have a right to claim employment from their governors; butonly so far as they yield to the governor the direction and disciplineof their labour; and it is only so far as they grant to the men whomthey may set over them the father's authority to check thechildishnesses of national fancy, and direct the waywardnesses ofnational energy, that they have a right to ask that none of theirdistresses should be unrelieved, none of their weaknesses unwatched; andthat no grief, nor nakedness, nor peril, should exist for them, againstwhich the father's hand was not outstretched, or the father's shielduplifted. [3]

[Note 3: Compare Wordsworth's Essay on the Poor Law Amendment Bill. I quote one important passage: "But, if it be not safe to touch theabstract question of man's right in a social state to help himself evenin the last extremity, may we not still contend for the duty of aChristian government, standing _in loco parentis_ towards all itssubjects, to make such effectual provision that no one shall be indanger of perishing either through the neglect or harshness of itslegislation? Or, waiving this, is it not indisputable that the claim ofthe State to the allegiance, involves the protection of the subject?And, as all rights in one party impose a correlative duty upon another, it follows that the right of the State to require the services of itsmembers, even to the jeopardizing of their lives in the common defence, establishes a right in the people (not to be gainsaid by utilitariansand economists) to public support when, from any cause, they may beunable to support themselves. "--(See note 2nd, in Addenda. )]

17. Now, I have pressed this upon you at more length than is needful orproportioned to our present purposes of inquiry, because I would not forthe first time speak to you on this subject of political economy withoutclearly stating what I believe to be its first grand principle. But itsbearing on the matter in hand is chiefly to prevent you from at once tooviolently dissenting from me when what I may state to you as advisableeconomy in art appears to imply too much restraint or interference withthe freedom of the patron or artist. We are a little apt, though on thewhole a prudent nation, to act too immediately on our impulses, even inmatters merely commercial; much more in those involving continualappeals to our fancies. How far, therefore, the proposed systems orrestraints may be advisable, it is for you to judge; only I pray you notto be offended with them merely because they _are_ systems andrestraints. 

18. Do you at all recollect that interesting passage of Carlyle, inwhich he compares, in this country and at this day, the understood andcommercial value of man and horse; and in which he wonders that thehorse, with its inferior brains and its awkward hoofiness, instead ofhandiness, should be always worth so many tens or scores of pounds inthe market, while the man, so far from always commanding his price inthe market, would often be thought to confer a service on the communityby simply killing himself out of their way? Well, Carlyle does notanswer his own question, because he supposes we shall at once see theanswer. The value of the horse consists simply in the fact of your beingable to put a bridle on him. The value of the man consists precisely inthe same thing. If you can bridle him, or, which is better, if he canbridle himself, he will be a valuable creature directly. Otherwise, in acommercial point of view, his value is either nothing, or accidentalonly. Only, of course, the proper bridle of man is not a leathern one:what kind of texture it is rightly made of, we find from that command, "Be ye not as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose mouths must be held in with bit and bridle. " You are not to bewithout the reins, indeed; but they are to be of another kind: "I willguide thee with mine Eye. " So the bridle of man is to be the Eye of God;and if he rejects that guidance, then the next best for him is thehorse's and the mule's, which have no understanding; and if he rejectsthat, and takes the bit fairly in his teeth, then there is nothing leftfor him than the blood that comes out of the city, up to thehorse-bridles. 

19. Quitting, however, at last these general and serious laws ofgovernment--or rather bringing them down to our own business in hand--wehave to consider three points of discipline in that particular branch ofhuman labour which is concerned, not with procuring of food, but theexpression of emotion; we have to consider respecting art: first, how toapply our labour to it; then, how to accumulate or preserve the resultsof labour; and then, how to distribute them. But since in art the labourwhich we have to employ is the labour of a particular class of men--menwho have special genius for the business--we have not only to considerhow to apply the labour, but, first of all, how to produce the labourer;and thus the question in this particular case becomes fourfold: first, how to get your man of genius; then, how to employ your man of genius;then, how to accumulate and preserve his work in the greatest quantity;and, lastly, how to distribute his work to the best national advantage. Let us take up these questions in succession. 

20. I. Discovery. --How are we to get our men of genius: that is to say, by what means may we produce among us, at any given time, the greatestquantity of effective art-intellect? A wide question, you say, involvingan account of all the best means of art education. Yes, but I do notmean to go into the consideration of those; I want only to state the fewprinciples which lie at the foundation of the matter. Of these, thefirst is that you have always to find your artist, not to make him; youcan't manufacture him, any more than you can manufacture gold. You canfind him, and refine him: you dig him out as he lies nugget-fashion inthe mountain-stream; you bring him home; and you make him into currentcoin, or household plate, but not one grain of him can you originallyproduce. A certain quantity of art-intellect is born annually in everynation, greater or less according to the nature and cultivation of thenation, or race of men; but a perfectly fixed quantity annually, notincreasable by one grain. You may lose it, or you may gather it; you maylet it lie loose in the ravine, and buried in the sands, or you may makekings' thrones of it, and overlay temple gates with it, as you choose:but the best you can do with it is always merely sifting, melting, hammering, purifying--never creating. 

21. And there is another thing notable about this artistical gold; notonly is it limited in quantity, but in use. You need not make thrones orgolden gates with it unless you like, but assuredly you can't doanything else with it. You can't make knives of it, nor armour, norrailroads. The gold won't cut you, and it won't carry you: put it to amechanical use, and you destroy it at once. It is quite true that in thegreatest artists, their proper artistical faculty is united with everyother; and you may make use of the other faculties, and let theartistical one lie dormant. For aught I know, there may be two or threeLeonardo da Vincis employed at this moment in your harbours andrailroads: but you are not employing their Leonardesque or goldenfaculty there, --you are only oppressing and destroying it. And theartistical gift in average men is not joined with others: your bornpainter, if you don't make a painter of him, won't be a first-ratemerchant, or lawyer; at all events, whatever he turns out, his ownspecial gift is unemployed by you; and in no wise helps him in thatother business. So here you have a certain quantity of a particular sortof intelligence, produced for you annually by providential laws, whichyou can only make use of by setting it to its own proper work, and whichany attempt to use otherwise involves the dead loss of so much humanenergy. 

22. Well then, supposing we wish to employ it, how is it to be bestdiscovered and refined? It is easily enough discovered. To wish toemploy it is to discover it. All that you need is, a school of trial[4]in every important town, in which those idle farmers' lads whom theirmasters never can keep out of mischief, and those stupid tailors''prentices who are always stitching the sleeves in wrong way upwards, may have a try at this other trade; only this school of trial must notbe entirely regulated by formal laws of art education, but mustultimately be the workshop of a good master painter, who will try thelads with one kind of art and another, till he finds out what they arefit for. 

[Note 4: See note 3rd, in Addenda. ]

23. Next, after your trial school, you want your easy and secureemployment, which is the matter of chief importance. For, even on thepresent system, the boys who have really intense art capacity, generallymake painters of themselves; but then, the best half of their earlyenergy is lost in the battle of life. Before a good painter can getemployment, his mind has always been embittered, and his geniusdistorted. A common mind usually stoops, in plastic chill, to whateveris asked of it, and scrapes or daubs its way complacently into publicfavour. [5] But your great men quarrel with you, and you revengeyourselves by starving them for the first half of their lives. Preciselyin the degree in which any painter possesses original genius, is atpresent the increase of moral certainty that during his early years hewill have a hard battle to fight; and that just at the time when hisconceptions ought to be full and happy, his temper gentle, and hishopes enthusiastic--just at that most critical period, his heart is fullof anxieties and household cares; he is chilled by disappointments, andvexed by injustice; he becomes obstinate in his errors, no less than inhis virtues, and the arrows of his aims are blunted, as the reeds of histrust are broken. 

[Note 5: See note 4th, in Addenda. ]

24. What we mainly want, therefore, is a means of sufficient andunagitated employment: not holding out great prizes for which youngpainters are to scramble; but furnishing all with adequate support, andopportunity to display such power as they possess without rejection ormortification. I need not say that the best field of labour of this kindwould be presented by the constant progress of public works involvingvarious decoration; and we will presently examine what kind of publicworks may thus, advantageously for the nation, be in constant progress. But a more important matter even than this of steady employment, is thekind of criticism with which you, the public, receive the works of theyoung men submitted to you. You may do much harm by indiscreet praiseand by indiscreet blame; but remember the chief harm is always done byblame. It stands to reason that a young man's work cannot be perfect. It_must_ be more or less ignorant; it must be more or less feeble; it islikely that it may be more or less experimental, and if experimental, here and there mistaken. If, therefore, you allow yourself to launch outinto sudden barking at the first faults you see, the probability is thatyou are abusing the youth for some defect naturally and inevitablybelonging to that stage of his progress; and that you might just asrationally find fault with a child for not being as prudent as a privycouncillor, or with a kitten for not being as grave as a cat. 

25. But there is one fault which you may be quite sure is unnecessary, and therefore a real and blamable fault: that is haste, involvingnegligence. Whenever you see that a young man's work is either bold orslovenly, then you may attack it firmly; sure of being right. If hiswork is bold, it is insolent; repress his insolence: if it is slovenly, it is indolent; spur his indolence. So long as he works in that dashingor impetuous way, the best hope for him is in your contempt: and it isonly by the fact of his seeming not to seek your approbation that youmay conjecture he deserves it. 

26. But if he does deserve it, be sure that you give it him, else younot only run a chance of driving him from the right road by want ofencouragement, but you deprive yourselves of the happiest privilege youwill ever have of rewarding his labour. For it is only the young who canreceive much reward from men's praise: the old, when they are great, gettoo far beyond and above you to care what you think of them. You mayurge them then with sympathy, and surround them then with acclamation;but they will doubt your pleasure, and despise your praise. You mighthave cheered them in their race through the asphodel meadows of theiryouth; you might have brought the proud, bright scarlet into theirfaces, if you had but cried once to them "Well done, " as they dashed upto the first goal of their early ambition. But now, their pleasure is inmemory, and their ambition is in heaven. They can be kind to you, butyou nevermore can be kind to them. You may be fed with the fruit andfulness of their old age, but you were as the nipping blight to them intheir blossoming, and your praise is only as the warm winds of autumnto the dying branches. 

27. There is one thought still, the saddest of all, bearing on thiswithholding of early help. It is possible, in some noble natures, thatthe warmth and the affections of childhood may remain unchilled, thoughunanswered; and that the old man's heart may still be capable ofgladness, when the long-withheld sympathy is given at last. But in thesenoble natures it nearly always happens that the chief motive of earthlyambition has not been to give delight to themselves, but to theirparents. Every noble youth looks back, as to the chiefest joy which thisworld's honour ever gave him, to the moment when first he saw hisfather's eyes flash with pride, and his mother turn away her head, lesthe should take her tears for tears of sorrow. Even the lover's joy, whensome worthiness of his is acknowledged before his mistress, is not sogreat as that, for it is not so pure--the desire to exalt himself in hereyes mixes with that of giving her delight; but he does not need toexalt himself in his parents' eyes: it is with the pure hope of givingthem pleasure that he comes to tell them what he has done, or what hasbeen said of him; and therefore he has a purer pleasure of his own. Andthis purest and best of rewards you keep from him if you can: you feedhim in his tender youth with ashes and dishonour; and then you come tohim, obsequious, but too late, with your sharp laurel crown, the dew alldried from off its leaves; and you thrust it into his languid hand, andhe looks at you wistfully. What shall he do with it? What can he do, butgo and lay it on his mother's grave?

28. Thus, then, you see that you have to provide for your young men:first, the searching or discovering school; then the calm employment;then the justice of praise: one thing more you have to do for them inpreparing them for full service--namely, to make, in the noble sense ofthe word, gentlemen of them; that is to say, to take care that theirminds receive such training, that in all they paint they shall see andfeel the noblest things. I am sorry to say, that of all parts of anartist's education, this is the most neglected among us; and that evenwhere the natural taste and feeling of the youth have been pure andtrue, where there was the right stuff in him to make a gentleman of, youmay too frequently discern some jarring rents in his mind, and elementsof degradation in his treatment of subject, owing to want of gentletraining, and of the liberal influence of literature. This is quitevisible in our greatest artists, even in men like Turner andGainsborough; while in the common grade of our second-rate painters theevil attains a pitch which is far too sadly manifest to need my dwellingupon it. Now, no branch of art economy is more important than that ofmaking the intellect at your disposal pure as well as powerful; so thatit may always gather for you the sweetest and fairest things. The samequantity of labour from the same man's hand, will, according as you havetrained him, produce a lovely and useful work, or a base and hurtfulone; and depend upon it, whatever value it may possess, by reason of thepainter's skill, its chief and final value, to any nation, depends uponits being able to exalt and refine, as well as to please; and that thepicture which most truly deserves the name of an art-treasure is thatwhich has been painted by a good man. 

29. You cannot but see how far this would lead, if I were to enlargeupon it. I must take it up as a separate subject some other time: onlynoticing at present that no money could be better spent by a nation thanin providing a liberal and disciplined education for its painters, asthey advance into the critical period of their youth; and that, also, alarge part of their power during life depends upon the kind of subjectswhich you, the public, ask them for, and therefore the kind of thoughtswith which you require them to be habitually familiar. I shall have moreto say on this head when we come to consider what employment they shouldhave in public buildings. 

30. There are many other points of nearly as much importance as these, to be explained with reference to the development of genius; but Ishould have to ask you to come and hear six lectures instead of two if Iwere to go into their detail. For instance, I have not spoken of the wayin which you ought to look for those artificers in various manualtrades, who, without possessing the order of genius which you woulddesire to devote to higher purposes, yet possess wit, and humour, andsense of colour, and fancy for form--all commercially valuable asquantities of intellect, and all more or less expressible in the lowerarts of iron-work, pottery, decorative sculpture, and such like. Butthese details, interesting as they are, I must commend to your ownconsideration, or leave for some future inquiry. I want just now only toset the bearings of the entire subject broadly before you, with enoughof detailed illustration to make it intelligible; and therefore I mustquit the first head of it here, and pass to the second--namely, how bestto employ the genius we discover. A certain quantity of able hands andheads being placed at our disposal, what shall we most advisably setthem upon?

31. II. APPLICATION. --There are three main points the economist has toattend to in this. 

First, To set his men to various work. 

Secondly, To easy work. 

Thirdly, To lasting work. 

I shall briefly touch on the first two, for I want to arrest yourattention on the last. 

32. I say first to various work. Supposing you have two men of equalpower as landscape painters--and both of them have an hour at yourdisposal. You would not set them both to paint the same piece oflandscape. You would, of course, rather have two subjects than arepetition of one. 

Well, supposing them sculptors, will not the same rule hold? Younaturally conclude at once that it will; but you will have hard work toconvince your modern architects of that. They will put twenty men towork, to carve twenty capitals; and all shall be the same. If I couldshow you the architects' yards in England just now, all open at once, perhaps you might see a thousand clever men, all employed in carving thesame design. Of the degradation and deathfulness to the art-intellect ofthe country involved in such a habit, I have more or less been led tospeak before now; but I have not hitherto marked its definite tendencyto increase the price of _work_, as such. When men are employedcontinually in carving the same ornaments, they get into a monotonousand methodical habit of labour--precisely correspondent to that in whichthey would break stones, or paint house-walls. Of course, what they doso constantly, they do easily; and if you excite them temporarily by anincrease of wages, you may get much work done by them in a little time. But, unless so stimulated, men condemned to a monotonous exertion, work--and always, by the laws of human nature, _must_ work--only at atranquil rate, not producing by any means a maximum result in a giventime. But if you allow them to vary their designs, and thus interesttheir heads and hearts in what they are doing, you will find them becomeeager, first, to get their ideas expressed, and then to finish theexpression of them; and the moral energy thus brought to bear on thematter quickens, and therefore cheapens, the production in a mostimportant degree. Sir Thomas Deane, the architect of the new Museum atOxford, told me, as I passed through Oxford on my way here, that hefound that, owing to this cause alone, capitals of various design couldbe executed cheaper than capitals of similar design (the amount of handlabour in each being the same) by about 30 per cent. 

33. Well, that is the first way, then, in which you will employ yourintellect well; and the simple observance of this plain rule ofpolitical economy will effect a noble revolution in your architecture, such as you cannot at present so much as conceive. Then the second wayin which we are to guard against waste is by setting our men to theeasiest, and therefore the quickest, work which will answer the purpose. Marble, for instance, lasts quite as long as granite, and is much softerto work; therefore, when you get hold of a good sculptor, give himmarble to carve--not granite. 

34. That, you say, is obvious enough. Yes; but it is not so obvious howmuch of your workmen's time you waste annually in making them cut glass, after it has got hard, when you ought to make them mould it while it issoft. It is not so obvious how much expense you waste in cuttingdiamonds and rubies, which are the hardest things you can find, intoshapes that mean nothing, when the same men might be cutting sandstoneand freestone into shapes that meant something. It is not so obvious howmuch of the artists' time in Italy you waste, by forcing them to makewretched little pictures for you out of crumbs of stone glued togetherat enormous cost, when the tenth of the time would make good and noblepictures for you out of water-colour. 

35. I could go on giving you almost numberless instances of this greatcommercial mistake; but I should only weary and confuse you. I thereforecommend also this head of our subject to your own meditation, andproceed to the last I named--the last I shall task your patience withto-night. You know we are now considering how to apply our genius; andwe were to do it as economists, in three ways:--

To _various_ work;

To _easy_ work;

To _lasting_ work. 

36. This lasting of the work, then, is our final question. 

Many of you may perhaps remember that Michael Angelo was once commandedby Pietro di Medici to mould a statue out of snow, and that he obeyedthe command. [6] I am glad, and we have all reason to be glad, that sucha fancy ever came into the mind of the unworthy prince, and for thiscause: that Pietro di Medici then gave, at the period of one great epochof consummate power in the arts, the perfect, accurate, and intensestpossible type of the greatest error which nations and princes cancommit, respecting the power of genius entrusted to their guidance. Youhad there, observe, the strongest genius in the most perfect obedience;capable of iron independence, yet wholly submissive to the patron'swill; at once the most highly accomplished and the most original, capable of doing as much as man could do, in any direction that mancould ask. And its governor, and guide, and patron sets it to build astatue in snow--to put itself into the service of annihilation--to makea cloud of itself, and pass away from the earth. 

[Note 6: See the noble passage on this tradition in "Casa GuidiWindows. "]

37. Now this, so precisely and completely done by Pietro di Medici, iswhat we are all doing, exactly in the degree in which we direct thegenius under our patronage to work in more or less perishable materials. So far as we induce painters to work in fading colours, or architects tobuild with imperfect structure, or in any other way consult onlyimmediate ease and cheapness in the production of what we want, to theexclusion of provident thought as to its permanence and serviceablenessin after ages; so far we are forcing our Michael Angelos to carve insnow. The first duty of the economist in art is, to see that nointellect shall thus glitter merely in the manner of hoar-frost; butthat it shall be well vitrified, like a painted window, and shall be setso between shafts of stone and bands of iron, that it shall bear thesunshine upon it, and send the sunshine through it, from generation togeneration. 

38. I can conceive, however, some political economist to interrupt mehere, and say, "If you make your art wear too well, you will soon havetoo much of it; you will throw your artists quite out of work. Betterallow for a little wholesome evanescence--beneficent destruction: leteach age provide art for itself, or we shall soon have so many goodpictures that we shall not know what to do with them. "

Remember, my dear hearers, who are thus thinking, that politicaleconomy, like every other subject, cannot be dealt with effectively ifwe try to solve two questions at a time instead of one. It is onequestion, how to get plenty of a thing; and another, whether plenty ofit will be good for us. Consider these two matters separately; neverconfuse yourself by interweaving one with the other. It is one question, how to treat your fields so as to get a good harvest; another, whetheryou wish to have a good harvest, or would rather like to keep up theprice of corn. It is one question, how to graft your trees so as to growmost apples; and quite another, whether having such a heap of apples inthe storeroom will not make them all rot. 

39. Now, therefore, that we are talking only about grafting and growing, pray do not vex yourselves with thinking what you are to do with thepippins. It may be desirable for us to have much art, or little--we willexamine that by-and-bye; but just now, let us keep to the simpleconsideration how to get plenty of good art if we want it. Perhaps itmight be just as well that a man of moderate income should be able topossess a good picture, as that any work of real merit should cost500_l. _ or 1, 000_l. _; at all events, it is certainly one of the branchesof political economy to ascertain how, if we like, we can get things inquantities--plenty of corn, plenty of wine, plenty of gold, or plenty ofpictures. 

It has just been said, that the first great secret is to produce workthat will last. Now, the conditions of work lasting are twofold: it mustnot only be in materials that will last, but it must be itself of aquality that will last--it must be good enough to bear the test of time. If it is not good, we shall tire of it quickly, and throw it aside--weshall have no pleasure in the accumulation of it. So that the firstquestion of a good art-economist respecting any work is, Will it loseits flavour by keeping? It may be very amusing now, and look much like awork of genius; but what will be its value a hundred years hence?

You cannot always ascertain this. You may get what you fancy to be workof the best quality, and yet find to your astonishment that it won'tkeep. But of one thing you may be sure, that art which is producedhastily will also perish hastily; and that what is cheapest to you now, is likely to be dearest in the end. 

40. I am sorry to say, the great tendency of this age is to expend itsgenius in perishable art of this kind, as if it were a triumph to burnits thoughts away in bonfires. There is a vast quantity of intellect andof labour consumed annually in our cheap illustrated publications; youtriumph in them; and you think it so grand a thing to get so manywoodcuts for a penny. Why, woodcuts, penny and all, are as much lost toyou as if you had invested your money in gossamer. More lost, for thegossamer could only tickle your face, and glitter in your eyes; it couldnot catch your feet and trip you up: but the bad art can, and does; foryou can't like good woodcuts as long as you look at the bad ones. If wewere at this moment to come across a Titian woodcut, or a Dürer woodcut, we should not like it--those of us at least who are accustomed to thecheap work of the day. We don't like, and can't like, _that_ long; butwhen we are tired of one bad cheap thing, we throw it aside and buyanother bad cheap thing; and so keep looking at bad things all ourlives. Now, the very men who do all that quick bad work for us arecapable of doing perfect work. Only, perfect work can't be hurried, andtherefore it can't be cheap beyond a certain point. But suppose you paytwelve times as much as you do now, and you have one woodcut for ashilling instead of twelve; and the one woodcut for a shilling is asgood as art can be, so that you will never tire of looking at it; and isstruck on good paper with good ink, so that you will never wear it outby handling it; while you are sick of your penny-each cuts by the end ofthe week, and have torn them mostly in half too. Isn't your shilling'sworth the best bargain?

41. It is not, however, only in getting prints or woodcuts of the bestkind that you will practise economy. There is a certain quality about anoriginal drawing which you cannot get in a woodcut, and the best part ofthe genius of many men is only expressible in original work, whetherwith pen or ink--pencil or colours. This is not always the case; but ingeneral, the best men are those who can only express themselves on paperor canvas; and you will therefore, in the long run, get most for yourmoney by buying original work; proceeding on the principle already laiddown, that the best is likely to be the cheapest in the end. Of course, original work cannot be produced under a certain cost. If you want aman to make you a drawing which takes him six days, you must, at allevents, keep him for six days in bread and water, fire and lodging; thatis the lowest price at which he can do it for you, but that is not verydear: and the best bargain which can possibly be made honestly inart--the very ideal of a cheap purchase to the purchaser--is theoriginal work of a great man fed for as many days as are necessary onbread and water, or perhaps we may say with as many onions as will keephim in good humour. That is the way by which you will always get mostfor your money; no mechanical multiplication or ingenuity of commercialarrangements will ever get you a better penny's worth of art than that. 

42. Without, however, pushing our calculations quite to thisprison-discipline extreme, we may lay it down as a rule in art-economy, that original work is, on the whole, cheapest and best worth having. Butprecisely in proportion to the value of it as a production, becomes theimportance of having it executed in permanent materials. And here wecome to note the second main error of the day, that we not only ask ourworkmen for bad art, but we make them put it into bad substance. Wehave, for example, put a great quantity of genius, within the lasttwenty years, into water-colour drawing, and we have done this with themost reckless disregard whether either the colours or the paper willstand. In most instances, neither will. By accident, it may happen thatthe colours in a given drawing have been of good quality, and its paperuninjured by chemical processes. But you take not the least care toensure these being so; I have myself seen the most destructive changestake place in water-colour drawings within twenty years after they werepainted; and from all I can gather respecting the recklessness of modernpaper manufacture, my belief is, that though you may still handle anAlbert Dürer engraving, two hundred years old, fearlessly, not one-halfof that time will have passed over your modern water-colours, beforemost of them will be reduced to mere white or brown rags; and yourdescendants, twitching them contemptuously into fragments between fingerand thumb, will mutter against you, half in scorn and half in anger, "Those wretched nineteenth century people! they kept vapouring andfuming about the world, doing what they called business, and theycouldn't make a sheet of paper that wasn't rotten. "

43. And note that this is no unimportant portion of your art economy atthis time. Your water-colour painters are becoming every day capable ofexpressing greater and better things; and their material is especiallyadapted to the turn of your best artists' minds. The value which youcould accumulate in work of this kind would soon become a most importantitem in the national art-wealth, if only you would take the little painsnecessary to secure its permanence. I am inclined to think, myself, thatwater-colour ought not to be used on paper at all, but only on vellum, and then, if properly taken care of, the drawing would be almostimperishable. Still, paper is a much more convenient material for rapidwork; and it is an infinite absurdity not to secure the goodness of itsquality, when we could do so without the slightest trouble. Among themany favours which I am going to ask from our paternal government, whenwe get it, will be that it will supply its little boys with good paper. You have nothing to do but to let the government establish a papermanufactory, under the superintendence of any of our leading chemists, who should be answerable for the safety and completeness of all theprocesses of the manufacture. The government stamp on the corner of yoursheet of drawing-paper, made in the perfect way, should cost you ashilling, which would add something to the revenue; and when you boughta water-colour drawing for fifty or a hundred guineas, you would havemerely to look in the corner for your stamp, and pay your extra shillingfor the security that your hundred guineas were given really for adrawing, and not for a coloured rag. There need be no monopoly orrestriction in the matter; let the paper manufacturers compete with thegovernment, and if people liked to save their shilling, and take theirchance, let them; only, the artist and purchaser might then be sure ofgood material, if they liked, and now they cannot be. 

44. I should like also to have a government colour manufactory; thoughthat is not so necessary, as the quality of colour is more within theartist's power of testing, and I have no doubt that any painter may getpermanent colour from the respectable manufacturers, if he chooses. Iwill not attempt to follow the subject out at all as it respectsarchitecture, and our methods of modern building; respecting which Ihave had occasion to speak before now. 

45. But I cannot pass without some brief notice our habit--continually, as it seems to me, gaining strength--of putting a large quantity ofthought and work, annually, into things which are either in their naturenecessarily perishable, as dress; or else into compliances with thefashion of the day, in things not necessarily perishable, as plate. I amafraid almost the first idea of a young rich couple setting up house inLondon, is, that they must have new plate. Their father's plate may bevery handsome, but the fashion is changed. They will have a new servicefrom the leading manufacturer, and the old plate, except a few apostlespoons, and a cup which Charles the Second drank a health in to theirpretty ancestress, is sent to be melted down, and made up with newflourishes and fresh lustre. Now, so long as this is the case--so long, observe, as fashion has influence on the manufacture of plate--so long_you cannot have a goldsmith's art in this country_. Do you suppose anyworkman worthy the name will put his brains into a cup, or an urn, whichhe knows is to go to the melting-pot in half a score years? He will not;you don't ask or expect it of him. You ask of him nothing but a littlequick handicraft--a clever twist of a handle here, and a foot there, aconvolvulus from the newest school of design, a pheasant from Landseer'sgame cards; a couple of sentimental figures for supporters, in the styleof the signs of insurance offices, then a clever touch with theburnisher, and there's your epergne, the admiration of all the footmenat the wedding-breakfast, and the torment of some unfortunate youth whocannot see the pretty girl opposite to him, through its tyrannousbranches. 

46. But you don't suppose that _that's_ goldsmith's work? Goldsmith'swork is made to last, and made with the men's whole heart and soul init; true goldsmith's work, when it exists, is generally the means ofeducation of the greatest painters and sculptors of the day. Francia wasa goldsmith; Francia was not his own name, but that of his master thejeweller; and he signed his pictures almost always, "Francia, thegoldsmith, " for love of his master; Ghirlandajo was a goldsmith, and wasthe master of Michael Angelo; Verrocchio was a goldsmith, and was themaster of Leonardo da Vinci. Ghiberti was a goldsmith, and beat out thebronze gates which Michael Angelo said might serve for gates ofParadise. [7] But if ever you want work like theirs again, you must keepit, though it should have the misfortune to become old-fashioned. Youmust not break it up, nor melt it any more. There is no economy in that;you could not easily waste intellect more grievously. Nature may melther goldsmith's work at every sunset if she chooses; and beat it outinto chased bars again at every sunrise; but you must not. The way tohave a truly noble service of plate, is to keep adding to it, notmelting it. At every marriage, and at every birth, get a new piece ofgold or silver if you will, but with noble workmanship on it, done forall time, and put it among your treasures; that is one of the chiefthings which gold was made for, and made incorruptible for. When we knowa little more of political economy, we shall find that none butpartially savage nations need, imperatively, gold for their currency;[8]but gold has been given us, among other things, that we might putbeautiful work into its imperishable splendour, and that the artists whohave the most wilful fancies may have a material which will drag out, and beat out, as their dreams require, and will hold itself togetherwith fantastic tenacity, whatever rare and delicate service they set itupon. 

[Note 7: Several reasons may account for the fact that goldsmith'swork is so wholesome for young artists: first, that it gives greatfirmness of hand to deal for some time with a solid substance; again, that it induces caution and steadiness--a boy trusted with chalk andpaper suffers an immediate temptation to scrawl upon it and play withit, but he dares not scrawl on gold, and he cannot play with it; and, lastly, that it gives great delicacy and precision of touch to work uponminute forms, and to aim at producing richness and finish of designcorrespondent to the preciousness of the material. ]

[Note 8: See note in Addenda on the nature of property. ]

47. So here is one branch of decorative art in which rich people mayindulge themselves unselfishly; if they ask for good art in it, they maybe sure in buying gold and silver plate that they are enforcing usefuleducation on young artists. But there is another branch of decorativeart in which I am sorry to say we cannot, at least under existingcircumstances, indulge ourselves, with the hope of doing good toanybody: I mean the great and subtle art of dress. 

48. And here I must interrupt the pursuit of our subject for a moment ortwo, in order to state one of the principles of political economy, which, though it is, I believe, now sufficiently understood and assertedby the leading masters of the science, is not yet, I grieve to say, acted upon by the plurality of those who have the management of riches. Whenever we spend money, we of course set people to work: that is themeaning of spending money; we may, indeed, lose it without employinganybody; but, whenever we spend it, we set a number of people to work, greater or less, of course, according to the rate of wages, but, in thelong run, proportioned to the sum we spend. Well, your shallow people, because they see that however they spend money they are always employingsomebody, and, therefore, doing some good, think and say to themselves, that it is all one _how_ they spend it--that all their apparentlyselfish luxury is, in reality, unselfish, and is doing just as muchgood as if they gave all their money away, or perhaps more good; and Ihave heard foolish people even declare it as a principle of politicaleconomy, that whoever invented a new want[9] conferred a good on thecommunity. I have not words strong enough--at least, I could not, without shocking you, use the words which would be strong enough--toexpress my estimate of the absurdity and the mischievousness of thispopular fallacy. So, putting a great restraint upon myself, and using nohard words, I will simply try to state the nature of it, and the extentof its influence. 

[Note 9: See note 5th, in Addenda. ]

49. Granted, that whenever we spend money for whatever purpose, we setpeople to work; and passing by, for the moment, the question whether thework we set them to is all equally healthy and good for them, we willassume that whenever we spend a guinea we provide an equal number ofpeople with healthy maintenance for a given time. But, by the way inwhich we spend it, we entirely direct the labour of those people duringthat given time. We become their masters or mistresses, and we compelthem to produce, within a certain period, a certain article. Now, thatarticle may be a useful and lasting one, or it may be a useless andperishable one--it may be one useful to the whole community, or usefulonly to ourselves. And our selfishness and folly, or our virtue andprudence, are shown, not by our spending money, but by our spending itfor the wrong or the right thing; and we are wise and kind, not inmaintaining a certain number of people for a given period, but only inrequiring them to produce during that period, the kind of things whichshall be useful to society, instead of those which are only useful toourselves. 

50. Thus, for instance: if you are a young lady, and employ a certainnumber of sempstresses for a given time, in making a given number ofsimple and serviceable dresses--suppose, seven; of which you can wearone yourself for half the winter, and give six away to poor girls whohave none, you are spending your money unselfishly. But if youemploy the same number of sempstresses for the same number of days, in making four, or five, or six beautiful flounces for your ownball-dress--flounces which will clothe no one but yourself, and whichyou will yourself be unable to wear at more than one ball--you areemploying your money selfishly. You have maintained, indeed, in eachcase, the same number of people; but in the one case you have directedtheir labour to the service of the community; in the other case you haveconsumed it wholly upon yourself. I don't say you are never to do so; Idon't say you ought not sometimes to think of yourselves only, and tomake yourselves as pretty as you can; only do not confuse coquettishnesswith benevolence, nor cheat yourselves into thinking that all the fineryyou can wear is so much put into the hungry mouths of those beneath you:it is not so; it is what you yourselves, whether you will or no, mustsometimes instinctively feel it to be--it is what those who standshivering in the streets, forming a line to watch you as you step out ofyour carriages, _know_ it to be; those fine dresses do not mean that somuch has been put into their mouths, but that so much has been taken outof their mouths. 

51. The real politico-economical signification of every one of thosebeautiful toilettes, is just this: that you have had a certain number ofpeople put for a certain number of days wholly under your authority, bythe sternest of slave-masters--hunger and cold; and you have said tothem, "I will feed you, indeed, and clothe you, and give you fuel for somany days; but during those days you shall work for me only: your littlebrothers need clothes, but you shall make none for them: your sickfriend needs clothes, but you shall make none for her: you yourself willsoon need another and a warmer dress, but you shall make none foryourself. You shall make nothing but lace and roses for me; for thisfortnight to come, you shall work at the patterns and petals, and then Iwill crush and consume them away in an hour. " You will perhapsanswer--"It may not be particularly benevolent to do this, and we won'tcall it so; but at any rate we do no wrong in taking their labour whenwe pay them their wages: if we pay for their work, we have a right toit. "

52. No;--a thousand times no. The labour which you have paid for, doesindeed become, by the act of purchase, your own labour: you have boughtthe hands and the time of those workers; they are, by right and justice, your own hands, your own time. But have you a right to spend your owntime, to work with your own hands, only for your own advantage?--muchmore, when, by purchase, you have invested your own person with thestrength of others; and added to your own life, a part of the life ofothers? You may, indeed, to a certain extent, use their labour for yourdelight: remember, I am making no general assertions against splendourof dress, or pomp of accessories of life; on the contrary, there aremany reasons for thinking that we do not at present attach enoughimportance to beautiful dress, as one of the means of influencinggeneral taste and character. But I _do_ say, that you must weigh thevalue of what you ask these workers to produce for you in its owndistinct balance; that on its own worthiness or desirableness rests thequestion of your kindness, and not merely on the fact of your havingemployed people in producing it: and I say further, that as long asthere are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long there canbe no question at all but that splendour of dress is a crime. In duetime, when we have nothing better to set people to work at, it may beright to let them make lace and cut jewels; but as long as there are anywho have no blankets for their beds, and no rags for their bodies, solong it is blanket-making and tailoring we must set people to workat--not lace. 

53. And it would be strange, if at any great assembly which, while itdazzled the young and the thoughtless, beguiled the gentler hearts thatbeat beneath the embroidery, with a placid sensation of luxuriousbenevolence--as if by all that they wore in waywardness of beauty, comfort had been first given to the distressed, and aid to the indigent;it would be strange, I say, if, for a moment, the spirits of Truth andof Terror, which walk invisibly among the masques of the earth, wouldlift the dimness from our erring thoughts, and show us how--inasmuch asthe sums exhausted for that magnificence would have given back thefailing breath to many an unsheltered outcast on moor and street--theywho wear it have literally entered into partnership with Death; anddressed themselves in his spoils. Yes, if the veil could be lifted notonly from your thoughts, but from your human sight, you would see--theangels do see--on those gay white dresses of yours, strange dark spots, and crimson patterns that you knew not of--spots of the inextinguishablered that all the seas cannot wash away; yes, and among the pleasantflowers that crown your fair heads, and glow on your wreathed hair, youwould see that one weed was always twisted which no one thought of--thegrass that grows on graves. 

54. It was not, however, this last, this clearest and most appallingview of our subject, that I intended to ask you to take this evening;only it is impossible to set any part of the matter in its true light, until we go to the root of it. But the point which it is our specialbusiness to consider is, not whether costliness of dress is contrary tocharity; but whether it is not contrary to mere worldly wisdom: whether, even supposing we knew that splendour of dress did not cost suffering orhunger, we might not put the splendour better in other things thandress. And, supposing our mode of dress were really graceful orbeautiful, this might be a very doubtful question; for I believe truenobleness of dress to be an important means of education, as itcertainly is a necessity to any nation which wishes to possess livingart, concerned with portraiture of human nature. No good historicalpainting ever yet existed, or ever can exist, where the dresses of thepeople of the time are not beautiful: and had it not been for the lovelyand fantastic dressing of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, neither French, nor Florentine, nor Venetian art could have risen toanything like the rank it reached. Still, even then, the best dressingwas never the costliest; and its effect depended much more on itsbeautiful and, in early times, modest, arrangement, and on the simpleand lovely masses of its colour, than on gorgeousness of clasp orembroidery. 

55. Whether we can ever return to any of those more perfect types ofform, is questionable; but there can be no more question that all themoney we spend on the forms of dress at present worn, is, so far as anygood purpose is concerned, wholly lost. Mind, in saying this, I reckonamong good purposes the purpose which young ladies are said sometimesto entertain--of being married; but they would be married quite as soon(and probably to wiser and better husbands) by dressing quietly, as bydressing brilliantly: and I believe it would only be needed to layfairly and largely before them the real good which might be effected bythe sums they spend in toilettes, to make them trust at once only totheir bright eyes and braided hair for all the mischief they have amind to. I wish we could, for once, get the statistics of a Londonseason. There was much complaining talk in Parliament, last week, of the vast sum the nation has given for the best Paul Veronese inVenice--14, 000_l. _: I wonder what the nation meanwhile has given for itsball-dresses! Suppose we could see the London milliners' bills, simplyfor unnecessary breadths of slip and flounce, from April to July; Iwonder whether 14, 000_l. _ would cover _them_. But the breadths of slipand flounce are by this time as much lost and vanished as last year'ssnow; only they have done less good: but the Paul Veronese will last forcenturies, if we take care of it; and yet, we grumble at the price givenfor the painting, while no one grumbles at the price of pride. 

56. Time does not permit me to go into any farther illustration of thevarious modes in which we build our statue out of snow, and waste ourlabour on things that vanish. I must leave you to follow out the subjectfor yourselves, as I said I should, and proceed, in our next lecture, toexamine the two other branches of our subject--namely, how to accumulateour art, and how to distribute it. But, in closing, as we have been muchon the topic of good government, both of ourselves and others, let mejust give you one more illustration of what it means, from that old artof which, next evening, I shall try to convince you that the value, bothmoral and mercantile, is greater than we usually suppose. 

57. One of the frescoes by Ambrozio Lorenzetti, in the town-hall ofSiena, represents, by means of symbolical figures, the principles ofGood Civic Government and of Good Government in general. The figurerepresenting this noble Civic Government is enthroned, and surrounded byfigures representing the Virtues, variously supporting or administeringits authority. Now, observe what work is given to each of thesevirtues. Three winged ones--Faith, Hope, and Charity--surround the headof the figure; not in mere compliance with the common and heraldic lawsof precedence among Virtues, such as we moderns observe habitually, butwith peculiar purpose on the part of the painter. Faith, as thusrepresented ruling the thoughts of the Good Governor, does not meanmerely religious faith, understood in those times to be necessary to allpersons--governed no less than governors--but it means the faith whichenables work to be carried out steadily, in spite of adverse appearancesand expediencies; the faith in great principles, by which a civic rulerlooks past all the immediate checks and shadows that would daunt acommon man, knowing that what is rightly done will have a right issue, and holding his way in spite of pullings at his cloak and whisperings inhis ear, enduring, as having in him a faith which is evidence of thingsunseen. 

58. And Hope, in like manner, is here not the heavenward hope whichought to animate the hearts of all men; but she attends upon GoodGovernment, to show that all such government is _expectant_ as well as_conservative_; that if it ceases to be hopeful of better things, itceases to be a wise guardian of present things: that it ought never, aslong as the world lasts, to be wholly content with any existing state ofinstitution or possession, but to be hopeful still of more wisdom andpower; not clutching at it restlessly or hastily, but feeling that itsreal life consists in steady ascent from high to higher: conservative, indeed, and jealously conservative of old things, but conservative ofthem as pillars, not as pinnacles--as aids, but not as idols; andhopeful chiefly, and active, in times of national trial or distress, according to those first and notable words describing the queenlynation: "She riseth, _while it is yet night_. "

59. And again, the winged Charity which is attendant on Good Governmenthas, in this fresco, a peculiar office. Can you guess what? If youconsider the character of contest which so often takes place among kingsfor their crowns, and the selfish and tyrannous means they commonly taketo aggrandize or secure their power, you will, perhaps, be surprised tohear that the office of Charity is to crown the King. And yet, if youthink of it a little, you will see the beauty of the thought which setsher in this function: since, in the first place, all the authority of agood governor should be desired by him only for the good of his people, so that it is only Love that makes him accept or guard his crown: in thesecond place, his chief greatness consists in the exercise of this love, and he is truly to be revered only so far as his acts and thoughts arethose of kindness; so that Love is the light of his crown, as well asthe giver of it: lastly, because his strength depends on the affectionsof his people, and it is only their love which can securely crown him, and for ever. So that Love is the strength of his crown as well as thelight of it. 

60. Then, surrounding the King, or in various obedience to him, appearthe dependent virtues, as Fortitude, Temperance, Truth, and otherattendant spirits, of all which I cannot now give account, wishing youonly to notice the one to whom are entrusted the guidance andadministration of the public revenues. Can you guess which it is likelyto be? Charity, you would have thought, should have something to do withthe business; but not so, for she is too hot to attend carefully to it. Prudence, perhaps, you think of in the next place. No, she is too timid, and loses opportunities in making up her mind. Can it be Liberalitythen? No: Liberality is entrusted with some small sums; but she is a badaccountant, and is allowed no important place in the exchequer. But thetreasures are given in charge to a virtue of which we hear too little inmodern times, as distinct from others; Magnanimity: largeness of heart:not softness or weakness of heart, mind you--but capacity of heart--thegreat _measuring_ virtue, which weighs in heavenly balances all that maybe given, and all that may be gained; and sees how to do noblest thingsin noblest ways: which of two goods comprehends and therefore choosesthe greater: which of two personal sacrifices dares and accepts thelarger: which, out of the avenues of beneficence, treads always thatwhich opens farthest into the blue fields of futurity: that character, in fine, which, in those words taken by us at first for the descriptionof a Queen among the nations, looks less to the present power than tothe distant promise; "Strength and honour are in her clothing, --and sheshall rejoice IN TIME TO COME. "

LECTURE II. 

THE ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ART. 

_Continuation of the previous Lecture; delivered July 13, 1857. _

61. The heads of our subject which remain for our consideration thisevening are, you will remember, the accumulation and the distribution ofworks of art. Our complete inquiry fell into four divisions--first, howto get our genius; then, how to apply our genius; then, how toaccumulate its results; and lastly, how to distribute them. Weconsidered, last evening, how to discover and apply it;--we haveto-night to examine the modes of its preservation and distribution. 

62. III. ACCUMULATION. --And now, in the outset, it will be well to facethat objection which we put aside a little while ago; namely, thatperhaps it is not well to have a great deal of good art; and that itshould not be made too cheap. 

"Nay, " I can imagine some of the more generous among you exclaiming, "wewill not trouble you to disprove that objection; of course it is aselfish and base one: good art, as well as other good things, ought tobe made as cheap as possible, and put as far as we can within the reachof everybody. "

63. Pardon me, I am not prepared to admit that. I rather side with theselfish objectors, and believe that art ought not to be made cheap, beyond a certain point; for the amount of pleasure that you can receivefrom any great work, depends wholly on the quantity of attention andenergy of mind you can bring to bear upon it. Now, that attention andenergy depend much more on the freshness of the thing than you would atall suppose; unless you very carefully studied the movements of your ownminds. If you see things of the same kind and of equal value veryfrequently, your reverence for them is infallibly diminished, yourpowers of attention get gradually wearied, and your interest andenthusiasm worn out; and you cannot in that state bring to any givenwork the energy necessary to enjoy it. If, indeed, the question wereonly between enjoying a great many pictures each a little, or onepicture very much, the sum of enjoyment being in each case the same, youmight rationally desire to possess rather the larger quantity than thesmall; both because one work of art always in some sort illustratesanother, and because quantity diminishes the chances of destruction. 

64. But the question is not a merely arithmetical one of this kind. Yourfragments of broken admirations will not, when they are put together, make up one whole admiration; two and two, in this case, do not makefour, nor anything like four. Your good picture, or book, or work of artof any kind, is always in some degree fenced and closed about withdifficulty. You may think of it as of a kind of cocoanut, with veryoften rather an unseemly shell, but good milk and kernel inside. Now, ifyou possess twenty cocoanuts, and being thirsty, go impatiently from oneto the other, giving only a single scratch with the point of your knifeto the shell of each, you will get no milk from all the twenty. But ifyou leave nineteen of them alone, and give twenty cuts to the shell ofone, you will get through it, and at the milk of it. And the tendency ofthe human mind is always to get tired before it has made its twentycuts; and to try another nut: and moreover, even if it has perseveranceenough to crack its nuts, it is sure to try to eat too many, and tochoke itself. Hence, it is wisely appointed for us that few of thethings we desire can be had without considerable labour, and atconsiderable intervals of time. We cannot generally get our dinnerwithout working for it, and that gives us appetite for it, we cannot getour holiday without waiting for it, and that gives us zest for it; andwe ought not to get our picture without paying for it, and that gives usa mind to look at it. 

65. Nay, I will even go so far as to say that we ought not to get bookstoo cheaply. No book, I believe, is ever worth half so much to itsreader as one that has been coveted for a year at a bookstall, andbought out of saved halfpence; and perhaps a day or two's fasting. That's the way to get at the cream of a book. And I should say more onthis matter, and protest as energetically as I could against the plagueof cheap literature, with which we are just now afflicted, but that Ifear your calling me to order, as being unpractical, because I don'tquite see my way at present to making everybody fast for their books. But one may see that a thing is desirable and possible, even though onemay not at once know the best way to it, --and in my island of Barataria, when I get it well into order, I assure you no book shall be sold forless than a pound sterling; if it can be published cheaper than that, the surplus shall all go into my treasury, and save my subjects taxationin other directions; only people really poor, who cannot pay the pound, shall be supplied with the books they want for nothing, in a certainlimited quantity. I haven't made up my mind about the number yet, andthere are several other points in the system yet unsettled; when theyare all determined, if you will allow me, I will come and give youanother lecture, on the political economy of literature. [10]

[Note 10: See note 6th, in Addenda. ]

66. Meantime, returning to our immediate subject, I say to my generoushearers, who want to shower Titians and Turners upon us, like fallingleaves, "Pictures ought not to be too cheap;" but in much stronger toneI would say to those who want to keep up the prices of pictorialproperty, that pictures ought not to be too dear--that is to say, not asdear as they are. For, as matters at present stand, it is whollyimpossible for any man in the ordinary circumstances of English life topossess himself of a piece of great art. A modern drawing of averagemerit, or a first-class engraving, may, perhaps, not without someself-reproach, be purchased out of his savings by a man of narrowincome; but a satisfactory example of first-rate art--masterhands'work--is wholly out of his reach. And we are so accustomed to look uponthis as the natural course and necessity of things, that we never setourselves in any wise to diminish the evil; and yet it is an evilperfectly capable of diminution. 

67. It is an evil precisely similar in kind to that which existed in theMiddle Ages, respecting good books, and which everybody then, I suppose, thought as natural as we do now our small supply of good pictures. Youcould not then study the work of a great historian, or great poet, anymore than you can now study that of a great painter, but at heavy cost. If you wanted a book, you had to get it written out for you, or to writeit out for yourself. But printing came, and the poor man may read hisDante and his Homer; and Dante and Homer are none the worse for that. But it is only in literature that private persons of moderate fortunecan possess and study greatness: they can study at home no greatness inart; and the object of that accumulation which we are at present aimingat, as our third object in political economy, is to bring great art insome degree within the reach of the multitude; and, both in larger andmore numerous galleries than we now possess, and by distribution, according to his wealth and wish, in each man's home, to render theinfluence of art somewhat correspondent in extent to that of literature. Here, then, is the subtle balance which your economist has to strike: toaccumulate so much art as to be able to give the whole nation a supplyof it, according to its need, and yet to regulate its distribution sothat there shall be no glut of it, nor contempt. 

68. A difficult balance, indeed, for us to hold, if it were left merelyto our skill to poise; but the just point between poverty and profusionhas been fixed for us accurately by the wise laws of Providence. If youcarefully watch for all the genius you can detect, apply it to goodservice, and then reverently preserve what it produces, you will neverhave too little art; and if, on the other hand, you never force anartist to work hurriedly, for daily bread, nor imperfectly, because youwould rather have showy works than complete ones, you will never havetoo much. Do not force the multiplication of art, and you will not haveit too cheap; do not wantonly destroy it, and you will not have it toodear. 

69. "But who wantonly destroys it?" you will ask. Why, we all do. Perhaps you thought, when I came to this part of our subject, corresponding to that set forth in our housewife's economy by the"keeping her embroidery from the moth, " that I was going to tell youonly how to take better care of pictures, how to clean them, and varnishthem, and where to put them away safely when you went out of town. Ah, not at all. The utmost I have to ask of you is, that you will not pullthem to pieces, and trample them under your feet. "What!" you will say, "when do we do such things? Haven't we built a perfectly beautifulgallery for all the pictures we have to take care of?" Yes, you have, for the pictures which are definitely sent to Manchester to be takencare of. But there are quantities of pictures out of Manchester which itis your business, and mine too, to take care of no less than of these, and which we are at this moment employing ourselves in pulling to piecesby deputy. I will tell you what they are, and where they are, in aminute; only first let me state one more of those main principles ofpolitical economy on which the matter hinges. 

70. I must begin a little apparently wide of the mark, and ask you toreflect if there is any way in which we waste money more in England thanin building fine tombs? Our respect for the dead, when they are _just_dead, is something wonderful, and the way we show it more wonderfulstill. We show it with black feathers and black horses; we show it withblack dresses and bright heraldries; we show it with costly obelisks andsculptures of sorrow, which spoil half of our most beautiful cathedrals. We show it with frightful gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the quiet grass; and last, and not least, we show it bypermitting ourselves to tell any number of lies we think amiable orcredible, in the epitaph. This feeling is common to the poor as well asthe rich; and we all know how many a poor family will nearly ruinthemselves, to testify their respect for some member of it in hiscoffin, whom they never much cared for when he was out of it; and howoften it happens that a poor old woman will starve herself to death, inorder that she may be respectably buried. 

71. Now, this being one of the most complete and special ways of wastingmoney, --no money being less productive of good, or of any percentagewhatever, than that which we shake away from the ends of undertakers'plumes, --it is of course the duty of all good economists, and kindpersons, to prove and proclaim continually, to the poor as well as therich, that respect for the dead is not really shown by laying greatstones on them to tell us where they are laid; but by remembering wherethey are laid, without a stone to help us; trusting them to the sacredgrass and saddened flowers; and still more, that respect and love areshown to them, not by great monuments to them which we build with _our_hands, but by letting the monuments stand, which they built with _theirown_. And this is the point now in question. 

72. Observe, there are two great reciprocal duties concerning industry, constantly to be exchanged between the living and the dead. We, as welive and work, are to be always thinking of those who are to come afterus; that what we do may be serviceable, as far as we can make it so, tothem, as well as to us. Then, when we die, it is the duty of those whocome after us to accept this work of ours with thanks and remembrance, not thrusting it aside or tearing it down the moment they think theyhave no use for it. And each generation will only be happy or powerfulto the pitch that it ought to be, in fulfilling these two duties to thePast and the Future. Its own work will never be rightly done, even foritself--never good, or noble, or pleasurable to its own eyes--if it doesnot prepare it also for the eyes of generations yet to come. And its ownpossessions will never be enough for it, and its own wisdom never enoughfor it, unless it avails itself gratefully and tenderly of the treasuresand the wisdom bequeathed to it by its ancestors. 

73. For, be assured, that all the best things and treasures of thisworld are not to be produced by each generation for itself; but we areall intended, not to carve our work in snow that will melt, but each andall of us to be continually rolling a great white gathering snowball, higher and higher--larger and larger--along the Alps of human power. Thus the science of nations is to be accumulative from father to son:each learning a little more and a little more; each receiving all thatwas known, and adding its own gain: the history and poetry of nationsare to be accumulative; each generation treasuring the history and thesongs of its ancestors, adding its own history and its own songs: andthe art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and historyare; the work of living men is not superseding, but building itselfupon the work of the past. Nearly every great and intellectual race ofthe world has produced, at every period of its career, an art with somepeculiar and precious character about it, wholly unattainable by anyother race, and at any other time; and the intention of Providenceconcerning that art, is evidently that it should all grow together intoone mighty temple; the rough stones and the smooth all finding theirplace, and rising, day by day, in richer and higher pinnacles to heaven. 

74. Now, just fancy what a position the world, considered as one greatworkroom--one great factory in the form of a globe--would have been inby this time, if it had in the least understood this duty, or beencapable of it. Fancy what we should have had around us now, if, insteadof quarrelling and fighting over their work, the nations had aided eachother in their work, or if even in their conquests, instead of effacingthe memorials of those they succeeded and subdued, they had guarded thespoils of their victories. Fancy what Europe would be now, if thedelicate statues and temples of the Greeks--if the broad roads andmassy walls of the Romans--if the noble and pathetic architecture of themiddle ages, had not been ground to dust by mere human rage. You talk ofthe scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time isscytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm--we who smitelike the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish--ourselves who consume: weare the mildew, and the flame; and the soul of man is to its own work asthe moth that frets when it cannot fly, and as the hidden flame thatblasts where it cannot illuminate. All these lost treasures of humanintellect have been wholly destroyed by human industry of destruction;the marble would have stood its two thousand years as well in thepolished statue as in the Parian cliff; but we men have ground it topowder, and mixed it with our own ashes. The walls and the ways wouldhave stood--it is we who have left not one stone upon another, andrestored its pathlessness to the desert; the great cathedrals of oldreligion would have stood--it is we who have dashed down the carved workwith axes and hammers, and bid the mountain-grass bloom upon thepavement, and the sea-winds chant in the galleries. 

75. You will perhaps think all this was somehow necessary for thedevelopment of the human race. I cannot stay now to dispute that, thoughI would willingly; but do you think it is _still_ necessary for thatdevelopment? Do you think that in this nineteenth century it is stillnecessary for the European nations to turn all the places where theirprincipal art-treasures are into battle-fields? For that is what theyare doing even while I speak; the great firm of the world is managingits business at this moment, just as it has done in past time. Imaginewhat would be the thriving circumstances of a manufacturer of somedelicate produce--suppose glass, or china--in whose workshop andexhibition rooms all the workmen and clerks began fighting at least oncea day, first blowing off the steam, and breaking all the machinery theycould reach; and then making fortresses of all the cupboards, andattacking and defending the show-tables, the victorious party finallythrowing everything they could get hold of out of the window, by way ofshowing their triumph, and the poor manufacturer picking up and puttingaway at last a cup here and a handle there. A fine prosperous businessthat would be, would it not? and yet that is precisely the way the greatmanufacturing firm of the world carries on its business. 

76. It has so arranged its political squabbles for the last six or sevenhundred years, that not one of them could be fought out but in the midstof its most precious art; and it so arranges them to this day. Forexample, if I were asked to lay my finger, in a map of the world, on thespot of the world's surface which contained at this moment the mostsingular concentration of art-teaching and art-treasure, I should lay iton the name of the town of Verona. Other cities, indeed, contain moreworks of carriageable art, but none contain so much of the gloriouslocal art, and of the springs and sources of art, which can by no meansbe made subjects of package or porterage, nor, I grieve to say, ofsalvage. Verona possesses, in the first place, not the largest, but themost perfect and intelligible Roman amphitheatre that exists, stillunbroken in circle of step, and strong in succession of vault and arch:it contains minor Roman monuments, gateways, theatres, baths, wrecks oftemples, which give the streets of its suburbs a character of antiquityunexampled elsewhere, except in Rome itself. But it contains, in thenext place, what Rome does not contain--perfect examples of the greattwelfth-century Lombardic architecture, which was the root of all themedięval art of Italy, without which no Giottos, no Angelicos, noRaphaels would have been possible: it contains that architecture, not inrude forms, but in the most perfect and loveliest types it everattained--contains those, not in ruins, nor in altered and hardlydecipherable fragments, but in churches perfect from porch to apse, withall their carving fresh, their pillars firm, their joints unloosened. Besides these, it includes examples of the great thirteenth andfourteenth-century Gothic of Italy, not merely perfect, but elsewhereunrivalled. At Rome, the Roman--at Pisa, the Lombard--architecture maybe seen in greater or in equal nobleness; but not at Rome, nor Pisa, norFlorence, nor in any city of the world, is there a great medięval Gothiclike the Gothic of Verona. Elsewhere, it is either less pure in type orless lovely in completion: only at Verona may you see it in thesimplicity of its youthful power, and the tenderness of its accomplishedbeauty. And Verona possesses, in the last place, the loveliestRenaissance architecture of Italy, not disturbed by pride, nor defiledby luxury, but rising in fair fulfilment of domestic service, serenityof effortless grace, and modesty of home seclusion; its richest workgiven to the windows that open on the narrowest streets and most silentgardens. All this she possesses, in the midst of natural scenery such asassuredly exists nowhere else in the habitable globe--a wild Alpineriver foaming at her feet, from whose shore the rocks rise in a greatcrescent, dark with cypress, and misty with olive: illimitably, frombefore her southern gates, the tufted plains of Italy sweep and fade ingolden light; around her, north and west, the Alps crowd in crestedtroops, and the winds of Benacus bear to her the coolness of theirsnows. 

77. And this is the city--such, and possessing such things as these--atwhose gates the decisive battles of Italy are fought continually: threedays her towers trembled with the echo of the cannon of Arcola; heapedpebbles of the Mincio divide her fields to this hour with lines ofbroken rampart, whence the tide of war rolled back to Novara; and now onthat crescent of her eastern cliffs, whence the full moon used to risethrough the bars of the cypresses in her burning summer twilights, touching with soft increase of silver light the rosy marbles of herbalconies, --along the ridge of that encompassing rock, other circles areincreasing now, white and pale; walled towers of cruel strength, sable-spotted with cannon-courses. I tell you, I have seen, when thethunderclouds came down on those Italian hills, and all their crags weredipped in the dark, terrible purple, as if the winepress of the wrath ofGod had stained their mountain-raiment--I have seen the hail fall inItaly till the forest branches stood stripped and bare as if blasted bythe locust; but the white hail never fell from those clouds of heaven asthe black hail will fall from the clouds of hell, if ever one breath ofItalian life stirs again in the streets of Verona. 

78. Sad as you will feel this to be, I do not say that you can directlyprevent it; you cannot drive the Austrians out of Italy, nor preventthem from building forts where they choose. But I do say, [11] that you, and I, and all of us, ought to be both acting and feeling with a fullknowledge and understanding of these things; and that, without trying toexcite revolutions or weaken governments, we may give our own thoughtsand help, so as in a measure to prevent needless destruction. We shoulddo this, if we only realized the thing thoroughly. You drive out day byday through your own pretty suburbs, and you think only of making, withwhat money you have to spare, your gateways handsomer, and yourcarriage-drives wider--and your drawing-rooms more splendid, having avague notion that you are all the while patronizing and advancing art;and you make no effort to conceive the fact that, within a few hours'journey of you, there are gateways and drawing-rooms which might just aswell be yours as these, all built already; gateways built by thegreatest masters of sculpture that ever struck marble; drawing-rooms, painted by Titian and Veronese; and you won't accept nor save these asthey are, but you will rather fetch the house-painter from over the way, and let Titian and Veronese house the rats. 

[Note 11: The reader can hardly but remember Mrs. Browning'sbeautiful appeal for Italy, made on the occasion of the first greatExhibition of Art in England:--

 Magi of the east and of the west, Your incense, gold, and myrrh are excellent!-- What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest? Your hands have worked well. Is your courage spent In handwork only? Have you nothing best, Which generous souls may perfect and present, And He shall thank the givers for? no light Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor, Who sit in darkness when it is not night? No cure for wicked children? Christ, --no cure, No help for women, sobbing out of sight Because men made the laws? no brothel-lure Burnt out by popular lightnings? Hast thou found No remedy, my England, for such woes? No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound, No call back for the exiled? no repose, Russia for knouted Poles worked underground, And gentle ladies bleached among the snows? No mercy for the slave, America? No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France? Alas, great nations have great shames, I say. No pity, O world, no tender utterance Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way For poor Italia, baffled by mischance? O gracious nations, give some ear to me! You all go to your Fair, and I am one Who at the roadside of humanity Beseech your alms, --God's justice to be done. So, prosper!

]

79. "Yes, " of course, you answer; "we want nice houses here, not housesin Verona. What should we do with houses in Verona?" And I answer, doprecisely what you do with the most expensive part of your possessionshere: take pride in them--only a noble pride. You know well, when youexamine your own hearts, that the greater part of the sums you spend onpossessions is spent for pride. Why are your carriages nicely paintedand finished outside? You don't see the outsides as you sit in them--theoutsides are for other people to see. Why are your exteriors of housesso well finished, your furniture so polished and costly, but for otherpeople to see? You are just as comfortable yourselves, writing on yourold friend of a desk, with the white cloudings in his leather, and usingthe light of a window which is nothing but a hole in the brick wall. Andall that is desirable to be done in this matter is merely to take pridein preserving great art, instead of in producing mean art; pride in thepossession of precious and enduring things, a little way off, insteadof slight and perishing things near at hand. You know, in old Englishtimes, our kings liked to have lordships and dukedoms abroad: and whyshould not your merchant princes like to have lordships and estatesabroad? Believe me, rightly understood, it would be a prouder, and inthe full sense of our English word, more "respectable" thing to be lordof a palace at Verona, or of a cloister full of frescoes at Florence, than to have a file of servants dressed in the finest liveries that evertailor stitched, as long as would reach from here to Bolton:--yes, and aprouder thing to send people to travel in Italy, who would have to sayevery now and then, of some fair piece of art, "Ah! this was _kept_ herefor us by the good people of Manchester, " than to bring them travellingall the way here, exclaiming of your various art treasures, "These were_brought_ here for us, (not altogether without harm) by the good peopleof Manchester. "

80. "Ah!" but you say, "the Art Treasures Exhibition will pay; butVeronese palaces won't. " Pardon me. They _would_ pay, less directly, butfar more richly. Do you suppose it is in the long run good forManchester, or good for England, that the Continent should be in thestate it is? Do you think the perpetual fear of revolution, or theperpetual repression of thought and energy that clouds and encumbers thenations of Europe, is eventually profitable for _us_? Were we any thebetter of the course of affairs in '48? or has the stabling of thedragoon horses in the great houses of Italy any distinct effect in thepromotion of the cotton-trade? Not so. But every stake that you couldhold in the stability of the Continent, and every effort that you couldmake to give example of English habits and principles on the Continent, and every kind deed that you could do in relieving distress andpreventing despair on the Continent, would have tenfold reaction on theprosperity of England, and open and urge, in a thousand unforeseendirections, the sluices of commerce and the springs of industry. 

81. I could press, if I chose, both these motives upon you, of pride andself-interest, with more force, but these are not motives which ought tobe urged upon you at all. The only motive that I ought to put beforeyou is simply that it would be right to do this; that the holding ofproperty abroad, and the personal efforts of Englishmen to redeem thecondition of foreign nations, are among the most direct pieces of dutywhich our wealth renders incumbent upon us. I do not--and in all truthand deliberateness I say this--I do not know anything more ludicrousamong the self-deceptions of well-meaning people than their notion ofpatriotism, as requiring them to limit their efforts to the good oftheir own country;--the notion that charity is a geographical virtue, and that what it is holy and righteous to do for people on one bank of ariver, it is quite improper and unnatural to do for people on the other. It will be a wonderful thing, some day or other, for the Christian worldto remember, that it went on thinking for two thousand years thatneighbours were neighbours at Jerusalem, but not at Jericho; a wonderfulthing for us English to reflect, in after-years, how long it was beforewe could shake hands with anybody across that shallow salt wash, whichthe very chalk-dust of its two shores whitens from Folkestone toAmbleteuse. 

82. Nor ought the motive of gratitude, as well as that of mercy, to bewithout its influence on you, who have been the first to ask to see, andthe first to show to us, the treasures which this poor lost Italy hasgiven to England. Remember, all these things that delight you here werehers--hers either in fact or in teaching; hers, in fact, are all themost powerful and most touching paintings of old time that now glow uponyour walls; hers in teaching are all the best and greatest of descendantsouls--your Reynolds and your Gainsborough never could have painted butfor Venice; and the energies which have given the only true life to yourexisting art were first stirred by voices of the dead that haunted theSacred Field of Pisa. 

Well, all these motives for some definite course of action on our parttowards foreign countries rest upon very serious facts; too serious, perhaps you will think, to be interfered with; for we are all of us inthe habit of leaving great things alone, as if Providence would mindthem, and attending ourselves only to little things which we know, practically, Providence doesn't mind unless we do. We are ready enoughto give care to the growing of pines and lettuces, knowing that theydon't grow Providentially sweet or large unless we look after them; butwe don't give any care to the good of Italy or Germany, because we thinkthat they will grow Providentially happy without any of our meddling. 

83. Let us leave the great things, then, and think of little things; notof the destruction of whole provinces in war, which it may not be anybusiness of ours to prevent; but of the destruction of poor littlepictures in peace, from which it surely would not be much out of our wayto save them. You know I said, just now, we were all of us engaged inpulling pictures to pieces by deputy, and you did not believe me. Consider, then, this similitude of ourselves. Suppose you saw (as Idoubt not you often do see) a prudent and kind young lady sitting atwork, in the corner of a quiet room, knitting comforters for hercousins, and that just outside, in the hall, you saw a cat and herkittens at play among the family pictures; amusing themselves especiallywith the best Vandykes, by getting on the tops of the frames, and thenscrambling down the canvases by their claws; and on some one's informingthe young lady of these proceedings of the cat and kittens, suppose sheanswered that it wasn't her cat, but her sister's, and the picturesweren't hers, but her uncle's, and she couldn't leave her work, for shehad to make so many pairs of comforters before dinner. Would you not saythat the prudent and kind young lady was, on the whole, answerable forthe additional touches of claw on the Vandykes?

84. Now, that is precisely what we prudent and kind English are doing, only on a larger scale. Here we sit in Manchester, hard at work, veryproperly, making comforters for our cousins all over the world. Justoutside there in the hall--that beautiful marble hall of Italy--the catsand kittens and monkeys are at play among the pictures: I assure you, inthe course of the fifteen years in which I have been working in thoseplaces in which the most precious remnants of European art exist, asensation, whether I would or no, was gradually made distinct and deepin my mind, that I was living and working in the midst of a den ofmonkeys;--sometimes amiable and affectionate monkeys, with all manner ofwinning ways and kind intentions, --more frequently selfish andmalicious monkeys; but, whatever their disposition, squabblingcontinually about nuts, and the best places on the barren sticks oftrees; and that all this monkeys' den was filled, by mischance, withprecious pictures, and the witty and wilful beasts were always wrappingthemselves up and going to sleep in pictures, or tearing holes in themto grin through; or tasting them and spitting them out again, ortwisting them up into ropes and making swings of them; and thatsometimes only, by watching one's opportunity, and bearing a scratch ora bite, one could rescue the corner of a Tintoret, or Paul Veronese, andpush it through the bars into a place of safety. 

85. Literally, I assure you, this was, and this is, the fixed impressionon my mind of the state of matters in Italy. And see how. The professorsof art in Italy, having long followed a method of study peculiar tothemselves, have at last arrived at a form of art peculiar tothemselves; very different from that which was arrived at by Correggioand Titian. Naturally, the professors like their own form the best; and, as the old pictures are generally not so startling to the eye as themodern ones, the dukes and counts who possess them, and who like to seetheir galleries look new and fine (and are persuaded also that acelebrated chef-d'oeuvre ought always to catch the eye at a quarter of amile off), believe the professors who tell them their sober pictures arequite faded, and good for nothing, and should all be brought brightagain; and, accordingly, give the sober pictures to the professors, tobe put right by rules of art. Then, the professors repaint the oldpictures in all the principal places, leaving perhaps only a bit ofbackground to set off their own work. And thus the professors come to begenerally figured, in my mind, as the monkeys who tear holes in thepictures, to grin through. Then the picture-dealers, who live by thepictures, cannot sell them to the English in their old and pure state;all the good work must be covered with new paint, and varnished so as tolook like one of the professorial pictures in the great gallery, beforeit is saleable. And thus the dealers come to be imaged, in my mind, asthe monkeys who make ropes of the pictures, to swing by. Then, every nowand then at some old stable, or wine-cellar, or timber-shed, behindsome forgotten vats or faggots, somebody finds a fresco of Perugino's orGiotto's, but doesn't think much of it, and has no idea of having peoplecoming into his cellar, or being obliged to move his faggots; and so hewhitewashes the fresco, and puts the faggots back again; and these kindof persons, therefore, come generally to be imaged, in my mind, as themonkeys who taste the pictures, and spit them out, not finding themnice. While, finally, the squabbling for nuts and apples (called inItaly "bella libertą") goes on all day long. 

86. Now, all this might soon be put an end to, if we English, who are sofond of travelling in the body, would also travel a little in soul! Wethink it a great triumph to get our packages and our persons carried ata fast pace, but we never take the slightest trouble to put any paceinto our perceptions; we stay usually at home in thought, or if we evermentally see the world, it is at the old stage-coach or waggon rate. Dobut consider what an odd sight it would be, if it were only quite clearto you how things are really going on--how, here in England, we aremaking enormous and expensive efforts to produce new art of all kinds, knowing and confessing all the while that the greater part of it is bad, but struggling still to produce new patterns of wall-papers, and newshapes of teapots, and new pictures, and statues, and architecture; andpluming and cackling if ever a teapot or a picture has the least good init;--all the while taking no thought whatever of the best possiblepictures, and statues, and wall-patterns already in existence, whichrequire nothing but to be taken common care of, and kept from damp anddust: but we let the walls fall that Giotto patterned, and the canvasesrot that Tintoret painted, and the architecture be dashed to pieces thatSt. Louis built, while we are furnishing our drawing-rooms with prizeupholstery, and writing accounts of our handsome warehouses to thecountry papers. Don't think I use my words vaguely or generally: I speakof literal facts. Giotto's frescoes at Assisi are perishing at thismoment for want of decent care; Tintoret's pictures in San Sebastian, atVenice, are at this instant rotting piecemeal into grey rags; St. Louis's chapel, at Carcassonne, is at this moment lying in shatteredfragments in the market-place. And here we are all cawing and crowing, poor little half-fledged daws as we are, about the pretty sticks andwool in our own nests. There's hardly a day passes, when I am at home, but I get a letter from some well-meaning country clergyman, deeplyanxious about the state of his parish church, and breaking his heart toget money together that he may hold up some wretched remnant of Tudortracery, with one niche in the corner and no statue--when all the whilethe mightiest piles of religious architecture and sculpture that everthe world saw are being blasted and withered away, without one glance ofpity or regret. The country clergyman does not care for _them_--he has asea-sick imagination that cannot cross channel. What is it to him, ifthe angels of Assisi fade from its vaults, or the queens and kings ofChartres fall from their pedestals? They are not in his parish. 

87. "What!" you will say, "are we not to produce any new art, nor takecare of our parish churches?" No, certainly not, until you have takenproper care of the art you have got already, and of the best churchesout of the parish. Your first and proper standing is not aschurchwardens and parish overseers, in an English county, but as membersof the great Christian community of Europe. And as members of thatcommunity (in which alone, observe, pure and precious ancient artexists, for there is none in America, none in Asia, none in Africa), youconduct yourselves precisely as a manufacturer would, who attended tohis looms, but left his warehouse without a roof. The rain floods yourwarehouse, the rats frolic in it, the spiders spin in it, the choughsbuild in it, the wall-plague frets and festers in it; and still you keepweave, weave, weaving at your wretched webs, and thinking you aregrowing rich, while more is gnawed out of your warehouse in an hour thanyou can weave in a twelvemonth. 

88. Even this similitude is not absurd enough to set us rightly forth. The weaver would, or might, at least, hope that his new woof was asstout as the old ones, and that, therefore, in spite of rain and ravage, he would have something to wrap himself in when he needed it. But _our_webs rot as we spin. The very fact that we despise the great art of thepast shows that we cannot produce great art now. If we could do it, weshould love it when we saw it done--if we really cared for it, we shouldrecognize it and keep it; but we don't care for it. It is not art thatwe want; it is amusement, gratification of pride, present gain--anythingin the world but art: let it rot, we shall always have enough to talkabout and hang over our sideboards. 

89. You will (I hope) finally ask me what is the outcome of all this, practicable tomorrow morning by us who are sitting here? These are themain practical outcomes of it: In the first place, don't grumble whenyou hear of a new picture being bought by Government at a large price. There are many pictures in Europe now in danger of destruction whichare, in the true sense of the word, priceless; the proper price issimply that which it is necessary to give to get and to save them. Ifyou can get them for fifty pounds, do; if not for less than a hundred, do; if not for less than five thousand, do; if not for less than twentythousand, do; never mind being imposed upon: there is nothingdisgraceful in being imposed upon; the only disgrace is in imposing;and you can't in general get anything much worth having, in the way ofContinental art, but it must be with the help or connivance of numbersof people who, indeed, ought to have nothing to do with the matter, butwho practically have, and always will have, everything to do with it;and if you don't choose to submit to be cheated by them out of a ducathere and a zecchin there, you will be cheated by them out of yourpicture; and whether you are most imposed upon in losing that, or thezecchins, I think I may leave you to judge; though I know there are manypolitical economists, who would rather leave a bag of gold on agarret-table, than give a porter sixpence extra to carry it downstairs. 

That, then, is the first practical outcome of the matter. Never grumble, but be glad when you hear of a new picture being bought at a largeprice. In the long run, the dearest pictures are always the bestbargains; and, I repeat, (for else you might think I said it in merehurry of talk, and not deliberately, ) there are some pictures which arewithout price. You should stand, nationally, at the edge of Dovercliffs--Shakespeare's--and wave blank cheques in the eyes of the nationson the other side of the sea, freely offered, for such and such canvasesof theirs. 

90. Then the next practical outcome of it is--Never buy a copy of apicture, under any circumstances whatever. All copies are bad; becauseno painter who is worth a straw ever _will_ copy. He will make a studyof a picture he likes, for his own use, in his own way; but he won't andcan't copy. Whenever you buy a copy, you buy so much misunderstanding ofthe original, and encourage a dull person in following a business he isnot fit for, besides increasing ultimately chances of mistake andimposture, and farthering, as directly as money _can_ farther, the causeof ignorance in all directions. You may, in fact, consider yourself ashaving purchased a certain quantity of mistakes; and, according to yourpower, being engaged in disseminating them. 

91. I do not mean, however, that copies should never be made. A certainnumber of dull persons should always be employed by a Government inmaking the most accurate copies possible of all good pictures; thesecopies, though artistically valueless, would be historically anddocumentarily valuable, in the event of the destruction of the originalpicture. The studies also made by great artists for their own use, should be sought after with the greatest eagerness; they are often to bebought cheap; and in connection with the mechanical copies, would becomevery precious: tracings from frescoes and other large works are also ofgreat value; for though a tracing is liable to just as many mistakes asa copy, the mistakes in a tracing are of one kind only, which may beallowed for, but the mistakes of a common copyist are of all conceivablekinds: finally, engravings, in so far as they convey certain facts aboutthe pictures, without pretending adequately to represent or give an ideaof the pictures, are often serviceable and valuable. I can't, of course, enter into details in these matters just now; only this main piece ofadvice I can safely give you--never to buy copies of pictures (for yourprivate possession) which pretend to give a facsimile that shall be inany wise representative of, or equal to, the original. Whenever you doso, you are only lowering your taste, and wasting your money. And ifyou are generous and wise, you will be ready rather to subscribe as muchas you would have given for a copy of a great picture towards itspurchase, or the purchase of some other like it, by the nation. Thereought to be a great National Society instituted for the purchase ofpictures; presenting them to the various galleries in our great cities, and watching there over their safety: but in the meantime, you canalways act safely and beneficially by merely allowing your artistfriends to buy pictures for you, when they see good ones. Never buy foryourselves, nor go to the foreign dealers; but let any painter whom youknow be entrusted, when he finds a neglected old picture in an oldhouse, to try if he cannot get it for you; then, if you like it, keepit; if not, send it to the hammer, and you will find that you do notlose money on pictures so purchased. 

92. And the third and chief practical outcome of the matter is thisgeneral one: Wherever you go, whatever you do, act more for_preservation_ and less for _production_. I assure you, the world is, generally speaking, in calamitous disorder, and just because you havemanaged to thrust some of the lumber aside, and get an available cornerfor yourselves, you think you should do nothing but sit spinning in itall day long--while, as householders and economists, your first thoughtand effort should be, to set things more square all about you. Try toset the ground floors in order, and get the rottenness out of yourgranaries. _Then_ sit and spin, but not till then. 

93. IV. DISTRIBUTION. --And now, lastly, we come to the fourth great headof our inquiry, the question of the wise distribution of the art we havegathered and preserved. It must be evident to us, at a moment's thought, that the way in which works of art are on the whole most useful to thenation to which they belong, must be by their collection in publicgalleries, supposing those galleries properly managed. But there is onedisadvantage attached necessarily to gallery exhibition--namely, theextent of mischief which may be done by one foolish curator. As long asthe pictures which form the national wealth are disposed in privatecollections, the chance is always that the people who buy them will bejust the people who are fond of them; and that the sense of exchangeablevalue in the commodity they possess, will induce them, even if they donot esteem it themselves, to take such care of it as will preserve itsvalue undiminished. At all events, so long as works of art are scatteredthrough the nation, no universal destruction of them is possible; acertain average only are lost by accidents from time to time. But whenthey are once collected in a large public gallery, if the appointment ofcurator becomes in any way a matter of formality, or the post is solucrative as to be disputed by place-hunters, let but one foolish orcareless person get possession of it, and perhaps you may have all yourfine pictures repainted, and the national property destroyed, in amonth. That is actually the case at this moment, in several greatforeign galleries. They are the places of execution of pictures: overtheir doors you only want the Dantesque inscription, "Lasciate ognisperanza, voi che entrate. "

94. Supposing, however, this danger properly guarded against, as itwould be always by a nation which either knew the value, or understoodthe meaning, of painting, [12] arrangement in a public gallery is thesafest, as well as the most serviceable, method of exhibiting pictures;and it is the only mode in which their historical value can be broughtout, and their historical meaning made clear. But great good is also tobe done by encouraging the private possession of pictures; partly as ameans of study, (much more being always discovered in any work of art bya person who has it perpetually near him than by one who only sees itfrom time to time, ) and also as a means of refining the habits andtouching the hearts of the masses of the nation in their domestic life. 

[Note 12: It would be a great point gained towards the preservationof pictures if it were made a rule that at every operation theyunderwent, the exact spots in which they have been repainted should berecorded in writing. ]

95. For these last purposes, the most serviceable art is the living artof the time; the particular tastes of the people will be best met, andtheir particular ignorances best corrected, by painters labouring in themidst of them, more or less guided to the knowledge of what is wanted bythe degree of sympathy with which their work is received. So then, generally, it should be the object of government, and of all patrons ofart, to collect, as far as may be, the works of dead masters in publicgalleries, arranging them so as to illustrate the history of nations, and the progress and influence of their arts; and to encourage theprivate possession of the works of _living_ masters. And the first andbest way in which to encourage such private possession is, of course, tokeep down the prices of them as far as you can. 

I hope there are not a great many painters in the room; if there are, Ientreat their patience for the next quarter of an hour: if they willbear with me for so long, I hope they will not, finally, be offended bywhat I am going to say. 

96. I repeat, trusting to their indulgence in the interim, that thefirst object of our national economy, as respects the distribution ofmodern art, should be steadily and rationally to limit its prices, sinceby doing so, you will produce two effects: you will make the paintersproduce more pictures, two or three instead of one, if they wish to makemoney; and you will, by bringing good pictures within the reach ofpeople of moderate income, excite the general interest of the nation inthem, increase a thousandfold the demand for the commodity, andtherefore its wholesome and natural production. 

97. I know how many objections must arise in your minds at this momentto what I say; but you must be aware that it is not possible for me inan hour to explain all the moral and commercial bearings of such aprinciple as this. Only, believe me, I do not speak lightly; I think Ihave considered all the objections which could be rationally broughtforward, though I have time at present only to glance at the mainone--namely, the idea that the high prices paid for modern pictures areeither honourable, or serviceable, to the painter. So far from thisbeing so, I believe one of the principal obstacles to the progress ofmodern art to be the high prices given for good modern pictures. Forobserve first the action of this high remuneration on the artist's mind. If he "gets on, " as it is called, catches the eye of the public, andespecially of the public of the upper classes, there is hardly any limitto the fortune he may acquire; so that, in his early years, his mind isnaturally led to dwell on this worldly and wealthy eminence as the mainthing to be reached by his art; if he finds that he is not graduallyrising towards it, he thinks there is something wrong in his work; or, if he is too proud to think that, still the bribe of wealth and honourwarps him from his honest labour into efforts to attract attention; andhe gradually loses both his power of mind and his rectitude of purpose. This, according to the degree of avarice or ambition which exists in anypainter's mind, is the necessary influence upon him of the hope of greatwealth and reputation. But the harm is still greater, in so far as thepossibility of attaining fortune of this kind tempts people continuallyto become painters who have no real gift for the work; and on whom thesemotives of mere worldly interest have exclusive influence;--men whotorment and abuse the patient workers, eclipse or thrust aside alldelicate and good pictures by their own gaudy and coarse ones, corruptthe taste of the public, and do the greatest amount of mischief to theschools of art in their day which it is possible for their capacities toeffect; and it is quite wonderful how much mischief may be done even bysmall capacity. If you could by any means succeed in keeping the pricesof pictures down, you would throw all these disturbers out of the way atonce. 

98. You may perhaps think that this severe treatment would do more harmthan good, by withdrawing the wholesome element of emulation, and givingno stimulus to exertion; but I am sorry to say that artists will alwaysbe sufficiently jealous of one another, whether you pay them large orlow prices; and as for stimulus to exertion, believe me, no good work inthis world was ever done for money, nor while the slightest thought ofmoney affected the painter's mind. Whatever idea of pecuniary valueenters into his thoughts as he works, will, in proportion to thedistinctness of its presence, shorten his power. A real painter willwork for you exquisitely, if you give him, as I told you a little whileago, bread and water and salt; and a bad painter will work badly andhastily, though you give him a palace to live in, and a princedom tolive upon. Turner got, in his earlier years, half a crown a day and hissupper (not bad pay, neither); and he learned to paint upon that. And Ibelieve that there is no chance of art's truly flourishing in anycountry, until you make it a simple and plain business, providing itsmasters with an easy competence, but rarely with anything more. And Isay this, not because I despise the great painter, but because I honourhim; and I should no more think of adding to his respectability orhappiness by giving him riches, than, if Shakespeare or Milton werealive, I should think we added to _their_ respectability, or were likelyto get better work from them, by making them millionaires. 

99. But, observe, it is not only the painter himself whom you injure, bygiving him too high prices; you injure all the inferior painters of theday. If they are modest, they will be discouraged and depressed by thefeeling that their doings are worth so little, comparatively, in youreyes;--if proud, all their worst passions will be aroused, and theinsult or opprobrium which they will try to cast on their successfulrival will not only afflict and wound him, but at last sour and hardenhim: he cannot pass through such a trial without grievous harm. 

100. That, then, is the effect you produce on the painter of mark, andon the inferior ones of his own standing. But you do worse than this;you deprive yourselves, by what you give for the fashionable picture, ofthe power of helping the younger men who are coming forward. Be itadmitted, for argument's sake, if you are not convinced by what I havesaid, that you do no harm to the great man by paying him well; yetcertainly you do him no special good. His reputation is established, andhis fortune made; he does not care whether you buy or not; he thinks heis rather doing you a favour than otherwise by letting you have one ofhis pictures at all. All the good you do him is to help him to buy a newpair of carriage horses; whereas, with that same sum which thus you castaway, you might have relieved the hearts and preserved the health oftwenty young painters; and if, among those twenty, you but chanced onone in whom a true latent power had been hindered by his poverty, justconsider what a far-branching, far-embracing good you have wrought withthat lucky expenditure of yours. I say, "Consider it, " in vain; youcannot consider it, for you cannot conceive the sickness of heart withwhich a young painter of deep feeling toils through his firstobscurity;--his sense of the strong voice within him, which you will nothear;--his vain, fond, wondering witness to the things you will notsee;--his far-away perception of things that he could accomplish if hehad but peace, and time, all unapproachable and vanishing from him, because no one will leave him peace or grant him time: all his friendsfalling back from him; those whom he would most reverently obey rebukingand paralysing him; and, last and worst of all, those who believe in himthe most faithfully suffering by him the most bitterly;--the wife'seyes, in their sweet ambition, shining brighter as the cheek wastesaway; and the little lips at his side parched and pale, which one day, he knows, though he may never see it, will quiver so proudly when theycall his name, calling him "our father. " You deprive yourselves, by yourlarge expenditure for pictures of mark, of the power of relieving andredeeming _this_ distress; you injure the painter whom you pay solargely;--and what, after all, have you done for yourselves or got foryourselves? It does not in the least follow that the hurried work of afashionable painter will contain more for your money than the quiet workof some unknown man. In all probability, you will find, if you rashlypurchase what is popular at a high price, that you have got one pictureyou don't care for, for a sum which would have bought twenty you wouldhave delighted in. 

101. For remember always, that the price of a picture by a living artistnever represents, never _can_ represent, the quantity of labour or valuein it. Its price represents, for the most part, the degree of desirewhich the rich people of the country have to possess it. Once get thewealthy classes to imagine that the possession of pictures by a givenartist adds to their "gentility, " and there is no price which his workmay not immediately reach, and for years maintain; and in buying at thatprice, you are not getting value for your money, but merely disputingfor victory in a contest of ostentation. And it is hardly possible tospend your money in a worse or more wasteful way; for though you may notbe doing it for ostentation yourself, you are, by your pertinacity, nourishing the ostentation of others; you meet them in their game ofwealth, and continue it for them; if they had not found an oppositeplayer, the game would have been done; for a proud man can find noenjoyment in possessing himself of what nobody disputes with him. Sothat by every farthing you give for a picture beyond its fairprice--that is to say, the price which will pay the painter for histime--you are not only cheating yourself and buying vanity, but you arestimulating the vanity of others; paying, literally, for the cultivationof pride. You may consider every pound that you spend above the justprice of a work of art, as an investment in a cargo of mental quick-limeor guano, which, being laid on the fields of human nature, is to grow aharvest of pride. You are in fact ploughing and harrowing, in a mostvaluable part of your land, in order to reap the whirlwind; you aresetting your hand stoutly to Job's agriculture--"Let thistles growinstead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley. "

102. Well, but you will say, there is one advantage in high prices, which more than counter-balances all this mischief, namely, that bygreat reward we both urge and enable a painter to produce rather oneperfect picture than many inferior ones: and one perfect picture (so youtell us, and we believe it) is worth a great number of inferior ones. 

It is so; but you cannot get it by paying for it. A great work is onlydone when the painter gets into the humour for it, likes his subject, and determines to paint it as well as he can, whether he is paid for itor not; but bad work, and generally the worst sort of bad work, is donewhen he is trying to produce a showy picture, or one that shall appearto have as much labour in it as shall be worth a high price. [13]

[Note 13: When this lecture was delivered, I gave here some data forapproximate estimates of the average value of good modern pictures ofdifferent classes; but the subject is too complicated to be adequatelytreated in writing, without introducing more detail than the reader willhave patience for. But I may state, roughly, that prices above a hundredguineas are in general extravagant for water-colours, and above fivehundred for oils. An artist almost always does wrong who puts more workthan these prices will remunerate him for into any single canvas--histalent would be better employed in painting two pictures than one soelaborate. The water-colour painters also are getting into the habit ofmaking their drawings too large, and in a measure attaching their pricerather to breadth and extent of touch than to thoughtful labour. Ofcourse marked exceptions occur here and there, as in the case of JohnLewis, whose drawings are wrought with unfailing precision throughout, whatever their scale. Hardly any price can be remunerative for suchwork. ]

103. There is, however, another point, and a still more important one, bearing on this matter of purchase, than the keeping down of prices toa rational standard. And that is, that you pay your prices into thehands of living men, and do not pour them into coffins. 

For observe that, as we arrange our payment of pictures at present, noartist's work is worth half its proper value while he is alive. Themoment he dies, his pictures, if they are good, reach double theirformer value; but, that rise of price represents simply a profit made bythe intelligent dealer or purchaser on his past purchases. So that thereal facts of the matter are, that the British public, spending acertain sum annually in art, determines that, of every thousand it pays, only five hundred shall go to the painter, or shall be at all concernedin the production of art; and that the other five hundred shall be paidmerely as a testimonial to the intelligent dealer, who knew what to buy. Now, testimonials are very pretty and proper things, within due limits;but testimonial to the amount of a hundred per cent. On the totalexpenditure is not good political economy. Do not, therefore, ingeneral, unless you see it to be necessary for its preservation, buy thepicture of a dead artist. If you fear that it may be exposed to contemptor neglect, buy it; its price will then, probably, not be high: if youwant to put it into a public gallery, buy it; you are sure, then, thatyou do not spend your money selfishly: or, if you loved the man's workwhile he was alive, and bought it then, buy it also now, if you can seeno living work equal to it. But if you did not buy it while the man wasliving, never buy it after he is dead: you are then doing no good tohim, and you are doing some shame to yourself. Look around you forpictures that you really like, and in buying which you can help somegenius yet unperished--that is the best atonement you can make to theone you have neglected--and give to the living and struggling painter atonce wages, and testimonial. 

104. So far then of the motives which should induce us to keep down theprices of modern art, and thus render it, as a private possession, attainable by greater numbers of people than at present. But we shouldstrive to render it accessible to them in other ways also--chiefly bythe permanent decoration of public buildings; and it is in this fieldthat I think we may look for the profitable means of providing thatconstant employment for young painters of which we were speaking lastevening. 

The first and most important kind of public buildings which we arealways sure to want, are schools: and I would ask you to consider verycarefully, whether we may not wisely introduce some great changes in theway of school decoration. Hitherto, as far as I know, it has either beenso difficult to give all the education we wanted to our lads, that wehave been obliged to do it, if at all, with cheap furniture and barewalls; or else we have considered that cheap furniture and bare wallsare a proper part of the means of education; and supposed that boyslearned best when they sat on hard forms, and had nothing but blankplaster about and above them whereupon to employ their spare attention;also, that it was as well they should be accustomed to rough and uglyconditions of things, partly by way of preparing them for the hardshipsof life, and partly that there might be the least possible damage doneto floors and forms, in the event of their becoming, during the master'sabsence, the fields or instruments of battle. All this is so far welland necessary, as it relates to the training of country lads, and thefirst training of boys in general. But there certainly comes a period inthe life of a well-educated youth, in which one of the principalelements of his education is, or ought to be, to give him refinement ofhabits; and not only to teach him the strong exercises of which hisframe is capable, but also to increase his bodily sensibility andrefinement, and show him such small matters as the way of handlingthings properly, and treating them considerately. 

105. Not only so; but I believe the notion of fixing the attention bykeeping the room empty, is a wholly mistaken one: I think it is just inthe emptiest room that the mind wanders most; for it gets restless, likea bird, for want of a perch, and casts about for any possible means ofgetting out and away. And even if it be fixed, by an effort, on thebusiness in hand, that business becomes itself repulsive, more than itneed be, by the vileness of its associations; and many a study appearsdull or painful to a boy, when it is pursued on a blotted deal desk, under a wall with nothing on it but scratches and pegs, which would havebeen pursued pleasantly enough in a curtained corner of his father'slibrary, or at the lattice window of his cottage. Now, my own belief is, that the best study of all is the most beautiful; and that a quiet gladeof forest, or the nook of a lake shore, are worth all the schoolrooms inChristendom, when once you are past the multiplication table; but bethat as it may, there is no question at all but that a time ought tocome in the life of a well-trained youth, when he can sit at awriting-table without wanting to throw the inkstand at his neighbour;and when also he will feel more capable of certain efforts of mind withbeautiful and refined forms about him than with ugly ones. When thattime comes, he ought to be advanced into the decorated schools; and thisadvance ought to be one of the important and honourable epochs of hislife. 

106. I have not time, however, to insist on the mere serviceableness toour youth of refined architectural decoration, as such; for I want youto consider the probable influence of the particular kind of decorationwhich I wish you to get for them, namely, historical painting. You knowwe have hitherto been in the habit of conveying all our historicalknowledge, such as it is, by the ear only, never by the eye; all ournotion of things being ostensibly derived from verbal description, notfrom sight. Now, I have no doubt that, as we grow gradually wiser--andwe are doing so every day--we shall discover at last that the eye is anobler organ than the ear; and that through the eye we must, in reality, obtain, or put into form, nearly all the useful information we are tohave about this world. Even as the matter stands, you will find that theknowledge which a boy is supposed to receive from verbal description isonly available to him so far as in any underhand way he gets a sight ofthe thing you are talking about. I remember well that, for many years ofmy life, the only notion I had of the look of a Greek knight wascomplicated between recollection of a small engraving in my pocketPope's Homer, and reverent study of the Horse Guards. And though Ibelieve that most boys collect their ideas from more varied sources andarrange them more carefully than I did; still, whatever sources theyseek must always be ocular: if they are clever boys, they will go andlook at the Greek vases and sculptures in the British Museum, and at theweapons in our armouries--they will see what real armour is like inlustre, and what Greek armour was like in form, and so put a fairly trueimage together, but still not, in ordinary cases, a very living orinteresting one. 

107. Now, the use of your decorative painting would be, in myriads ofways, to animate their history for them, and to put the living aspect ofpast things before their eyes as faithfully as intelligent inventioncan; so that the master shall have nothing to do but once to point tothe schoolroom walls, and for ever afterwards the meaning of any wordwould be fixed in a boy's mind in the best possible way. Is it aquestion of classical dress--what a tunic was like, or a chlamys, or apeplus? At this day, you have to point to some vile woodcut, in themiddle of a dictionary page, representing the thing hung upon a stick;but then, you would point to a hundred figures, wearing the actualdress, in its fiery colours, in all actions of various stateliness orstrength; you would understand at once how it fell round the people'slimbs as they stood, how it drifted from their shoulders as they went, how it veiled their faces as they wept, how it covered their heads inthe day of battle. _Now_, if you want to see what a weapon is like, yourefer, in like manner, to a numbered page, in which there arespear-heads in rows, and sword-hilts in symmetrical groups; andgradually the boy gets a dim mathematical notion how one scimitar ishooked to the right and another to the left, and one javelin has a knobto it and another none: while one glance at your good picture would showhim, --and the first rainy afternoon in the schoolroom would for ever fixin his mind, --the look of the sword and spear as they fell or flew; andhow they pierced, or bent, or shattered--how men wielded them, and howmen died by them. 

108. But far more than all this, is it a question not of clothes orweapons, but of men? how can we sufficiently estimate the effect on themind of a noble youth, at the time when the world opens to him, ofhaving faithful and touching representations put before him of the actsand presences of great men--how many a resolution, which would alter andexalt the whole course of his after-life, might be formed, when in somedreamy twilight he met, through his own tears, the fixed eyes of thoseshadows of the great dead, unescapable and calm, piercing to his soul;or fancied that their lips moved in dread reproof or soundlessexhortation? And if but for one out of many this were true--if yet, in afew, you could be sure that such influence had indeed changed theirthoughts and destinies, and turned the eager and reckless youth, whowould have cast away his energies on the race-horse or thegambling-table, to that noble life-race, that holy life-hazard, whichshould win all glory to himself and all good to his country, --would notthat, to some purpose, be "political economy of art"?

109. And observe, there could be no monotony, no exhaustibleness, in thescenes required to be thus portrayed. Even if there were, and youwanted for every school in the kingdom, one death of Leonidas; onebattle of Marathon; one death of Cleobis and Bito; there need nottherefore be more monotony in your art than there was in the repetitionof a given cycle of subjects by the religious painters of Italy. But weought not to admit a cycle at all. For though we had as many greatschools as we have great cities (one day I hope we _shall_ have), centuries of painting would not exhaust, in all the number of them, thenoble and pathetic subjects which might be chosen from the history ofeven one noble nation. But, beside this, you will not, in a littlewhile, limit your youths' studies to so narrow fields as you do now. There will come a time--I am sure of it--when it will be found that thesame practical results, both in mental discipline and in politicalphilosophy, are to be attained by the accurate study of medięval andmodern as of ancient history; and that the facts of medięval and modernhistory are, on the whole, the most important to us. And among thesenoble groups of constellated schools which I foresee arising in ourEngland, I foresee also that there will be divided fields of thought;and that while each will give its scholars a great general idea of theworld's history, such as all men should possess--each will also takeupon itself, as its own special duty, the closer study of the course ofevents in some given place or time. It will review the rest of history, but it will exhaust its own special field of it; and found its moral andpolitical teaching on the most perfect possible analysis of the resultsof human conduct in one place, and at one epoch. And then, the galleriesof that school will be painted with the historical scenes belonging tothe age which it has chosen for its special study. 

110. So far, then, of art as you may apply it to that great series ofpublic buildings which you devote to the education of youth. The nextlarge class of public buildings in which we should introduce it, is onewhich I think a few years more of national progress will render moreserviceable to us than they have been lately. I mean, buildings for themeetings of guilds of trades. 

And here, for the last time, I must again interrupt the course of ourchief inquiry, in order to state one other principle of politicaleconomy, which is perfectly simple and indisputable; but which, nevertheless, we continually get into commercial embarrassments for wantof understanding; and not only so, but suffer much hindrance in ourcommercial discoveries, because many of our business men do notpractically admit it. 

Supposing half a dozen or a dozen men were cast ashore from a wreck onan uninhabited island, and left to their own resources, one of course, according to his capacity, would be set to one business and one toanother; the strongest to dig and cut wood, and to build huts for therest: the most dexterous to make shoes out of bark and coats out ofskins; the best educated to look for iron or lead in the rocks, and toplan the channels for the irrigation of the fields. But though theirlabours were thus naturally severed, that small group of shipwrecked menwould understand well enough that the speediest progress was to be madeby helping each other, --not by opposing each other: and they would knowthat this help could only be properly given so long as they were frankand open in their relations, and the difficulties which each lay underproperly explained to the rest. So that any appearance of secrecy orseparateness in the actions of any of them would instantly, and justly, be looked upon with suspicion by the rest, as the sign of some selfishor foolish proceeding on the part of the individual. If, for instance, the scientific man were found to have gone out at night, unknown to therest, to alter the sluices, the others would think, and in allprobability rightly think, that he wanted to get the best supply ofwater to his own field; and if the shoemaker refused to show them wherethe bark grew which he made the sandals of, they would naturally think, and in all probability rightly think, that he didn't want them to seehow much there was of it, and that he meant to ask from them more cornand potatoes in exchange for his sandals than the trouble of making themdeserved. And thus, although each man would have a portion of time tohimself in which he was allowed to do what he chose without let orinquiry, --so long as he was working in that particular business which hehad undertaken for the common benefit, any secrecy on his part would beimmediately supposed to mean mischief; and would require to be accountedfor, or put an end to: and this all the more because whatever the workmight be, certainly there would be difficulties about it which, whenonce they were well explained, might be more or less done away with bythe help of the rest; so that assuredly every one of them would advancewith his labour not only more happily, but more profitably and quickly, by having no secrets, and by frankly bestowing, and frankly receiving, such help as lay in his way to get or to give. 

111. And, just as the best and richest result of wealth and happiness tothe whole of them would follow on their perseverance in such a system offrank communication and of helpful labour;--so precisely the worst andpoorest result would be obtained by a system of secrecy and of enmity;and each man's happiness and wealth would assuredly be diminished inproportion to the degree in which jealousy and concealment became theirsocial and economical principles. It would not, in the long run, bringgood, but only evil, to the man of science, if, instead of tellingopenly where he had found good iron, he carefully concealed every newbed of it, that he might ask, in exchange for the rare ploughshare, morecorn from the farmer, or, in exchange for the rude needle, more labourfrom the sempstress: and it would not ultimately bring good, but onlyevil, to the farmers, if they sought to burn each other's cornstacks, that they might raise the value of their grain, or if the sempstressestried to break each other's needles, that each might get all thestitching to herself. 

112. Now, these laws of human action are precisely as authoritative intheir application to the conduct of a million of men, as to that of sixor twelve. All enmity, jealousy, opposition, and secrecy are wholly, andin all circumstances, destructive in their nature--not productive; andall kindness, fellowship, and communicativeness are invariablyproductive in their operation, --not destructive; and the evil principlesof opposition and exclusiveness are not rendered less fatal, but morefatal, by their acceptance among large masses of men; more fatal, I say, exactly in proportion as their influence is more secret. For though theopposition does always its own simple, necessary, direct quantity ofharm, and withdraws always its own simple, necessary, measurablequantity of wealth from the sum possessed by the community, yet, inproportion to the size of the community, it does another and morerefined mischief than this, by concealing its own fatality under aspectsof mercantile complication and expediency, and giving rise to multitudesof false theories based on a mean belief in narrow and immediateappearances of good done here and there by things which have theuniversal and everlasting nature of evil. So that the time and powers ofthe nation are wasted, not only in wretched struggling against eachother, but in vain complaints, and groundless discouragements, and emptyinvestigations, and useless experiments in laws, and elections, andinventions; with hope always to pull wisdom through some new-shaped slitin a ballot-box, and to drag prosperity down out of the clouds alongsome new knot of electric wire; while all the while Wisdom standscalling at the corners of the streets, and the blessing of Heaven waitsready to rain down upon us, deeper than the rivers and broader than thedew, if only we will obey the first plain principles of humanity, andthe first plain precepts of the skies: "Execute true judgment, and showmercy and compassion, every man to his brother; and let none of youimagine evil against his brother in your heart. "[14]

[Note 14: It would be well if, instead of preaching continuallyabout the doctrine of faith and good works, our clergymen would simplyexplain to their people a little what good works mean. There is not achapter in all the book we profess to believe, more specially anddirectly written for England than the second of Habakkuk, and I never inall my life heard one of its practical texts preached from. I supposethe clergymen are all afraid, and know their flocks, while they will sitquite politely to hear syllogisms out of the epistle to the Romans, would get restive directly if they ever pressed a practical text home tothem. But we should have no mercantile catastrophes, and no distressfulpauperism, if we only read often, and took to heart, those plainwords:--"Yea, also, because he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and cannot be satisfied, --Shall notall these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb againsthim, and say, 'Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his: and tohim that _ladeth himself with thick clay_'?" (What a glorious history inone metaphor, of the life of a man greedy of fortune!) "Woe to him thatcoveteth an evil covetousness that he may set his nest on high. Woe tohim that buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a city byiniquity. Behold, is it not of the Lord of Hosts that the people shalllabour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for veryvanity?"

The Americans, who have been sending out ships with sham bolt-heads ontheir timbers, and only half their bolts, may meditate on that "buildetha town with blood. "]

113. Therefore, I believe most firmly, that as the laws of nationalprosperity get familiar to us, we shall more and more cast our toil intosocial and communicative systems; and that one of the first means of ourdoing so, will be the re-establishing guilds of every important trade ina vital, not formal, condition;--that there will be a great council orgovernment house for the members of every trade, built in whatever townof the kingdom occupies itself principally in such trade, with minorcouncil-halls in other cities; and to each council-hall, officersattached, whose first business may be to examine into the circumstancesof every operative, in that trade, who chooses to report himself to themwhen out of work, and to set him to work, if he is indeed able andwilling, at a fixed rate of wages, determined at regular periods in thecouncil-meetings; and whose next duty may be to bring reports before thecouncil of all improvements made in the business, and means of itsextension: not allowing private patents of any kind, but making allimprovements available to every member of the guild, only allotting, after successful trial of them, a certain reward to the inventors. 

114. For these, and many other such purposes, such halls will be again, I trust, fully established, and then, in the paintings and decorationsof them, especial effort ought to be made to express the worthiness andhonourableness of the trade for whose members they are founded. For Ibelieve one of the worst symptoms of modern society to be, its notion ofgreat inferiority, and ungentlemanliness, as necessarily belonging tothe character of a tradesman. I believe tradesmen may be, ought tobe--often are, more gentlemen than idle and useless people: and Ibelieve that art may do noble work by recording in the hall of eachtrade, the services which men belonging to that trade have done fortheir country, both preserving the portraits, and recording theimportant incidents in the lives, of those who have made great advancesin commerce and civilization. I cannot follow out this subject--itbranches too far, and in too many directions; besides, I have no doubtyou will at once see and accept the truth of the main principle, and beable to think it out for yourselves. I would fain also have saidsomething of what might be done, in the same manner, for almshouses andhospitals, and for what, as I shall try to explain in notes to thislecture, we may hope to see, some day, established with a differentmeaning in their name than that they now bear--work-houses; but I havedetained you too long already, and cannot permit myself to trespassfurther on your patience except only to recapitulate, in closing, thesimple principles respecting wealth which we have gathered during thecourse of our inquiry; principles which are nothing more than theliteral and practical acceptance of the saying which is in all goodmen's mouths--namely, that they are stewards or ministers of whatevertalents are entrusted to them. 

115. Only, is it not a strange thing, that while we more or less acceptthe meaning of that saying, so long as it is considered metaphorical, wenever accept its meaning in its own terms? You know the lesson is givenus under the form of a story about money. Money was given to theservants to make use of: the unprofitable servant dug in the earth, andhid his lord's money. Well, we, in our political and spiritualapplication of this, say, that of course money doesn't mean money: itmeans wit, it means intellect, it means influence in high quarters, itmeans everything in the world except itself. And do not you see what apretty and pleasant come-off there is for most of us, in this spiritualapplication? Of course, if we had wit, we would use it for the good ofour fellow-creatures. But we haven't wit. Of course, if we had influencewith the bishops, we would use it for the good of the Church; but wehaven't any influence with the bishops. Of course, if we had politicalpower, we would use it for the good of the nation; but we have nopolitical power; we have no talents entrusted to us of any sort or kind. It is true we have a little money, but the parable can't possibly meananything so vulgar as money; our money's our own. 

116. I believe, if you think seriously of this matter, you will feelthat the first and most literal application is just as necessary a oneas any other--that the story does very specially mean what itsays--plain money; and that the reason we don't at once believe it doesso, is a sort of tacit idea that while thought, wit, and intellect, andall power of birth and position, are indeed _given_ to us, and, therefore, to be laid out for the Giver--our wealth has not been givento us; but we have worked for it, and have a right to spend it as wechoose. I think you will find that is the real substance of ourunderstanding in this matter. Beauty, we say, is given by God--it is atalent; strength is given by God--it is a talent; position is given byGod--it is a talent; but money is proper wages for our day's work--it isnot a talent, it is a due. We may justly spend it on ourselves, if wehave worked for it. 

117. And there would be some shadow of excuse for this, were it not thatthe very power of making the money is itself only one of theapplications of that intellect or strength which we confess to betalents. Why is one man richer than another? Because he is moreindustrious, more persevering, and more sagacious. Well, who made himmore persevering or more sagacious than others? That power of endurance, that quickness of apprehension, that calmness of judgment, which enablehim to seize the opportunities that others lose, and persist in thelines of conduct in which others fail--are these not talents?--are theynot, in the present state of the world, among the most distinguished andinfluential of mental gifts? And is it not wonderful, that while weshould be utterly ashamed to use a superiority of body, in order tothrust our weaker companions aside from some place of advantage, weunhesitatingly use our superiorities of mind to thrust them back fromwhatever good that strength of mind can attain? You would be indignantif you saw a strong man walk into a theatre or a lecture-room, and, calmly choosing the best place, take his feeble neighbour by theshoulder, and turn him out of it into the back seats, or the street. Youwould be equally indignant if you saw a stout fellow thrust himself upto a table where some hungry children were being fed, and reach his armover their heads and take their bread from them. But you are not theleast indignant if, when a man has stoutness of thought and swiftness ofcapacity, and, instead of being long-armed only, has the much greatergift of being long-headed--you think it perfectly just that he shoulduse his intellect to take the bread out of the mouths of all the othermen in the town who are of the same trade with him; or use his breadthand sweep of sight to gather some branch of the commerce of the countryinto one great cobweb, of which he is himself to be the central spider, making every thread vibrate with the points of his claws, and commandingevery avenue with the facets of his eyes. You see no injustice in this. 

118. But there is injustice; and, let us trust, one of which honourablemen will at no very distant period disdain to be guilty. In some degree, however, it is indeed not unjust; in some degree, it is necessary andintended. It is assuredly just that idleness should be surpassed byenergy; that the widest influence should be possessed by those who arebest able to wield it; and that a wise man, at the end of his career, should be better off than a fool. But for that reason, is the fool to bewretched, utterly crushed down, and left in all the suffering which hisconduct and capacity naturally inflict?--Not so. What do you supposefools were made for? That you might tread upon them, and starve them, and get the better of them in every possible way? By no means. They weremade that wise people might take care of them. That is the true andplain fact concerning the relations of every strong and wise man to theworld about him. He has his strength given him, not that he may crushthe weak, but that he may support and guide them. In his own householdhe is to be the guide and the support of his children; out of hishousehold he is still to be the father--that is, the guide andsupport--of the weak and the poor; not merely of the meritoriously weakand the innocently poor, but of the guiltily and punishably poor; of themen who ought to have known better--of the poor who ought to be ashamedof themselves. It is nothing to give pension and cottage to the widowwho has lost her son; it is nothing to give food and medicine to theworkman who has broken his arm, or the decrepit woman wasting insickness. But it is something to use your time and strength to war withthe waywardness and thoughtlessness of mankind; to keep the erringworkman in your service till you have made him an unerring one; and todirect your fellow-merchant to the opportunity which his dulness wouldhave lost. This is much; but it is yet more, when you have fullyachieved the superiority which is due to you, and acquired the wealthwhich is the fitting reward of your sagacity, if you solemnly accept theresponsibility of it, as it is the helm and guide of labour far andnear. 

119. For you who have it in your hands are in reality the pilots of thepower and effort of the State. It is entrusted to you as an authority tobe used for good or evil, just as completely as kingly authority wasever given to a prince, or military command to a captain. And, accordingto the quantity of it that you have in your hands, you are the arbitersof the will and work of England; and the whole issue, whether the workof the State shall suffice for the State or not, depends upon you. Youmay stretch out your sceptre over the heads of the English labourers, and say to them, as they stoop to its waving, "Subdue this obstacle thathas baffled our fathers, put away this plague that consumes ourchildren; water these dry places, plough these desert ones, carry thisfood to those who are in hunger; carry this light to those who are indarkness; carry this life to those who are in death;" or on the otherside you may say to her labourers: "Here am I; this power is in my hand;come, build a mound here for me to be throned upon, high and wide; come, make crowns for my head, that men may see them shine from far away;come, weave tapestries for my feet, that I may tread softly on the silkand purple; come, dance before me, that I may be gay; and sing sweetlyto me, that I may slumber; so shall I live in joy, and die in honour. "And better than such an honourable death it were that the day hadperished wherein we were born, and the night in which it was said thereis a child conceived. 

120. I trust that in a little while there will be few of our rich menwho, through carelessness or covetousness, thus forfeit the gloriousoffice which is intended for their hands. I said, just now, that wealthill-used was as the net of the spider, entangling and destroying: butwealth well used is as the net of the sacred fisher who gathers souls ofmen out of the deep. A time will come--I do not think even now it isfar from us--when this golden net of the world's wealth will be spreadabroad as the flaming meshes of morning cloud are over the sky; bearingwith them the joy of light and the dew of the morning, as well as thesummons to honourable and peaceful toil. What less can we hope from yourwealth than this, rich men of England, when once you feel fully how, bythe strength of your possessions--not, observe, by the exhaustion, butby the administration of them and the power, --you can direct theacts--command the energies--inform the ignorance--prolong the existence, of the whole human race; and how, even of worldly wisdom, which manemploys faithfully, it is true, not only that her ways are pleasantness, but that her paths are peace; and that, for all the children of men, aswell as for those to whom she is given, Length of days is in her righthand, as in her left hand Riches and Honour?

ADDENDA

Note, p. 18. --"_Fatherly authority. _"

121. This statement could not, of course, be heard without displeasureby a certain class of politicians; and in one of the notices of theselectures given in the Manchester journals at the time, endeavour wasmade to get quit of it by referring to the Divine authority, as the onlyPaternal power with respect to which men were truly styled "brethren. "Of course it is so, and, equally of course, all human government isnothing else than the executive expression of this Divine authority. Themoment government ceases to be the practical enforcement of Divine law, it is tyranny; and the meaning which I attach to the words "paternalgovernment, " is, in more extended terms, simply this--"The executivefulfilment, by formal human methods, of the will of the Father ofmankind respecting His children. " I could not give such a definition ofGovernment as this in a popular lecture; and even in written form, itwill necessarily suggest many objections, of which I must notice andanswer the most probable. 

Only, in order to avoid the recurrence of such tiresome phrases as "itmay be answered in the second place, " and "it will be objected in thethird place, " etc. , I will ask the reader's leave to arrange thediscussion in the form of simple dialogue, letting _O. _ stand forobjector, and _R. _ for response. 

122. _O. _--You define your paternal government to be the executivefulfilment, by formal human methods, of the Divine will. But, assuredly, that will cannot stand in need of aid or expression from human laws. Itcannot fail of its fulfilment. 

_R. _ 122. In the final sense it cannot; and in that sense, men who arecommitting murder and stealing are fulfilling the will of God as much asthe best and kindest people in the world. But in the limited and presentsense, the only sense with which _we_ have anything to do, God's willconcerning man is fulfilled by some men, and thwarted by others. Andthose men who either persuade or enforce the doing of it, stand towardsthose who are rebellious against it exactly in the position of faithfulchildren in a family, who, when the father is out of sight, eithercompel or persuade the rest to do as their father would have them, werehe present; and in so far as they are expressing and maintaining, forthe time, the paternal authority, they exercise, in the exact sense inwhich I mean the phrase to be understood, paternal government over therest. 

_O. _--But, if Providence has left a liberty to man in many things inorder to prove him, why should human law abridge that liberty, and takeupon itself to compel what the great Lawgiver does not compel?

123. _R. _--It is confessed, in the enactment of any law whatsoever, thathuman lawgivers have a right to do this. For, if you have no right toabridge any of the liberty which Providence has left to man, you have noright to punish any one for committing murder or robbery. You ought toleave them to the punishment of God and Nature. But if you thinkyourself under obligation to punish, as far as human laws can, theviolation of the will of God by these great sins, you are certainlyunder the same obligation to punish, with proportionately lesspunishment, the violation of His will in less sins. 

_O. _--No; you must not attempt to punish less sins by law, because youcannot properly define nor ascertain them. Everybody can determinewhether murder has been committed or not, but you cannot determine howfar people have been unjust or cruel in minor matters, and thereforecannot make or execute laws concerning minor matters. 

_R. _--If I propose to you to punish faults which cannot be defined, orto execute laws which cannot be made equitable, reject the laws Ipropose. But do not generally object to the principle of law. 

_O. _--Yes; I generally object to the principle of law as applied tominor things; because, if you could succeed (which you cannot) inregulating the entire conduct of men by law in little things as well asgreat, you would take away from human life all its probationarycharacter, and render many virtues and pleasures impossible. You wouldreduce virtue to the movement of a machine, instead of the act of aspirit. 

124. _R. _--You have just said, parenthetically, and I fully andwillingly admit it, that it is impossible to regulate all minor mattersby law. Is it not probable, therefore, that the degree in which it is_possible_ to regulate them by it, is also the degree in which it is_right_ to regulate them by it? Or what other means of judgment will youemploy, to separate the things which ought to be formally regulated fromthe things which ought not? You admit that great sins should be legallyrepressed; but you say that small sins should not be legally repressed. How do you distinguish between great and small sins? and how do youintend to determine, or do you in practice of daily life determine, onwhat occasions you should compel people to do right, and on whatoccasions you should leave them the option of doing wrong?

_O. _--I think you cannot make any accurate or logical distinction insuch matters; but that common sense and instinct have, in all civilisednations, indicated certain crimes of great social harmfulness, such asmurder, theft, adultery, slander, and such like, which it is proper torepress legally; and that common sense and instinct indicate also thekind of crimes which it is proper for laws to let alone, such asmiserliness, ill-natured speaking, and many of those commercialdishonesties which I have a notion you want your paternal government tointerfere with. 

_R. _--Pray do not alarm yourself about what my paternal government islikely to interfere with, but keep to the matter in hand. You say that"common sense and instinct" have, in all civilised nations, distinguished between the sins that ought to be legally dealt with andthat ought not. Do you mean that the laws of all civilised nations areperfect?

_O. _--No; certainly not. 

_R. _--Or that they are perfect at least in their discrimination of whatcrimes they should deal with, and what crimes they should let alone?

_O. _--No; not exactly. 

_R. _--What _do_ you mean, then?

125. _O. _--I mean that the general tendency is right in the laws ofcivilised nations; and that, in due course of time, natural sense andinstinct point out the matters they should be brought to bear upon. Andeach question of legislation must be made a separate subject of inquiryas it presents itself: you cannot fix any general principles about whatshould be dealt with legally, and what should not. 

_R. _--Supposing it to be so, do you think there are any points in whichour English legislation is capable of amendment, as it bears oncommercial and economical matters, in this present time?

_O. _--Of course I do. 

_R. _--Well, then, let us discuss these together quietly; and if thepoints that I want amended seem to you incapable of amendment, or not inneed of amendment, say so: but don't object, at starting, to the mereproposition of applying law to things which have not had law applied tothem before. You have admitted the fitness of my expression, "paternalgovernment": it only has been, and remains, a question between us, howfar such government should extend. Perhaps you would like it only toregulate, among the children, the length of their lessons; and perhaps Ishould like it also to regulate the hardness of their cricket-balls: butcannot you wait quietly till you know what I want it to do, beforequarrelling with the thing itself?

_O. _--No; I cannot wait quietly; in fact, I don't see any use inbeginning such a discussion at all, because I am quite sure from thefirst, that you want to meddle with things that you have no businesswith, and to interfere with healthy liberty of action in all sorts ofways; and I know that you can't propose any laws that would be of realuse. [15]

[Note 15: If the reader is displeased with me for putting thisfoolish speech into his mouth, I entreat his pardon; but he may beassured that it is a speech which would be made by many people, and thesubstance of which would be tacitly felt by many more, at this point ofthe discussion. I have really tried, up to this point, to make theobjector as intelligent a person as it is possible for an author toimagine anybody to be who differs with him. ]

126. _R. _--If you indeed know that, you would be wrong to hear me anyfarther. But if you are only in painful doubt about me, which makes youunwilling to run the risk of wasting your time, I will tell youbeforehand what I really do think about this same liberty of action, namely, that whenever we can make a perfectly equitable law about anymatter, or even a law securing, on the whole, more just conduct thanunjust, we ought to make that law; and that there will yet, on theseconditions, always remain a number of matters respecting which legalismand formalism are impossible; enough, and more than enough, to exerciseall human powers of individual judgment, and afford all kinds of scopeto individual character. I think this; but of course it can only beproved by separate examination of the possibilities of formal restraintin each given field of action; and these two lectures are nothing morethan a sketch of such a detailed examination in one field, namely, thatof art. You will find, however, one or two other remarks on suchpossibilities in the next note. 

 * * * * *

Note 2nd, p. 21. --"_Right to public support. _"

127. It did not appear to me desirable, in the course of the spokenlecture, to enter into details or offer suggestions on the questions ofthe regulation of labour and distribution of relief, as it would havebeen impossible to do so without touching on many disputed or disputablepoints, not easily handled before a general audience. But I must nowsupply what is wanting to make my general statement clear. 

I believe, in the first place, that no Christian nation has any businessto see one of its members in distress without helping him, though, perhaps, at the same time punishing him: help, of course--in nine casesout of ten--meaning guidance, much more than gift, and, therefore, interference with liberty. When a peasant mother sees one of hercareless children fall into a ditch, her first proceeding is to pull himout; her second, to box his ears; her third, ordinarily, to lead himcarefully a little way by the hand, or send him home for the rest of theday. The child usually cries, and very often would clearly preferremaining in the ditch; and if he understood any of the terms ofpolitics, would certainly express resentment at the interference withhis individual liberty: but the mother has done her duty. Whereas theusual call of the mother nation to any of her children, under suchcircumstances, has lately been nothing more than the foxhunter's, --"Staystill there; I shall clear you. " And if we always _could_ clear them, their requests to be left in muddy independence might be sometimesallowed by kind people, or their cries for help disdained by unkindones. But we can't clear them. The whole nation is, in fact, boundtogether, as men are by ropes on a glacier--if one falls, the rest musteither lift him or drag him along with them[16] as dead weight, notwithout much increase of danger to themselves. And the law of rightbeing manifestly in this--as, whether manifestly or not, it is always, the law of prudence--the only question is, how this wholesome help andinterference are to be administered. 

[Note 16: It is very curious to watch the efforts of twoshop-keepers to ruin each other, neither having the least idea that hisruined neighbour must eventually be supported at his own expense, withan increase of poor rates; and that the contest between them is not inreality which shall get everything for himself, but which shall firsttake upon himself and his customers the gratuitous maintenance of theother's family. ]

128. The first interference should be in education. In order that menmay be able to support themselves when they are grown, their strengthmust be properly developed while they are young; and the State shouldalways see to this--not allowing their health to be broken by too earlylabour, nor their powers to be wasted for want of knowledge. Somequestions connected with this matter are noticed farther on under thehead "trial schools": one point I must notice here, that I believe allyouths, of whatever rank, ought to learn some manual trade thoroughly;for it is quite wonderful how much a man's views of life are cleared bythe attainment of the capacity of doing any one thing well with hishands and arms. For a long time, what right life there was in the upperclasses of Europe depended in no small degree on the necessity whicheach man was under of being able to fence; at this day, the most usefulthings which boys learn at public schools are, I believe, riding, rowing, and cricketing. But it would be far better that members ofParliament should be able to plough straight, and make a horseshoe, thanonly to feather oars neatly or point their toes prettily in stirrups. Then, in literary and scientific teaching, the great point of economy isto give the discipline of it through knowledge which will immediatelybear on practical life. Our literary work has long been economicallyuseless to us because too much concerned with dead languages; and ourscientific work will yet, for some time, be a good deal lost, becausescientific men are too fond or too vain of their systems, and waste thestudent's time in endeavouring to give him large views, and make himperceive interesting connections of facts; when there is not onestudent, no, nor one man, in a thousand, who can feel the beauty of asystem, or even take it clearly into his head; but nearly all men canunderstand, and most will be interested in, the facts which bear ondaily life. Botanists have discovered some wonderful connection betweennettles and figs, which a cowboy who will never see a ripe fig in hislife need not be at all troubled about; but it will be interesting tohim to know what effect nettles have on hay, and what taste they willgive to porridge; and it will give him nearly a new life if he can begot but once, in a spring time, to look well at the beautiful circlet ofwhite nettle blossom, and work out with his schoolmaster the curves ofits petals, and the way it is set on its central mast. So, the principleof chemical equivalents, beautiful as it is, matters far less to apeasant boy, and even to most sons of gentlemen, than their knowing howto find whether the water is wholesome in the back-kitchen cistern, orwhether the seven-acre field wants sand or chalk. 

129. Having, then, directed the studies of our youth so as to make thempractically serviceable men at the time of their entrance into life, that entrance should always be ready for them in cases where theirprivate circumstances present no opening. There ought to be governmentestablishments for every trade, in which all youths who desired itshould be received as apprentices on their leaving school; and menthrown out of work received at all times. At these governmentmanufactories the discipline should be strict, and the wages steady, notvarying at all in proportion to the demand for the article, but only inproportion to the price of food; the commodities produced being laid upin store to meet sudden demands, and sudden fluctuations in pricesprevented:--that gradual and necessary fluctuation only being allowedwhich is properly consequent on larger or more limited supply of rawmaterial and other natural causes. When there was a visible tendency toproduce a glut of any commodity, that tendency should be checked bydirecting the youth at the government schools into other trades; and theyearly surplus of commodities should be the principal means ofgovernment provisions for the poor. That provision should be large, andnot disgraceful to them. At present there are very strange notions inthe public mind respecting the receiving of alms: most people arewilling to take them in the form of a pension from government, butunwilling to take them in the form of a pension from their parishes. There may be some reason for this singular prejudice, in the fact of thegovernment pension being usually given as a definite acknowledgment ofsome service done to the country;--but the parish pension is, or oughtto be, given precisely on the same terms. A labourer serves his countrywith his spade, just as a man in the middle ranks of life serves it withhis sword, pen, or lancet: if the service is less, and therefore thewages during health less, then the reward, when health is broken, may beless, but not, therefore, less honourable; and it ought to be quite asnatural and straight-forward a matter for a labourer to take hispension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, asfor a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, becausehe has deserved well of his country. 

130. If there be any disgrace in coming to the parish, because it mayimply improvidence in early life, much more is there disgrace in comingto the government: since improvidence is far less justifiable in ahighly educated than in an imperfectly educated man; and far lessjustifiable in a high rank, where extravagance must have been luxury, than in a low rank, where it may only have been comfort. So that thereal fact of the matter is, that people will take alms delightedly, consisting of a carriage and footmen, because those do not look likealms to the people in the street; but they will not take alms consistingonly of bread and water and coals, because everybody would understandwhat those meant. Mind, I do not want any one to refuse the carriage whoought to have it; but neither do I want them to refuse the coals. Ishould indeed be sorry if any change in our views on these subjectsinvolved the least lessening of self-dependence in the English mind: butthe common shrinking of men from the acceptance of public charity isnot self-dependence, but mere base and selfish pride. It is not thatthey are unwilling to live at their neighbours' expense, but that theyare unwilling to confess they do: it is not dependence they wish toavoid, but gratitude. They will take places in which they know there isnothing to be done--they will borrow money they know they cannotrepay--they will carry on a losing business with other people'scapital--they will cheat the public in their shops, or sponge on theirfriends at their houses; but to say plainly they are poor men, who needthe nation's help and go into an almshouse, --this they loftilyrepudiate, and virtuously prefer being thieves to being paupers. 

131. I trust that these deceptive efforts of dishonest men to appearindependent, and the agonizing efforts of unfortunate men to remainindependent, may both be in some degree checked by a betteradministration and understanding of laws respecting the poor. But theordinances for relief and the ordinances for labour must go together;otherwise distress caused by misfortune will always be confounded, asit is now, with distress caused by idleness, unthrift, and fraud. It isonly when the State watches and guides the middle life of men, that itcan, without disgrace to them, protect their old age, acknowledging inthat protection that they have done their duty, or at least some portionof their duty, in better days. 

I know well how strange, fanciful, or impracticable these suggestionswill appear to most of the business men of this day; men who conceivethe proper state of the world to be simply that of a vast anddisorganized mob, scrambling each for what he can get, trampling downits children and old men in the mire, and doing what work it finds_must_ be done with any irregular squad of labourers it can bribe orinveigle together, and afterwards scatter to starvation. A great dealmay, indeed, be done in this way by a nation strong-elbowed andstrong-hearted as we are--not easily frightened by pushing, nordiscouraged by falls. But it is still not the right way of doing things, for people who call themselves Christians. Every so named soul of manclaims from every other such soul, protection and education inchildhood, --help or punishment in middle life, --reward or relief, ifneeded, in old age; all of these should be completely and unstintinglygiven; and they can only be given by the organization of such a systemas I have described. 

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Note 3rd, p. 27. --"_Trial Schools. _"

132. It may be seriously questioned by the reader how much of paintingtalent we really lose on our present system, [17] and how much we shouldgain by the proposed trial schools. For it might be thought that, asmatters stand at present, we have more painters than we ought to have, having so many bad ones, and that all youths who had true painters'genius forced their way out of obscurity. 

[Note 17: It will be observed that, in the lecture, it is _assumed_that works of art are national treasures; and that it is desirable towithdraw all the hands capable of painting or carving from otheremployments, in order that they may produce this kind of wealth. I donot, in assuming this, mean that works of art add to the monetaryresources of a nation, or form part of its wealth, in the vulgar sense. The result of the sale of a picture in the country itself is merely thata certain sum of money is transferred from the hands of B, thepurchaser, to those of A, the producer; the sum ultimately to bedistributed remaining the same, only A ultimately spending it instead ofB, while the labour of A has been in the meantime withdrawn fromproductive channels; he has painted a picture which nobody can liveupon, or live in, when he might have grown corn or built houses: whenthe sale therefore is effected in the country itself, it does not addto, but diminishes, the monetary resources of the country, except onlyso far as it may appear probable, on other grounds, that A is likely tospend the sum he receives for his picture more rationally and usefullythan B would have spent it. If, indeed, the picture, or other work ofart, be sold in foreign countries, either the money or the usefulproducts of the foreign country being imported in exchange for it, suchsale adds to the monetary resources of the selling, and diminishes thoseof the purchasing nation. But sound political economy, strange as it mayat first appear to say so, has nothing whatever to do with separationsbetween national interests. Political economy means the management ofthe affairs of _citizens_; and it either regards exclusively theadministration of the affairs of one nation, or the administration ofthe affairs of the world considered as one nation. So when a transactionbetween individuals which enriches A impoverishes B in precisely thesame degree, the sound economist considers it an unproductivetransaction between the individuals; and if a trade between two nationswhich enriches one, impoverishes the other in the same degree, the soundeconomist considers it an unproductive trade between the nations. It isnot a general question of political economy, but only a particularquestion of local expediency, whether an article, in itself valueless, may bear a value of exchange in transactions with some other nation. Theeconomist considers only the actual value of the thing done or produced;and if he sees a quantity of labour spent, for instance, by the Swiss, in producing woodwork for sale to the English, he at once sets thecommercial impoverishment of the English purchaser against thecommercial enrichment of the Swiss seller; and considers the wholetransaction productive only as far as the woodwork itself is a realaddition to the wealth of the world. For the arrangement of the laws ofa nation so as to procure the greatest advantages to itself, and leavethe smallest advantages to other nations, is not a part of the scienceof political economy, but merely a broad application of the science offraud. Considered thus in the abstract, pictures are not an _addition_to the monetary wealth of the world, except in the amount of pleasure orinstruction to be got out of them day by day: but there is a certainprotective effect on wealth exercised by works of high art which mustalways be included in the estimate of their value. Generally speaking, persons who decorate their houses with pictures will not spend so muchmoney in papers, carpets, curtains, or other expensive and perishableluxuries as they would otherwise. Works of good art, like books, exercise a conservative effect on the rooms they are kept in; and thewall of the library or picture gallery remains undisturbed, when thoseof other rooms are repapered or re-panelled. Of course this effect isstill more definite when the picture is on the walls themselves, eitheron canvas stretched into fixed shapes on their panels, or in fresco;involving, of course, the preservation of the building from allunnecessary and capricious alteration. And, generally speaking, theoccupation of a large number of hands in painting or sculpture in anynation may be considered as tending to check the disposition to indulgein perishable luxury. I do not, however, in my assumption that works ofart are treasures, take much into consideration this collateral monetaryresult. I consider them treasures, merely as permanent means of pleasureand instruction; and having at other times tried to show the severalways in which they can please and teach, assume here that they are thususeful, and that it is desirable to make as many painters as we can. ]

This is not so. It is difficult to analyse the characters of mind whichcause youths to mistake their vocation, and to endeavour to becomeartists, when they have no true artist's gift. But the fact is, thatmultitudes of young men do this, and that by far the greater number ofliving artists are men who have mistaken their vocation. The peculiarcircumstances of modern life, which exhibit art in almost every form tothe sight of the youths in our great cities, have a natural tendency tofill their imaginations with borrowed ideas, and their minds withimperfect science; the mere dislike of mechanical employments, eitherfelt to be irksome, or believed to be degrading, urges numbers of youngmen to become painters, in the same temper in which they would enlist orgo to sea; others, the sons of engravers or artists, taught the businessof the art by their parents, and having no gift for it themselves, follow it as the means of livelihood, in an ignoble patience; or, ifambitious, seek to attract regard, or distance rivalry, by fantastic, meretricious, or unprecedented applications of their mechanical skill;while finally, many men, earnest in feeling, and conscientious inprinciple, mistake their desire to be useful for a love of art, andtheir quickness of emotion for its capacity, and pass their lives inpainting moral and instructive pictures, which might almost justify usin thinking nobody could be a painter but a rogue. On the other hand, Ibelieve that much of the best artistical intellect is daily lost inother avocations. Generally, the temper which would make an admirableartist is humble and observant, capable of taking much interest inlittle things, and of entertaining itself pleasantly in the dullestcircumstances. Suppose, added to these characters, a steadyconscientiousness which seeks to do its duty wherever it may be placed, and the power, denied to few artistical minds, of ingenious invention inalmost any practical department of human skill, and it can hardly bedoubted that the very humility and conscientiousness which would haveperfected the painter, have in many instances prevented his becomingone; and that in the quiet life of our steady craftsmen--sagaciousmanufacturers, and uncomplaining clerks--there may frequently beconcealed more genius than ever is raised to the direction of ourpublic works, or to be the mark of our public praises. 

133. It is indeed probable, that intense disposition for art willconquer the most formidable obstacles, if the surrounding circumstancesare such as at all to present the idea of such conquest to the mind; butwe have no ground for concluding that Giotto would ever have been morethan a shepherd, if Cimabue had not by chance found him drawing; or thatamong the shepherds of the Apennines there were no other Giottos, undiscovered by Cimabue. We are too much in the habit of consideringhappy accidents as what are called 'special Providences'; and thinkingthat when any great work needs to be done, the man who is to do it willcertainly be pointed out by Providence, be he shepherd or seaboy; andprepared for his work by all kinds of minor providences, in the bestpossible way. Whereas all the analogies of God's operations in othermatters prove the contrary of this; we find that "of thousand seeds, Heoften brings but one to bear, " often not one; and the one seed which Heappoints to bear is allowed to bear crude or perfect fruit according tothe dealings of the husbandman with it. And there cannot be a doubt inthe mind of any person accustomed to take broad and logical views of theworld's history, that its events are ruled by Providence in preciselythe same manner as its harvests; that the seeds of good and evil arebroadcast among men, just as the seeds of thistles and fruits are; andthat according to the force of our industry, and wisdom of ourhusbandry, the ground will bring forth to us figs or thistles. So thatwhen it seems needed that a certain work should be done for the world, and no man is there to do it, we have no right to say that God did notwish it to be done; and therefore sent no men able to do it. Theprobability (if I wrote my own convictions, I should say certainty) is, that He sent many men, hundreds of men, able to do it; and that we haverejected them, or crushed them; by our previous folly of conduct or ofinstitution, we have rendered it impossible to distinguish, orimpossible to reach them; and when the need for them comes, and wesuffer for the want of them, it is not that God refuses to send usdeliverers, and specially appoints all our consequent sufferings; butthat He has sent, and we have refused, the deliverers; and the pain isthen wrought out by His eternal law, as surely as famine is wrought outby eternal law for a nation which will neither plough nor sow. No lessare we in error in supposing, as we so frequently do, that if a man befound, he is sure to be in all respects fitted for the work to be done, as the key is to the lock: and that every accident which happened in theforging him, only adapted him more truly to the wards. It is pitiful tohear historians beguiling themselves and their readers, by tracing inthe early history of great men the minor circumstances which fitted themfor the work they did, without ever taking notice of the othercircumstances which as assuredly unfitted them for it; so concludingthat miraculous interposition prepared them in all points foreverything, and that they did all that could have been desired or hopedfor from them; whereas the certainty of the matter is that, throughouttheir lives, they were thwarted and corrupted by some things ascertainly as they were helped and disciplined by others; and that, inthe kindliest and most reverent view which can justly be taken of them, they were but poor mistaken creatures, struggling with a world moreprofoundly mistaken than they;--assuredly sinned against or sinning inthousands of ways, and bringing out at last a maimed result--not whatthey might or ought to have done, but all that could be done against theworld's resistance, and in spite of their own sorrowful falsehood tothemselves. 

134. And this being so, it is the practical duty of a wise nation, firstto withdraw, as far as may be, its youth from destructiveinfluences;--then to try its material as far as possible, and to losethe use of none that is good. I do not mean by "withdrawing fromdestructive influences" the keeping of youths out of trials; but thekeeping them out of the way of things purely and absolutely mischievous. I do not mean that we should shade our green corn in all heat, andshelter it in all frost, but only that we should dyke out the inundationfrom it, and drive the fowls away from it. Let your youth labour andsuffer; but do not let it starve, nor steal, nor blaspheme. 

135. It is not, of course, in my power here to enter into details ofschemes of education; and it will be long before the results ofexperiments now in progress will give data for the solution of the mostdifficult questions connected with the subject, of which the principalone is the mode in which the chance of advancement in life is to beextended to all, and yet made compatible with contentment in the pursuitof lower avocations by those whose abilities do not qualify them for thehigher. But the general principle of trial schools lies at the root ofthe matter--of schools, that is to say, in which the knowledge offeredand discipline enforced shall be all a part of a great assay of thehuman soul, and in which the one shall be increased, the other directed, as the tried heart and brain will best bear, and no otherwise. Onething, however, I must say, that in this trial I believe all emulationto be a false motive, and all giving of prizes a false means. All thatyou can depend upon in a boy, as significative of true power, likely toissue in good fruit, is his will to work for the work's sake, not hisdesire to surpass his school-fellows; and the aim of the teaching yougive him ought to be, to prove to him and strengthen in him his ownseparate gift, not to puff him into swollen rivalry with those who areeverlastingly greater than he: still less ought you to hang favours andribands about the neck of the creature who is the greatest, to make therest envy him. Try to make them love him and follow him, not strugglewith him. 

136. There must, of course, be examination to ascertain and attest bothprogress and relative capacity; but our aim should be to make thestudents rather look upon it as a means of ascertaining their own truepositions and powers in the world, than as an arena in which to carryaway a present victory. I have not, perhaps, in the course of thelecture, insisted enough on the nature of relative capacity andindividual character, as the roots of all real _value_ in Art. We aretoo much in the habit, in these days, of acting as if Art worth a pricein the market were a commodity which people could be generally taught toproduce, and as if the _education_ of the artist, not his _capacity_, gave the sterling value to his work. No impression can possibly be moreabsurd or false. Whatever people can teach each other to do, they willestimate, and ought to estimate, only as common industry; nothing willever fetch a high price but precisely that which cannot be taught, andwhich nobody can do but the man from whom it is purchased. No state ofsociety, nor stage of knowledge, ever does away with the naturalpre-eminence of one man over another; and it is that pre-eminence, andthat only, which will give work high value in the market, or which oughtto do so. It is a bad sign of the judgment, and bad omen for theprogress, of a nation, if it supposes itself to possess many artists ofequal merit. Noble art is nothing less than the expression of a greatsoul; and great souls are not common things. If ever we confound theirwork with that of others, it is not through liberality, but throughblindness. 

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Note 4th, p. 28. --"_Public favour. _"

137. There is great difficulty in making any short or general statementof the difference between great and ignoble minds in their behaviour tothe 'public. ' It is by no means _universally_ the case that a mean mind, as stated in the text, will bend itself to what you ask of it: on thecontrary, there is one kind of mind, the meanest of all, whichperpetually complains of the public, and contemplates and proclaimsitself as a 'genius, ' refuses all wholesome discipline or humble office, and ends in miserable and revengeful ruin; also, the greatest minds aremarked by nothing more distinctly than an inconceivable humility, andacceptance of work or instruction in any form, and from any quarter. They will learn from everybody, and do anything that anybody asks ofthem, so long as it involves only toil, or what other men would thinkdegradation. But the point of quarrel, nevertheless, assuredly risessome day between the public and them, respecting some matter, not ofhumiliation, but of Fact. Your great man always at last comes to seesomething the public don't see. This something he will assuredly persistin asserting, whether with tongue or pencil, to be as _he_ sees it, notas _they_ see it; and all the world in a heap on the other side, willnot get him to say otherwise. Then, if the world objects to the saying, he may happen to get stoned or burnt for it, but that does not in theleast matter to him; if the world has no particular objection to thesaying, he may get leave to mutter it to himself till he dies, and bemerely taken for an idiot; that also does not matter to him--mutter ithe will, according to what he perceives to be fact, and not at allaccording to the roaring of the walls of Red Sea on the right hand orleft of him. Hence the quarrel, sure at some time or other to be startedbetween the public and him; while your mean man, though he will spit andscratch spiritedly at the public, while it does not attend to him, willbow to it for its clap in any direction, and say anything when he hasgot its ear, which he thinks will bring him another clap; and thus, asstated in the text, he and it go on smoothly together. 

There are, however, times when the obstinacy of the mean man looks verylike the obstinacy of the great one; but if you look closely into thematter, you will always see that the obstinacy of the first is in thepronunciation of "I;" and of the second, in the pronunciation of "It. "

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Note 5th, p. 56. --"_Invention of new wants. _"

138. It would have been impossible for political economists long to haveendured the error spoken of in the text, [18] had they not been confusedby an idea, in part well founded, that the energies and refinements, aswell as the riches of civilised life, arose from imaginary wants. It isquite true, that the savage who knows no needs but those of food, shelter, and sleep, and after he has snared his venison and patched therents of his hut, passes the rest of his time in animal repose, is in alower state than the man who labours incessantly that he may procure forhimself the luxuries of civilisation; and true also, that the differencebetween one and another nation in progressive power depends in greatpart on vain desires; but these idle motives are merely to beconsidered as giving exercise to the national body and mind; they arenot sources of wealth, except so far as they give the habits of industryand acquisitiveness. If a boy is clumsy and lazy, we shall do good if wecan persuade him to carve cherry-stones and fly kites; and this use ofhis fingers and limbs may eventually be the cause of his becoming awealthy and happy man; but we must not therefore argue thatcherry-stones are valuable property, or that kite-flying is a profitablemode of passing time. In like manner, a nation always wastes its timeand labour _directly_, when it invents a new want of a frivolous kind, and yet the invention of such a want may be the sign of a healthyactivity, and the labour undergone to satisfy the new want may lead, _indirectly_, to useful discoveries or to noble arts; so that a nationis not to be discouraged in its fancies when it is either too weak orfoolish to be moved to exertion by anything but fancies, or has attendedto its serious business first. If a nation will not forge iron, butlikes distilling lavender, by all means give it lavender to distil; onlydo not let its economists suppose that lavender is as profitable to itas oats, or that it helps poor people to live, any more than theschoolboy's kite provides him his dinner. Luxuries, whether national orpersonal, must be paid for by labour withdrawn from useful things; andno nation has a right to indulge in them until all its poor arecomfortably housed and fed. 

[Note 18: I have given the political economist too much credit insaying this. Actually, while these sheets are passing through the press, the blunt, broad, unmitigated fallacy is enunciated, formally andprecisely, by the common councilmen of New York, in their report on thepresent commercial crisis. Here is their collective opinion, publishedin the _Times_ of November 23rd, 1857:--"Another erroneous idea is thatluxurious living, extravagant dressing, splendid turn-outs and finehouses, are the cause of distress to a nation. No more erroneousimpression could exist. Every extravagance that the man of 100, 000 or1, 000, 000 dollars indulges in adds to the means, the support, the wealthof ten or a hundred who had little or nothing else but their labour, their intellect, or their taste. If a man of 1, 000, 000 dollars spendsprincipal and interest in ten years, and finds himself beggared at theend of that time, he has actually made a hundred who have catered to hisextravagance, employers or employed, so much richer by the division ofhis wealth. He may be ruined, but the nation is better off and richer, for one hundred minds and hands, with 10, 000 dollars apiece, are farmore productive than one with the whole. "

Yes, gentlemen of the common council; but what has been doing in thetime of the transfer? The spending of the fortune has taken a certainnumber of years (suppose ten), and during that time 1, 000, 000 dollars'worth of work has been done by the people, who have been paid that sumfor it. Where is the product of that work? By your own statements, wholly consumed; for the man for whom it has been done is now a beggar. You have given therefore, as a nation, 1, 000, 000 dollars' worth of work, and ten years of time, and you have produced, as ultimate result, onebeggar. Excellent economy, gentlemen! and sure to conduce, in duesequence, to the production of _more_ than one beggar. Perhaps thematter may be made clearer to you, however, by a more familiar instance. If a schoolboy goes out in the morning with five shillings in hispocket, and comes home penniless, having spent his all in tarts, principal and interest are gone, and fruiterer and baker are enriched. So far so good. But suppose the schoolboy, instead, has bought a bookand a knife; principal and interest are gone, and book-seller and cutlerare enriched. But the schoolboy is enriched also, and may help hisschool-fellows next day with knife and book, instead of lying in bed andincurring a debt to the doctor. ]

139. The enervating influence of luxury, and its tendencies to increasevice, are points which I keep entirely out of consideration in thepresent essay; but, so far as they bear on any question discussed, theymerely furnish additional evidence on the side which I have taken. Thus, in the present case, I assume that the luxuries of civilized life are inpossession harmless, and in acquirement serviceable as a motive forexertion; and even on those favourable terms, we arrive at theconclusion that the nation ought not to indulge in them except undersevere limitations. Much less ought it to indulge in them if thetemptation consequent on their possession, or fatality incident to theirmanufacture, more than counter-balances the good done by the effort toobtain them. 

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Note 6th, p. 74. --"_Economy of literature. _"

140. I have been much impressed lately by one of the results of thequantity of our books; namely, the stern impossibility of gettinganything understood, that required patience to understand. I observealways, in the case of my own writings, that if ever I state anythingwhich has cost me any trouble to ascertain, and which, therefore, willprobably require a minute or two of reflection from the reader before itcan be accepted, --that statement will not only be misunderstood, but inall probability taken to mean something very nearly the reverse of whatit does mean. Now, whatever faults there may be in my modes ofexpression, I know that the words I use will always be found, byJohnson's dictionary, to bear, first of all, the sense I use them in;and that the sentences, whether awkwardly turned or not, will, by theordinary rules of grammar, bear no other interpretation than that I meanthem to bear; so that the misunderstanding of them must result, ultimately, from the mere fact that their matter sometimes requires alittle patience. And I see the same kind of misinterpretation put onthe words of other writers, whenever they require the same kind ofthought. 

141. I was at first a little despondent about this; but, on the whole, Ibelieve it will have a good effect upon our literature for some time tocome; and then, perhaps, the public may recover its patience again. Forcertainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he mustsay all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader issure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his readerwill certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact maybe told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more thananything else. And though I often hear moral people complaining of thebad effects of want of thought, for my part, it seems to me that one ofthe worst diseases to which the human creature is liable is its diseaseof thinking. If it would only just _look_[19] at a thing instead ofthinking what it must be like, or _do_ a thing instead of thinking itcannot be done, we should all get on far better. 

[Note 19: There can be no question, however, of the mischievoustendency of the hurry of the present day, in the way people undertakethis very _looking_. I gave three years' close and incessant labour tothe examination of the chronology of the architecture of Venice; twolong winters being wholly spent in the drawing of details on the spot;and yet I see constantly that architects who pass three or four days ina gondola going up and down the Grand Canal, think that their firstimpressions are just as likely to be true as my patiently wroughtconclusions. Mr. Street, for instance, glances hastily at the faēade ofthe Ducal Palace--so hastily that he does not even see what its patternis, and misses the alternation of red and black in the centres of itssquares--and yet he instantly ventures on an opinion on the chronologyof its capitals, which is one of the most complicated and difficultsubjects in the whole range of Gothic archęology. It may, nevertheless, be ascertained with very fair probability of correctness by any personwho will give a month's hard work to it, but it can be ascertained nootherwise. ]

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Note 7th, p. 147. --"_Pilots of the State. _"

142. While, however, undoubtedly, these responsibilities attach to everyperson possessed of wealth, it is necessary both to avoid any stringencyof statement respecting the benevolent modes of spending money, and toadmit and approve so much liberty of spending it for selfish pleasuresas may distinctly make wealth a personal _reward_ for toil, and securein the minds of all men the right of property. For although, withoutdoubt, the purest pleasures it can procure are not selfish, it is onlyas a means of personal gratification that it will be desired by a largemajority of workers; and it would be no less false ethics than falsepolicy to check their energy by any forms of public opinion which borehardly against the wanton expenditure of honestly got wealth. It wouldbe hard if a man who has passed the greater part of his life at the deskor counter could not at last innocently gratify a caprice; and all thebest and most sacred ends of almsgiving would be at once disappointed, if the idea of a moral claim took the place of affectionate gratitude inthe mind of the receiver. 

143. Some distinction is made by us naturally in this respect betweenearned and inherited wealth; that which is inherited appearing toinvolve the most definite responsibilities, especially when consistingin revenues derived from the soil. The form of taxation whichconstitutes rental of lands places annually a certain portion of thenational wealth in the hands of the nobles, or other proprietors of thesoil, under conditions peculiarly calculated to induce them to givetheir best care to its efficient administration. The want ofinstruction in even the simplest principles of commerce and economy, which hitherto has disgraced our schools and universities, has indeedbeen the cause of ruin or total inutility of life to multitudes of ourmen of estate; but this deficiency in our public education cannot existmuch longer, and it appears to be highly advantageous for the State thata certain number of persons distinguished by race should be permitted toset examples of wise expenditure, whether in the advancement of science, or in patronage of art and literature; only they must see to it thatthey take their right standing more firmly than they have done hitherto, for the position of a rich man in relation to those around him is, inour present real life, and is also contemplated generally by politicaleconomists as being, precisely the reverse of what it ought to be. Arich man ought to be continually examining how he may spend his moneyfor the advantage of others: at present, others are continually plottinghow they may beguile him into spending it apparently for his own. Theaspect which he presents to the eyes of the world is generally that ofa person holding a bag of money with a staunch grasp, and resolved topart with none of it unless he is forced, and all the people about himare plotting how they may force him: that is to say, how they maypersuade him that he wants this thing or that; or how they may producethings that he will covet and buy. One man tries to persuade him that hewants perfumes; another that he wants jewellery; another that he wantssugarplums; another that he wants roses at Christmas. Anybody who caninvent a new want for him is supposed to be a benefactor to society: andthus the energies of the poorer people about him are continuallydirected to the production of covetable, instead of serviceable, things;and the rich man has the general aspect of a fool, plotted against bythe world. Whereas the real aspect which he ought to have is that of aperson wiser than others, entrusted with the management of a largerquantity of capital, which he administers for the profit of all, directing each man to the labour which is most healthy for him, and mostserviceable for the community. 

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Note 8th, p. 148. --"_Silk and purple. _"

144. In various places throughout these lectures I have had to allude tothe distinction between productive and unproductive labour, and betweentrue and false wealth. I shall here endeavour, as clearly as I can, toexplain the distinction I mean. 

Property may be divided generally into two kinds; that which produceslife, and that which produces the objects of life. That which producesor maintains life consists of food, in so far as it is nourishing; offurniture and clothing, in so far as they are protective or cherishing;of fuel; and of all land, instruments, or materials necessary to producefood, houses, clothes, and fuel. It is specially and rightly calleduseful property. 

The property which produces the objects of life consists of all thatgives pleasure or suggests and preserves thought: of food, furniture, and land, in so far as they are pleasing to the appetite or the eye; ofluxurious dress, and all other kinds of luxuries; of books, pictures, and architecture. But the modes of connection of certain minor forms ofproperty with human labour render it desirable to arrange them undermore than these two heads. Property may therefore be convenientlyconsidered as of five kinds. 

145. (1) Property necessary to life, but not producible by labour, andtherefore belonging of right, in a due measure, to every human being assoon as he is born, and morally inalienable. As for instance, his propershare of the atmosphere, without which he cannot breathe, and of water, which he needs to quench his thirst. As much land as he needs to feedfrom is also inalienable; but in well-regulated communities thisquantity of land may often be represented by other possessions, or itsneed supplied by wages and privileges. 

(2) Property necessary to life, but only producible by labour, and ofwhich the possession is morally connected with labour, so that no personcapable of doing the work necessary for its production has a right to ituntil he has done that work;--"he that will not work, neither should heeat. " It consists of simple food, clothing, and habitation, with theirseeds and materials, or instruments and machinery, and animals used fornecessary draught or locomotion, etc. It is to be observed of this kindof property, that its increase cannot usually be carried beyond acertain point, because it depends not on labour only, but on things ofwhich the supply is limited by nature. The possible accumulation of corndepends on the quantity of corn-growing land possessed or commerciallyaccessible; and that of steel, similarly on the accessible quantity ofcoal and iron-stone. It follows from this natural limitation of supplythat the accumulation of property of this kind in large masses at onepoint, or in one person's hands, commonly involves, more or less, thescarcity of it at another point and in other persons' hands; so that theaccidents or energies which may enable one man to procure a great dealof it, may, and in all likelihood will, partially prevent other menprocuring a sufficiency of it, however willing they may be to work forit; therefore, the modes of its accumulation and distribution need to bein some degree regulated by law and by national treaties, in order tosecure justice to all men. 

Another point requiring notice respecting this sort of property is, thatno work can be wasted in producing it, provided only the kind of itproduced be preservable and distributable, since for every grain of suchcommodities we produce we are rendering so much more life possible onearth. [20] But though we are sure, thus, that we are employing peoplewell, we cannot be sure we might not have employed them _better_; for itis possible to direct labour to the production of life, until little ornone is left for that of the objects of life, and thus to increasepopulation at the expense of civilization, learning, and morality: onthe other hand, it is just as possible--and the error is one to whichthe world is, on the whole, more liable--to direct labour to the objectsof life till too little is left for life, and thus to increase luxury orlearning at the expense of population. Right political economy holds itsaim poised justly between the two extremes, desiring neither to crowdits dominions with a race of savages, nor to found courts and collegesin the midst of a desert. 

[Note 20: This point has sometimes been disputed; for instance, opening Mill's 'Political Economy' the other day, I chanced on a passagein which he says that a man who makes a coat, if the person who wearsthe coat does nothing useful while he wears it, has done no more good tosociety than the man who has only raised a pineapple. But this is afallacy induced by endeavour after too much subtlety. None of us have aright to say that the life of a man is of no use to _him_, though it maybe of no use to _us_; and the man who made the coat, and therebyprolonged another man's life, has done a gracious and useful work, whatever may come of the life so prolonged. We may say to the wearer ofthe coat, "You who are wearing coats, and doing nothing in them, are atpresent wasting your own life and other people's;" but we have no rightto say that his existence, however wasted, is wasted _away_. It may bejust dragging itself on, in its thin golden line, with nothing dependentupon it, to the point where it is to strengthen into good chain cable, and have thousands of other lives dependent on it. Meantime, the simplefact respecting the coat-maker is, that he has given so much life to thecreature, the results of which he cannot calculate; they may be--in allprobability will be--infinite results in some way. But the raiser ofpines, who has only given a pleasant taste in the mouth to some one, maysee with tolerable clearness to the end of the taste in the mouth, andof all conceivable results therefrom. ]

146. (3) The third kind of property is that which conduces to bodilypleasures and conveniences, without directly tending to sustain life;perhaps sometimes indirectly tending to destroy it. All dainty (asdistinguished from nourishing) food, and means of producing it; allscents not needed for health; substances valued only for theirappearance and rarity (as gold and jewels); flowers of difficultculture; animals used for delight (as horses for racing), and suchlike, form property of this class; to which the term 'luxury, ' or'luxuries, ' ought exclusively to belong. 

Respecting which we have to note, first, that all such property is ofdoubtful advantage even to its possessor. Furniture tempting toindolence, sweet odours, and luscious food, are more or less injuriousto health: while jewels, liveries, and other such common belongings ofwealthy people, certainly convey no pleasure to their ownersproportionate to their cost. 

Farther, such property, for the most part, perishes in the using. Jewelsform a great exception--but rich food, fine dresses, horses andcarriages, are consumed by the owner's use. It ought much oftener to bebrought to the notice of rich men what sums of interest of money theyare paying towards the close of their lives, for luxuries consumed inthe middle of them. It would be very interesting, for instance, to knowthe exact sum which the money spent in London for ices, at its dessertsand balls, during the last twenty years, had it been saved and put outat compound interest, would at this moment have furnished for usefulpurposes. 

Also, in most cases, the enjoyment of such property is wholly selfish, and limited to its possessor. Splendid dress and equipage, however, whenso arranged as to produce real beauty of effect, may often be rather agenerous than a selfish channel of expenditure. They will, however, necessarily in such cases involve some of the arts of design; andtherefore take their place in a higher category than that of luxuriesmerely. 

147. (4) The fourth kind of property is that which bestows intellectualor emotional pleasure, consisting of land set apart for purposes ofdelight more than for agriculture, of books, works of art, and objectsof natural history. 

It is, of course, impossible to fix an accurate limit between propertyof the last class and of this class, since things which are a mereluxury to one person are a means of intellectual occupation to another. Flowers in a London ball-room are a luxury; in a botanical garden, adelight of the intellect; and in their native fields, both; while themost noble works of art are continually made material of vulgar luxuryor of criminal pride; but, when rightly used, property of this fourthclass is the only kind which deserves the name of _real_ property, it isthe only kind which a man can truly be said to 'possess. ' What a maneats, or drinks, or wears, so long as it is only what is needful forlife, can no more be thought of as his possession than the air hebreathes. The air is as needful to him as the food; but we do not talkof a man's wealth of air, and what food or clothing a man possesses morethan he himself requires must be for others to use (and, to him, therefore, not a real property in itself, but only a means of obtainingsome real property in exchange for it). Whereas the things that giveintellectual or emotional enjoyment may be accumulated, and do notperish in using; but continually supply new pleasures and new powers ofgiving pleasures to others. And these, therefore, are the only thingswhich can rightly be thought of as giving 'wealth' or 'well being. ' Foodconduces only to 'being, ' but these to '_well_ being. ' And there is notany broader general distinction between lower and higher orders of menthan rests on their possession of this real property. The human racemay be properly divided by zoologists into "men who have gardens, libraries, or works of art; and those who have none;" and the formerclass will include all noble persons, except only a few who make theworld their garden or museum; while the people who have not, or, whichis the same thing, do not care for gardens or libraries, but care fornothing but money or luxuries, will include none but ignoble persons:only it is necessary to understand that I mean by the term 'garden' asmuch the Carthusian's plot of ground fifteen feet square between hismonastery buttresses, as I do the grounds of Chatsworth or Kew; and Imean by the term 'art' as much the old sailor's print of the _Arethusa_bearing up to engage the _Belle Poule_, as I do Raphael's "Disputa, " andeven rather more; for when abundant, beautiful possessions of this kindare almost always associated with vulgar luxury, and become thenanything but indicative of noble character in their possessors. Theideal of human life is a union of Spartan simplicity of manners withAthenian sensibility and imagination; but in actual results, we arecontinually mistaking ignorance for simplicity, and sensuality forrefinement. 

148. (5) The fifth kind of property is representative property, consisting of documents or money, or rather documents only--for moneyitself is only a transferable document, current among societies of men, giving claim, at sight, to some definite benefit or advantage, mostcommonly to a certain share of real property existing in thosesocieties. The money is only genuine when the property it gives claim tois real, or the advantages it gives claim to certain; otherwise, it isfalse money, and may be considered as much 'forged' when issued by agovernment, or a bank, as when by an individual. Thus, if a dozen ofmen, cast ashore on a desert island, pick up a number of stones, put ared spot on each stone, and pass a law that every stone marked with ared spot shall give claim to a peck of wheat;--so long as no wheatexists, or can exist, on the island, the stones are not money. But themoment as much wheat exists as shall render it possible for the societyalways to give a peck for every spotted stone, the spotted stones wouldbecome money, and might be exchanged by their possessors for whateverother commodities they chose, to the value of the peck of wheat whichthe stones represented. If more stones were issued than the quantity ofwheat could answer the demand of, the value of the stone coinage wouldbe depreciated, in proportion to its increase above the quantity neededto answer it. 

149. Again, supposing a certain number of the men so cast ashore wereset aside by lot, or any other convention, to do the rougher labournecessary for the whole society, they themselves being maintained by thedaily allotment of a certain quantity of food, clothing, etc. Then, ifit were agreed that the stones spotted with red should be signs of aGovernment order for the labour of these men; and that any personpresenting a spotted stone at the office of the labourers, should beentitled to a man's work for a week or a day, the red stones would bemoney; and might--probably would--immediately pass current in the islandfor as much food, or clothing, or iron, or any other article, as a man'swork for the period secured by the stone was worth. But if theGovernment issued so many spotted stones that it was impossible for thebody of men they employed to comply with the orders, --as, suppose, ifthey only employed twelve men, and issued eighteen spotted stones daily, ordering a day's work each, --then the six extra stones would be forgedor false money; and the effect of this forgery would be the depreciationof the value of the whole coinage by one-third, that being the period ofshortcoming which would, on the average, necessarily ensue in theexecution of each order. Much occasional work may be done in a state orsociety, by help of an issue of false money (or false promises) by wayof stimulants; and the fruit of this work, if it comes into thepromiser's hands, may sometimes enable the false promises at last to befulfilled: hence the frequent issue of false money by governments andbanks, and the not unfrequent escapes from the natural and properconsequences of such false issues, so as to cause a confused conceptionin most people's minds of what money really is. I am not sure whethersome quantity of such false issue may not really be permissible in anation, accurately proportioned to the minimum average produce of thelabour it excites; but all such procedures are more or less unsound;and the notion of unlimited issue of currency is simply one of theabsurdest and most monstrous that ever came into disjointed human wits. 

150. The use of objects of real or supposed value for currency, as gold, jewellery, etc. , is barbarous; and it always expresses either themeasure of the distrust in the society of its own government, or theproportion of distrustful or barbarous nations with whom it has to deal. A metal not easily corroded or imitated, it is a desirable medium ofcurrency for the sake of cleanliness and convenience, but, were itpossible to prevent forgery, the more worthless the metal itself, thebetter. The use of worthless media, unrestrained by the use of valuablemedia, has always hitherto involved, and is therefore supposed toinvolve necessarily, unlimited, or at least improperly extended, issue;but we might as well suppose that a man must necessarily issue unlimitedpromises because his words cost nothing. Intercourse with foreignnations must, indeed, for ages yet to come, at the world's present rateof progress, be carried on by valuable currencies; but suchtransactions are nothing more than forms of barter. The gold used atpresent as a currency is not, in point of fact, currency at all, but thereal property[21] which the currency gives claim to, stamped to measureits quantity, and mingling with the real currency occasionally bybarter. 

151. The evils necessarily resulting from the use of baseless currencieshave been terribly illustrated while these sheets have been passingthrough the press; I have not had time to examine the various conditionsof dishonest or absurd trading which have led to the late 'panic' inAmerica and England; this only I know, that no merchant deserving thename ought to be more liable to 'panic' than a soldier should; for hisname should never be on more paper than he can at any instant meet thecall of, happen what will. I do not say this without feeling at the sametime how difficult it is to mark, in existing commerce, the just limitsbetween the spirit of enterprise and of speculation. Something of thesame temper which makes the English soldier do always all that ispossible, and attempt more than is possible, joins its influence withthat of mere avarice in tempting the English merchant into risks whichhe cannot justify, and efforts which he cannot sustain; and the samepassion for adventure which our travellers gratify every summer onperilous snow wreaths, and cloud-encompassed precipices, surrounds witha romantic fascination the glittering of a hollow investment, and gildsthe clouds that curl round gulfs of ruin. Nay, a higher and a moreserious feeling frequently mingles in the motley temptation; and menapply themselves to the task of growing rich, as to a labour ofprovidential appointment, from which they cannot pause withoutculpability, nor retire without dishonour. Our large trading citiesbear to me very nearly the aspect of monastic establishments in whichthe roar of the mill-wheel and the crane takes the place of otherdevotional music; and in which the worship of Mammon or Moloch isconducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety; the merchantrising to his Mammon matins with the self-denial of an anchorite, andexpiating the frivolities into which he may be beguiled in the course ofthe day by late attendance at Mammon vespers. But, with every allowancethat can be made for these conscientious and romantic persons, the factremains the same, that by far the greater number of the transactionswhich lead to these times of commercial embarrassment may be rangedsimply under two great heads--gambling and stealing; and both of thesein their most culpable form, namely, gambling with money which is notours, and stealing from those who trust us. I have sometimes thought aday might come, when the nation would perceive that a well-educated manwho steals a hundred thousand pounds, involving the entire means ofsubsistence of a hundred families, deserves, on the whole, as severe apunishment as an ill-educated man who steals a purse from a pocket, ora mug from a pantry. 

[Note 21: Or rather, equivalent to such real property, becauseeverybody has been accustomed to look upon it as valuable; and thereforeeverybody is willing to give labour or goods for it. But real propertydoes ultimately consist only in things that nourish body or mind; goldwould be useless to us if we could not get mutton or books for it. Ultimately all commercial mistakes and embarrassments result from peopleexpecting to get goods without working for them, or wasting them afterthey have got them. A nation which labours, and takes care of the fruitsof labour, would be rich and happy though there were no gold in theuniverse. A nation which is idle, and wastes the produce of what work itdoes, would be poor and miserable, though all its mountains were ofgold, and had glens filled with diamond instead of glacier. ]

152. But without hoping for this excess of clear-sightedness, we may atleast labour for a system of greater honesty and kindness in the minorcommerce of our daily life; since the great dishonesty of the greatbuyers and sellers is nothing more than the natural growth and outcomefrom the little dishonesty of the little buyers and sellers. Everyperson who tries to buy an article for less than its proper value, orwho tries to sell it at more than its proper value--every consumer whokeeps a tradesman waiting for his money, and every tradesman who bribesa consumer to extravagance by credit, is helping forward, according tohis own measure of power, a system of baseless and dishonourablecommerce, and forcing his country down into poverty and shame. Andpeople of moderate means and average powers of mind would do far morereal good by merely carrying out stern principles of justice and honestyin common matters of trade, than by the most ingenious schemes ofextended philanthropy, or vociferous declarations of theologicaldoctrine. There are three weighty matters of the law--justice, mercy, and truth; and of these the Teacher puts truth last, because that cannotbe known but by a course of acts of justice and love. But men put, inall their efforts, truth first, because they mean by it their ownopinions; and thus, while the world has many people who would suffermartyrdom in the cause of what they call truth, it has few who willsuffer even a little inconvenience, in that of justice and mercy. 

SUPPLEMENTARY ADDITIONAL PAPERS. 

EDUCATION IN ART. 

ART SCHOOL NOTES. 

SOCIAL POLICY. 

EDUCATION IN ART. 

(_Read for the author before the National Association for the Promotionof Social Science in the autumn of 1858; and printed in the Transactionsof the Society for that year, pp. 311-16. _)

153. I will not attempt in this paper to enter into any generalconsideration of the possible influence of art on the masses of thepeople. The inquiry is one of great complexity, involved with that intothe uses and dangers of luxury; nor have we as yet data enough tojustify us in conjecturing how far the practice of art may be compatiblewith rude or mechanical employments. But the question, howeverdifficult, lies in the same light as that of the uses of reading orwriting; for drawing, so far as it is possible to the multitude, ismainly to be considered as a means of obtaining and communicatingknowledge. He who can accurately represent the form of an object, andmatch its colour, has unquestionably a power of notation anddescription greater in most instances than that of words; and thisscience of notation ought to be simply regarded as that which isconcerned with the record of form, just as arithmetic is concerned withthe record of number. Of course abuses and dangers attend theacquirement of every power. We have all of us probably known personswho, without being able to read or write, discharged the importantduties of life wisely and faithfully; as we have also without doubtknown others able to read and write whose reading did little good tothemselves and whose writing little good to any one else. But we do nottherefore doubt the expediency of acquiring those arts, neither ought weto doubt the expediency of acquiring the art of drawing, if we admitthat it may indeed become practically useful. 

154. Nor should we long hesitate in admitting this, it we were not inthe habit of considering instruction in the arts chiefly as a means ofpromoting what we call "taste" or dilettanteism, and other habits ofmind which in their more modern developments in Europe have certainlynot been advantageous to nations, or indicative of worthiness in them. Nevertheless, true taste, or the instantaneous preference of the noblething to the ignoble, is a necessary accompaniment of high worthiness innations or men; only it is not to be acquired by seeking it as our chiefobject, since the first question, alike for man and for multitude, isnot at all what they are to like, but what they are to do; andfortunately so, since true taste, so far as it depends on originalinstinct, is not equally communicable to all men; and, so far as itdepends on extended comparison, is unattainable by men employed innarrow fields of life. We shall not succeed in making a peasant'sopinion good evidence on the merits of the Elgin and Lycian marbles; noris it necessary to dictate to him in his garden the preference ofgillyflower or of rose; yet I believe we may make art a means of givinghim helpful and happy pleasure, and of gaining for him serviceableknowledge. 

155. Thus, in our simplest codes of school instruction, I hope some dayto see local natural history assume a principal place, so that ourpeasant children may be taught the nature and uses of the herbs thatgrow in their meadows, and may take interest in observing andcherishing, rather than in hunting or killing, the harmless animals oftheir country. Supposing it determined that this local natural historyshould be taught, drawing ought to be used to fix the attention, andtest, while it aided, the memory. "Draw such and such a flower inoutline, with its bell towards you. Draw it with its side towards you. Paint the spots upon it. Draw a duck's head--her foot. Now a robin's--athrush's--now the spots upon the thrush's breast. " These are the kindsof tasks which it seems to me should be set to the young peasantstudent. Surely the occupation would no more be thought contemptiblewhich was thus subservient to knowledge and to compassion; and perhapswe should find in process of time that the Italian connexion of art with_diletto_, or delight, was both consistent with, and even mainlyconsequent upon, a pure Greek connexion of art with _arete_, or virtue. 

156. It may perhaps be thought that the power of representing in anysufficient manner natural objects such as those above instanced would beof too difficult attainment to be aimed at in elementary instruction. But I have had practical proof that it is not so. From workmen who hadlittle time to spare, and that only after they were jaded by the day'slabour, I have obtained, in the course of three or four months fromtheir first taking a pencil in hand, perfectly useful, and in manyrespects admirable, drawings of natural objects. It is, however, necessary, in order to secure this result, that the student's aim shouldbe absolutely restricted to the representation of visible fact. All morevaried or elevated practice must be deferred until the powers of truesight and just representation are acquired in simplicity; nor, in thecase of children belonging to the lower classes, does it seem to meoften advisable to aim at anything more. At all events, their drawinglessons should be made as recreative as possible. Undergoing duediscipline of hard labour in other directions, such children should bepainlessly initiated into employments calculated for the relief of toil. It is of little consequence that they should know the principles of art, but of much that their attention should be pleasurably excited. In ourhigher public schools, on the contrary, drawing should be taughtrightly; that is to say, with due succession and security of preliminarysteps, --it being here of little consequence whether the student attainsgreat or little skill, but of much that he should perceive distinctlywhat degree of skill he has attained, reverence that which surpasses it, and know the principles of right in what he has been able to accomplish. It is impossible to make every boy an artist or a connoisseur, but quitepossible to make him understand the meaning of art in its rudiments, andto make him modest enough to forbear expressing, in after life, judgments which he has not knowledge enough to render just. 

157. There is, however, at present this great difficulty in the way ofsuch systematic teaching--that the public do not believe the principlesof art are determinable, and, in no wise, matters of opinion. They donot believe that good drawing is good, and bad drawing bad, whatever anynumber of persons may think or declare to the contrary--that there is aright or best way of laying colours to produce a given effect, just asthere is a right or best way of dyeing cloth of a given colour, andthat Titian and Veronese are not merely accidentally admirable buteternally right. 

158. The public, of course, cannot be convinced of this unity andstability of principle until clear assertion of it is made to them bypainters whom they respect; and the painters whom they respect aregenerally too modest, and sometimes too proud, to make it. I believe thechief reason for their not having yet declared at least the fundamentallaws of labour as connected with art-study is a kind of feeling on theirpart that "_cela va sans dire_. " Every great painter knows so well thenecessity of hard and systematized work, in order to attain even thelower degrees of skill, that he naturally supposes if people use nodiligence in drawing, they do not care to acquire the power of it, andthat the toil involved in wholesome study being greater than the mass ofpeople have ever given, is also greater than they would ever be willingto give. Feeling, also, as any real painter feels, that his ownexcellence is a gift, no less than the reward of toil, perhaps slightlydisliking to confess the labour it has cost him to perfect it, andwholly despairing of doing any good by the confession, hecontemptuously leaves the drawing-master to do the best he can in histwelve lessons, and with courteous unkindness permits the young women ofEngland to remain under the impression that they can learn to draw withless pains than they can learn to dance. I have had practical experienceenough, however, to convince me that this treatment of the amateurstudent is unjust. Young girls will work with steadiest perseverancewhen once they understand the need of labour, and are convinced thatdrawing is a kind of language which may for ordinary purposes be learnedas easily as French or German; this language, also, having its grammarand its pronunciation, to be conquered or acquired only by persistencein irksome exercise--an error in a form being as entirely and simply anerror as a mistake in a tense, and an ill-drawn line as reprehensible asa vulgar accent. 

159. And I attach great importance to the sound education of our youngerfemales in art, thinking that in England the nursery and thedrawing-room are perhaps the most influential of academies. We addressourselves in vain to the education of the artist while the demand forhis work is uncertain or unintelligent; nor can art be considered ashaving any serious influence on a nation while gilded papers form theprincipal splendour of the reception room, and ill-wrought though costlytrinkets the principal entertainment of the boudoir. 

It is surely, therefore, to be regretted that the art-education of ourGovernment schools is addressed so definitely to the guidance of theartizan, and is therefore so little acknowledged hitherto by the generalpublic, especially by its upper classes. I have not acquaintance enoughwith the practical working of that system to venture any expression ofopinion respecting its general expediency; but it is my conviction that, so far as references are involved in it to the designing of patternscapable of being produced by machinery, such references must materiallydiminish its utility considered as a general system of instruction. 

160. We are still, therefore, driven to the same point, --the need of anauthoritative recommendation of some method of study to the public; amethod determined upon by the concurrence of some of our best painters, and avowedly sanctioned by them, so as to leave no room for hesitationin its acceptance. 

Nor need it be thought that, because the ultimate methods of workemployed by painters vary according to the particular effects producedby each, there would be any difficulty in obtaining their collectiveassent to a system of elementary precept. The facts of which it isnecessary that the student should be assured in his early efforts, areso simple, so few, and so well known to all able draughtsmen that, as Ihave just said, it would be rather doubt of the need of stating whatseemed to them self-evident, than reluctance to speak authoritatively onpoints capable of dispute, that would stand in the way of their givingform to a code of general instruction. To take merely two instances: Itwill perhaps appear hardly credible that among amateur students, howeverfar advanced in more showy accomplishments, there will not be found onein a hundred who can make an accurate drawing to scale. It is much ifthey can copy anything with approximate fidelity of its real size. Now, the inaccuracy of eye which prevents a student from drawing to scale isin fact nothing else than an entire want of appreciation of proportion, and therefore of composition. He who alters the relations of dimensionsto each other in his copy, shows that he does not enjoy those relationsin the original--that is to say, that all appreciation of noble design(which is based on the most exquisite relations of magnitude) isimpossible to him. To give him habits of mathematical accuracy intransference of the outline of complex form, is therefore among thefirst, and even among the most important, means of educating his taste. A student who can fix with precision the cardinal points of a bird'swing, extended in any fixed position, and can then draw the curves ofits individual plumes without measurable error, has advanced furthertowards a power of understanding the design of the great masters than hecould by reading many volumes of criticism, or passing many months inundisciplined examination of works of art. 

161. Again, it will be found that among amateur students there is almostuniversal deficiency in the power of expressing the roundness of asurface. They frequently draw with considerable dexterity and vigour, but never attain the slightest sense of those modulations in form whichcan only be expressed by gradations in shade. They leave sharp edges totheir blots of colour, sharp angles in their contours of lines, andconceal from themselves their incapacity of completion by redundance ofobject. The assurance to such persons that no object could be rightlyseen or drawn until the draughtsman had acquired the power of modulatingsurfaces by gradations wrought with some pointed instrument (whetherpen, pencil, or chalk), would at once prevent much vain labour, and putan end to many errors of that worst kind which not only retard thestudent, but blind him; which prevent him from either attainingexcellence himself, or understanding it in others. 

162. It would be easy, did time admit it, to give instances of otherprinciples which it is equally essential that the student should know, and certain that all painters of eminence would sanction; while eventhose respecting which some doubt may exist in their application toconsummate practice, are yet perfectly determinable, so far as they areneeded to guide a beginner. It may, for instance, be a question how farlocal colour should be treated as an element of chiaroscuro in amaster's drawing of the human form. But there can be no question that itmust be so treated in a boy's study of a tulip or a trout. 

163. A still more important point would be gained if authoritativetestimony of the same kind could be given to the merit and exclusivesufficiency of any series of examples of works of art, such as could atonce be put within the reach of masters of schools. For the modernstudent labours under heavy disadvantages in what at first sight mightappear an assistance to him, namely, the number of examples of manydifferent styles which surround him in galleries or museums. His mind isdisturbed by the inconsistencies of various excellences, and by his ownpredilection for false beauties in second or third-rate works. He isthus prevented from observing any one example long enough to understandits merit, or following any one method long enough to obtain facility inits practice. It seems, therefore, very desirable that some suchstandard of art should be fixed for all our schools, --a standard which, it must be remembered, need not necessarily be the highest possible, provided only it is the rightest possible. It is not to be hoped thatthe student should imitate works of the most exalted merit, but much tobe desired that he should be guided by those which have fewest faults. 

164. Perhaps, therefore, the most serviceable examples which could beset before youth might be found in the studies or drawings, rather thanin the pictures, of first-rate masters; and the art of photographyenables us to put renderings of such studies, which for most practicalpurposes are as good as the originals, on the walls of every school inthe kingdom. Supposing (I merely name these as examples of what I mean), the standard of manner in light-and-shade drawing fixed by Leonardo'sstudy, No. 19, in the collection of photographs lately published fromdrawings in the Florence Gallery; the standard of pen drawing with awash, fixed by Titian's sketch, No. 30 in the same collection; that ofetching, fixed by Rembrandt's spotted shell; and that of point work withthe pure line, by Dürer's crest with the cock; every effort of thepupil, whatever the instrument in his hand, would infallibly tend in aright direction, and the perception of the merits of these four works, or of any others like them, once attained thoroughly, by efforts, however distant or despairing, to copy portions of them, would leadsecurely in due time to the appreciation of other modes of excellence. 

165. I cannot, of course, within the limits of this paper, proceed toany statement of the present requirements of the English operative asregards art education. But I do not regret this, for it seems to me verydesirable that our attention should for the present be concentrated onthe more immediate object of general instruction. Whatever the publicdemand the artist will soon produce; and the best education which theoperative can receive is the refusal of bad work and the acknowledgmentof good. There is no want of genius among us, still less of industry. The least that we do is laborious, and the worst is wonderful. But thereis a want among us, deep and wide, of discretion in directing toil, andof delight in being led by imagination. In past time, though the massesof the nation were less informed than they are now, they were for thatvery reason simpler judges and happier gazers; it must be ours tosubstitute the gracious sympathy of the understanding for the brightgratitude of innocence. An artist can always paint well for those whoare lightly pleased or wisely displeased, but he cannot paint for thosewho are dull in applause and false in condemnation. 

REMARKS ADDRESSED

TO THE MANSFIELD ART NIGHT CLASS

_Oct. 14th, 1873. _[22]

166. It is to be remembered that the giving of prizes can only bejustified on the ground of their being the reward of superior diligenceand more obedient attention to the directions of the teacher. They mustnever be supposed, because practically they never can become, indications of superior genius; unless in so far as genius is likely tobe diligent and obedient, beyond the strength and temper of the dull. 

[Note 22: This address was written for the Art Night Class, Mansfield, but not delivered by me. In my absence--I forget from whatcause, but inevitable--the Duke of St. Albans honoured me by reading itto the meeting. ]

But it so frequently happens that the stimulus of vanity, acting onminds of inferior calibre, produces for a time an industry surpassingthe tranquil and self-possessed exertion of real power, that it may bequestioned whether the custom of bestowing prizes at all may notultimately cease in our higher Schools of Art, unless in the form ofsubstantial assistance given to deserving students who stand in need ofit: a kind of prize, the claim to which, in its nature, would dependmore on accidental circumstances, and generally good conduct, than ongenius. 

167. But, without any reference to the opinion of others, and withoutany chance of partiality in your own, there is one test by which you canall determine the rate of your real progress. 

Examine, after every period of renewed industry, how far you haveenlarged your faculty of _admiration_. 

Consider how much more you can see, to reverence, in the work ofmasters; and how much more to love, in the work of nature. 

This is the only constant and infallible test of progress. That youwonder more at the work of great men, and that you care more for naturalobjects. 

You have often been told by your teachers to expect this last result:but I fear that the tendency of modern thought is to reject the idea ofthat essential difference in rank between one intellect and another, ofwhich increasing reverence is the wise acknowledgment. 

You may, at least in early years, test accurately your power of doinganything in the least rightly, by your increasing conviction that younever will be able to do it as well as it has been done by others. 

168. That is a lesson, I repeat, which differs much, I fear, from theone you are commonly taught. The vulgar and incomparably false saying ofMacaulay's, that the intellectual giants of one age become theintellectual pigmies of the next, has been the text of too many sermonslately preached to you. 

You think you are going to do better things--each of you--than Titianand Phidias--write better than Virgil--think more wisely than Solomon. 

My good young people, this is the foolishest, quitepre-eminently--perhaps almost the harmfullest--notion that couldpossibly be put into your empty little eggshells of heads. There is notone in a million of you who can ever be great in _any_ thing. To begreater than the greatest that _have_ been, is permitted perhaps to oneman in Europe in the course of two or three centuries. But because youcannot be Handel and Mozart--is it any reason why you should not learnto sing "God save the Queen" properly, when you have a mind to? Becausea girl cannot be prima donna in the Italian Opera, is it any reason thatshe should not learn to play a jig for her brothers and sisters in goodtime, or a soft little tune for her tired mother, or that she should notsing to please herself, among the dew, on a May morning? Believe me, joy, humility, and usefulness, always go together: as insolence withmisery, and these both with destructiveness. You may learn with proudteachers how to throw down the Vendōme Column, and burn the Louvre, butnever how to lay so much as one touch of safe colour, or one layer ofsteady stone: and if indeed there be among you a youth of true genius, be assured that he will distinguish himself first, not by petulance orby disdain, but by discerning firmly what to admire, and whom to obey. 

169. It will, I hope, be the result of the interest lately awakened inart through our provinces, to enable each town of importance to obtain, in permanent possession, a few--and it is desirable there should be nomore than a few--examples of consummate and masterful art: an engravingor two by Dürer--a single portrait by Reynolds--a fifteenth centuryFlorentine drawing--a thirteenth century French piece of painted glass, and the like; and that, in every town occupied in a given manufacture, examples of unquestionable excellence in that manufacture should be madeeasily accessible in its civic museum. 

I must ask you, however, to observe very carefully that I use the word_manufacture_ in its literal and proper sense. It means the making ofthings _by the hand_. It does not mean the making them by machinery. And, while I plead with you for a true humility in rivalship with theworks of others, I plead with you also for a just pride in what youreally can honestly do yourself. 

You must neither think your work the best ever done by man:--nor, on theother hand, think that the tongs and poker can do better--and that, although you are wiser than Solomon, all this wisdom of yours can beoutshone by a shovelful of coke. 

170. Let me take, for instance, the manufacture of lace, for which, Ibelieve, your neighbouring town of Nottingham enjoys renown. There isstill some distinction between machine-made and hand-made lace. I willsuppose that distinction so far done away with, that, a pattern onceinvented, you can spin lace as fast as you now do thread. Everybody thenmight wear, not only lace collars, but lace gowns. Do you think theywould be more comfortable in them than they are now in plain stuff--orthat, when everybody could wear them, anybody would be proud of wearingthem? A spider may perhaps be rationally proud of his own cobweb, eventhough all the fields in the morning are covered with the like, for hemade it himself--but suppose a machine spun it for him?

Suppose all the gossamer were Nottingham-made, would a sensible spiderbe either prouder, or happier, think you?

A sensible spider! You cannot perhaps imagine such a creature. Yetsurely a spider is clever enough for his own ends?

You think him an insensible spider, only because he cannot understandyours--and is apt to impede yours. Well, be assured of this, sense inhuman creatures is shown also, not by cleverness in promoting their ownends and interests, but by quickness in understanding other people'sends and interests, and by putting our own work and keeping our ownwishes in harmony with theirs. 

171. But I return to my point, of cheapness. You don't think that itwould be convenient, or even creditable, for women to wash the doorstepsor dish the dinners in lace gowns? Nay, even for the most ladylikeoccupations--reading, or writing, or playing with her children--do youthink a lace gown, or even a lace collar, so great an advantage ordignity to a woman? If you think of it, you will find the whole value oflace, as a possession, depends on the fact of its having a beauty whichhas been the reward of industry and attention. 

That the thing itself is a prize--a thing which everybody cannot have. That it proves, by the _look_ of it, the _ability_ of its _maker_; thatit proves, by the _rarity_ of it, the _dignity_ of its _wearer_--eitherthat she has been so industrious as to save money, which can buy, say, a piece of jewellery, of gold tissue, or of fine lace--or else, that sheis a noble person, to whom her neighbours concede, as an honour, theprivilege of wearing finer dresses than they. 

If they all choose to have lace too--if it ceases to be a prize--itbecomes, does it not, only a cobweb?

The real good of a piece of lace, then, you will find, is that it shouldshow, first, that the designer of it had a pretty fancy; next, that themaker of it had fine fingers; lastly, that the wearer of it hasworthiness or dignity enough to obtain what is difficult to obtain, andcommon sense enough not to wear it on all occasions. I limit myself, inwhat farther I have to say, to the question of the manufacture--nay, ofone requisite in the manufacture: that which I have just called a prettyfancy. 

172. What do you suppose I mean by a pretty fancy? Do you think that, bylearning to draw, and looking at flowers, you will ever get the abilityto design a piece of lace beautifully? By no means. If that were so, everybody would soon learn to draw--everybody would design laceprettily--and then, --nobody would be paid for designing it. To someextent, that will indeed be the result of modern endeavour to teachdesign. But against all such endeavours, mother-wit, in the end, willhold her own. 

But anybody who _has_ this mother-wit, may make the exercise of it morepleasant to themselves, and more useful to other people, by learning todraw. 

An Indian worker in gold, or a Scandinavian worker in iron, or an oldFrench worker in thread, could produce indeed beautiful design out ofnothing but groups of knots and spirals: but you, when you are rightlyeducated, may render your knots and spirals infinitely more interestingby making them suggestive of natural forms, and rich in elements of trueknowledge. 

173. You know, for instance, the pattern which for centuries has beenthe basis of ornament in Indian shawls--the bulging leaf ending in aspiral. The Indian produces beautiful designs with nothing but thatspiral. You cannot better his powers of design, but you may make themmore civil and useful by adding knowledge of nature to invention. 

Suppose you learn to draw rightly, and, therefore, to know correctly thespirals of springing ferns--not that you may give ugly names to all thespecies of them--but that you may understand the grace and vitality ofevery hour of their existence. Suppose you have sense and clevernessenough to translate the essential character of this beauty into formsexpressible by simple lines--therefore expressible by thread--you mightthen have a series of fern-patterns which would each contain points ofdistinctive interest and beauty, and of scientific truth, and yet bevariable by fancy, with quite as much ease as the meaningless Indianone. Similarly, there is no form of leaf, of flower, or of insect, whichmight not become suggestive to you, and expressible in terms ofmanufacture, so as to be interesting, and useful to others. 

174. Only don't think that this kind of study will ever "pay" in thevulgar sense. 

It will make you wiser and happier. But do you suppose that it is thelaw of God, or nature, that people shall be paid in money for becomingwiser and happier? They are so, by that law, for honest work; and as allhonest work makes people wiser and happier, they are indeed, in somesort, paid in money for becoming wise. 

But if you seek wisdom only that you may get money, believe me, you areexactly on the foolishest of all fools' errands. "She is more preciousthan rubies"--but do you think that is only because she will help you tobuy rubies?

"All the things thou canst desire are not to be compared to her. " Do youthink that is only because she will enable you to get all the things youdesire? She is offered to you as a blessing _in herself_. She is thereward of kindness, of modesty, of industry. She is the prize ofPrizes--and alike in poverty or in riches--the strength of your Lifenow, the earnest of whatever Life is to come. 

SOCIAL POLICY

BASED ON NATURAL SELECTION. 

_Paper read before the Metaphysical Society, May 11th, 1875. _[23]

175. It has always seemed to me that Societies like this of ours, happyin including members not a little diverse in thought and various inknowledge, might be more useful to the public than perhaps they canfairly be said to have approved themselves hitherto, by using theirvariety of power rather to support intellectual conclusions byconcentric props, than to shake them with rotatory storms of wit; andmodestly endeavouring to initiate the building of walls for the Bridalcity of Science, in which no man will care to identify the particularstones he lays, rather than complying farther with the existingpicturesque, but wasteful, practice of every knight to throw up a feudaltower of his own opinions, tenable only by the most active pugnacity, and pierced rather with arrow-slits from which to annoy his neighbours, than windows to admit light or air. 

[Note 23: I trust that the Society will not consider its privilegesviolated by the publication of an essay, which, for such audience, Iwrote with more than ordinary care. ]

176. The paper read at our last meeting was unquestionably, within thelimits its writer had prescribed to himself, so logically sound, that(encouraged also by the suggestion of some of our most influentialmembers), I shall endeavour to make the matter of our to-night's debateconsequent upon it, and suggestive of possibly further advantageousdeductions. 

It will be remembered that, in reference to the statement in the Bishopof Peterborough's Paper, of the moral indifference of certain courses ofconduct on the postulate of the existence only of a Mechanical base ofMorals, it was observed by Dr. Adam Clarke that, even on such mechanicalbasis, the word "moral" might still be applied specially to any courseof action which tended to the development of the human race. Whereupon Iventured myself to inquire, in what direction such development was to beunderstood as taking place; and the discussion of this point being thendropped for want of time, I would ask the Society's permission to bringit again before them this evening in a somewhat more extended form; forin reality the question respecting the development of men istwofold, --first, namely, in what direction; and secondly, in what socialrelations, it is to be sought. 

I would therefore at present ask more deliberately than I could at ourlast meeting, --first, in what direction it is desirable that thedevelopment of humanity should take place? Should it, for instance, asin Greece, be of physical beauty, --emulation, (Hesiod's secondEris), --pugnacity, and patriotism? or, as in modern England, of physicalugliness, --envy, (Hesiod's first Eris), --cowardice, and selfishness? or, as by a conceivably humane but hitherto unexampled education might beattempted, of physical beauty, humility, courage, and affection, whichshould make all the world one native land, and [Greek: pasa gź taphos]?

177. I do not doubt but that the first automatic impulse of all ourautomatic friends here present, on hearing this sentence, will bestrenuously to deny the accuracy of my definition of the aims of modernEnglish education. Without attempting to defend it, I would only observethat this automatic development of solar caloric in scientific mindsmust be grounded on an automatic sensation of injustice done to themembers of the School Board, as well as to many other automaticallywell-meaning and ingenious persons; and that this sense of theinjuriousness and offensiveness of my definition cannot possibly haveany other basis (if I may be permitted to continue my professionalsimilitudes) than the fallen remnants and goodly stones, not one nowleft on another, but still forming an unremovable cumulus of ruin, andeternal Birs Nimroud, as it were, on the site of the old belfry ofChristian morality, whose top looked once so like touching Heaven. 

For no offence could be taken at my definition, unless traceable toadamantine conviction, --that ugliness, however indefinable, envy, however natural, and cowardice, however commercially profitable, arenevertheless eternally disgraceful; contrary, that is to say, to thegrace of our Lord Christ, if there be among us any Christ; to the graceof the King's Majesty, if there be among us any King; and to the graceeven of Christless and Kingless Manhood, if there be among us anyManhood. 

To this fixed conception of a difference between Better and Worse, or, when carried to the extreme, between good and evil in conduct, we all, it seems to me, instinctively and, therefore, rightly, attach the termof Moral sense;--the sense, for instance, that it would be better if themembers of this Society who are usually automatically absent were, instead, automatically present; or better, that this Paper, if (whichis, perhaps, too likely) it be thought automatically impertinent, hadbeen made by the molecular action of my cerebral particles, pertinent. 

178. Trusting, therefore, without more ado, to the strength of rampartin this Old Sarum of the Moral sense, however subdued into vague banksunder the modern steam-plough, I will venture to suppose the first of mytwo questions to have been answered by the choice on the part at leastof a majority of our Council, of the third direction of developmentabove specified as being the properly called "moral" one; and will go onto the second subject of inquiry, both more difficult and of greatpractical importance in the political crisis through which Europe ispassing, --namely, what relations between men are to be desired, or withresignation allowed, in the course of their Moral Development?

Whether, that is to say, we should try to make some men beautiful at thecost of ugliness in others, and some men virtuous at the cost of vice inothers, --or rather, all men beautiful and virtuous in the degreepossible to each under a system of equitable education? And evidentlyour first business is to consider in what terms the choice is put to usby Nature. What can we do, if we would? What must we do, whether we willor not? How high can we raise the level of a diffused Learning andMorality? and how far shall we be compelled, if we limit, to exaggerate, the advantages and injuries of our system? And are we prepared, if theextremity be inevitable, to push to their utmost the relations impliedwhen we take off our hats to each other, and triple the tiara of theSaint in Heaven, while we leave the sinner bareheaded in Cocytus?

179. It is well, perhaps, that I should at once confess myself to holdthe principle of limitation in its utmost extent; and to entertain nodoubt of the rightness of my ideal, but only of its feasibility. I amill at ease, for instance, in my uncertainty whether our greatlyregretted Chairman will ever be Pope, or whether some people whom Icould mention, (not, of course, members of our Society, ) will ever be inCocytus. 

But there is no need, if we would be candid, to debate the principle inthese violences of operation, any more than the proper methods ofdistributing food, on the supposition that the difference between aParis dinner and a platter of Scotch porridge must imply that one-halfof mankind are to die of eating, and the rest of having nothing to eat. I will therefore take for example a case in which the discrimination isless conclusive. 

180. When I stop writing metaphysics this morning it will be to arrangesome drawings for a young lady to copy. They are leaves of the bestilluminated MSS. I have, and I am going to spend my whole afternoon inexplaining to her what she is to aim at in copying them. 

Now, I would not lend these leaves to any other young lady that I knowof; nor give up my afternoon to, perhaps, more than two or three otheryoung ladies that I know of. But to keep to the first-instanced one, Ilend her my books, and give her, for what they are worth, my time andmost careful teaching, because she at present paints butterflies betterthan any other girl I know, and has a peculiar capacity for thesoftening of plumes and finessing of antennę. Grant me to be a goodteacher, and grant her disposition to be such as I suppose, and theresult will be what might at first appear an indefensible iniquity, namely, that this girl, who has already excellent gifts, having alsoexcellent teaching, will become perhaps the best butterfly-painter inEngland; while myriads of other girls, having originally inferiorpowers, and attracting no attention from the Slade Professor, willutterly lose their at present cultivable faculties of entomological art, and sink into the vulgar career of wives and mothers, to which we haveMr. Mill's authority for holding it a grievous injustice that any girlshould be irrevocably condemned. 

181. There is no need that I should be careful in enumerating thevarious modes, analogous to this, in which the Natural selection ofwhich we have lately heard, perhaps, somewhat more than enough, provokesand approves the Professorial selection which I am so bold as to defend;and if the automatic instincts of equity in us, which revolt against thegreat ordinance of Nature and practice of Man, that "to him that hath, shall more be given, " are to be listened to when the possessions inquestion are only of wisdom and virtue, let them at least prove theirsincerity by correcting, first, the injustice which has establisheditself respecting more tangible and more esteemed property; andterminating the singular arrangement prevalent in commercial Europe thatto every man with a hundred pounds in his pocket there shall annually begiven three, to every man with a thousand, thirty, and to every man withnothing, none. 

182. I am content here to leave under the scrutiny of the evening mygeneral statement, that as human development, when moral, is withspecial effort in a given direction, so, when moral, it is with specialeffort in favour of a limited class; but I yet trespass for a fewmoments on your patience in order to note that the acceptance of thissecond principle still leaves it debatable to what point the disfavourof the reprobate class, or the privileges of the elect, may advisablyextend. For I cannot but feel for my own part as if the daily bread ofmoral instruction might at least be so widely broken among the multitudeas to preserve them from utter destitution and pauperism in virtue; andthat even the simplest and lowest of the rabble should not be soabsolutely sons of perdition, but that each might say for himself, --"Formy part--no offence to the General, or any man of quality--I hope to besaved. " Whereas it is, on the contrary, implied by the habitualexpressions of the wisest aristocrats, that the completely developedpersons whose Justice and Fortitude--poles to the Cardinal points ofvirtue--are marked as their sufficient characteristics by the greatRoman moralist in his phrase, "Justus, et tenax propositi, " will in thecourse of nature be opposed by a civic ardour, not merely of theinnocent and ignorant, but of persons developed in a contrary directionto that which I have ventured to call "moral, " and therefore not merelyincapable of desiring or applauding what is right, but in an evilharmony, _prava jubentium_, clamorously demanding what is wrong. 

183. The point to which both Natural and Divine Selection would permitus to advance in severity towards this profane class, to which theenduring "Ecce Homo, " or manifestation of any properly human sentimentor person, must always be instinctively abominable, seems to beconclusively indicated by the order following on the parable of theTalents, --"Those mine enemies, bring hither, and slay them before me. "Nor does it seem reasonable, on the other hand, to set the limits offavouritism more narrowly. For even if, among fallible mortals, theremay frequently be ground for the hesitation of just men to award thepunishment of death to their enemies, the most beautiful story, to mypresent knowledge, of all antiquity, that of Cleobis and Bito, mightsuggest to them the fitness on some occasions, of distributing withoutany hesitation the reward of death to their friends. For surely thelogical conclusion of the Bishop of Peterborough, respecting thetreatment due to old women who have nothing supernatural about them, holds with still greater force when applied to the case of old women whohave everything supernatural about them; and while it might remainquestionable to some of us whether we had any right to deprive aninvalid who had no soul, of what might still remain to her of evenpainful earthly existence; it would surely on the most religious groundsbe both our privilege and our duty at once to dismiss any troublesomesufferer who _had_ a soul, to the distant and inoffensive felicities ofheaven. 

184. But I believe my hearers will approve me in again declining todisturb the serene confidence of daily action by these speculations inextreme; the really useful conclusion which, it seems to me, cannot beevaded, is that, without going so far as the exile of the inconvenientlywicked, and translation of the inconveniently sick, to their properspiritual mansions, we should at least be certain that we do not wastecare in protracting disease which might have been spent in preservinghealth; that we do not appease in the splendour of our turretedhospitals the feelings of compassion which, rightly directed, mighthave prevented the need of them; nor pride ourselves on the peculiarform of Christian benevolence which leaves the cottage roofless to modelthe prison, and spends itself with zealous preference where, in the keenwords of Carlyle, if you desire the material on which maximumexpenditure of means and effort will produce the minimum result, "hereyou accurately have it. "

185. I cannot but, in conclusion, most respectfully but most earnestly, express my hope that measures may be soon taken by the Lords Spiritualof England to assure her doubting mind of the real existence of thatsupernatural revelation of the basis of morals to which the Bishop ofPeterborough referred in the close of his paper; or at least to explainto her bewildered populace the real meaning and force of the TenCommandments, whether written originally by the finger of God or Man. Tome personally, I own, as one of that bewildered populace, that the essayby one of our most distinguished members on the Creed of Christendomseems to stand in need of explicit answer from our Divines; but if not, and the common application of the terms "Word of God" to the books ofScripture be against all question tenable, it becomes yet moreimperative on the interpreters of that Scripture to see that they arenot made void by our traditions, and that the Mortal sins ofCovetousness, Fraud, Usury, and contention be not the essence of aNational life orally professing submission to the laws of Christ, andsatisfaction in His Love. 

J. RUSKIN. 

 "Thou shalt not covet; but tradition Approves all forms of Competition. "

ARTHUR CLOUGH. 

INDEX. 

[Transcriber's note: entries here of page numbers followed by _n. _should indicate that references will be found in a note on that pagenumber. However, most of these references to notes on particular pagesare inaccurate. The direct page number links, however, are accurate. ]

(_The references are made to the numbered paragraphs, not to the pages, and are thus applicable to every edition of the book since that of1880. _)

Accumulation of learning, its law, 73. 

Accuracy and depth of study, distinct, 1857 _pref. _

Admiration, increase of, a test of progress in art, 167. 

Almsgiving, 142. " parish, &c. , 129. 

Almshouses, decoration of, 115. " prejudice of poor against, 129-30. 

Alpine climbing, risks of, 151. 

Ambition, in youth and age, 26. 

America, absence of great art in, 87. " bad shipbuilding in, 112 _n. _ " commercial panic in, 151. 

Ancestors, respect for their work insisted on, 72. 

Architecture, Gothic, sculpture to be in easiest materials, 34. " " to be studied at Verona, 76. " variety in, to be demanded, 32. " " cheapens the price, _ib. _

Arcola, battle of, 77. 

Arethusa, the, and the Belle-Poule engraving, 147. 

[Greek: Aretź] and art, 155. 

Art, cheap, its purchase, 40. " " great art not to be too cheap, and why, 62 _seq. _ " demand for good, and the possibility of having too much, 38. " dress, beauty of, essential to good art, 54. " education in (author's paper on), 153 _seq. _ " function of, to exalt as well as to please, 38. " -gift and art-study, 172. " good, to be lasting in its materials and power, 39. " " to be done for and be worthy of all time, 46. " great, the expression of a great soul, 136. " has laws, which must be recognised, 157. " -intellect in a nation, cannot be created, 20-1. " its debt to Italy, 82. " labour and, 19. " " the labour to be various, easy, permanent, 31 _seq. _ " literature and, the cost of, 67. " love of old, essential to produce new, 88. " materials of, to be lasting, 39, 42. " models in art schools, 162-4. " modern interest in, 168. " " " objects of, and old pictures, 86. " original work, the best to buy, 41. " permanency of--e. G. , a painted window, 37. " -power a gift, 158. " " in a nation, how to produce, 132. " " waste of, on perishable things, 45. " preservation of works of, 73-4. " " (1857) more important than production, 92. " price of good, 41. See s. Pictures. " progress in, tested by increased imagination, 167. " public to demand noble subjects of, 29. " " effect of public demand on, 165. " repetition in, monotonous, 32. " schools, trial, 22-3. " " provincial, to have good art-models, 169. " students, 153 seq. " -study will not "pay, " 174. " test of good, will it please a century hence? 39. " value of, depends on artist's capacity, not education, 136. " variety of work, 32. " work, hard, needed for, 158. " works of, illustrate each other, 63. " works of, property in, 147. " " provincial distribution of, 169. " " their conservative effect, 132 _n. _ " " to be lasting, 36. See s. Admiration, America, Architecture, Arethusa, Aretź, Artist, Beauty, Buildings, Cheapness, Colour, Criticism, Design, Diletto, Drawing, Dress, Education, Europe, Florence, France, Genius, Glass, Gold, Goldsmiths, Historical painting, Indian shawls, Italy, Jewels, Labour, Lace, Lombard, Marble, Mosaic, Painter, Philosophy, Pictures, Reverence, Schools, Trade, Wall-paper, War, Water colour, Wealth, Woodcuts. 

Artist, education of the, to be a gentleman--_i. E. _, feel nobly, 28. " encouragement of, in youth, 23. " goldsmith's work, good training for, 46. " greatest, have other powers than their art, 21. " jealousy among, 98. " modern training of, 132. " _nascitur non fit_, 20. " temper of, what, 132. " to be a good man, 28. " trial schools to discover, 22-3. See s. Dürer, Francia, Gainsborough, Ghiberti, Ghirlandajo, Giotto, Leonardo, Lewis, Lorenzetti, Michael Angelo, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Tintoret, Titian, Turner, Veronese, Verrocchio. 

"Asphodel meadows of our youth, " 26. 

Athletic games and education, 128. 

Austrians, in Italy, 78. 

Author, his idea of a knight, when a child, 106. " " teaching young lady to copy old MS. , 180. Life of: at Brantwood, April 29, 1880. " Manchester, July 10 and 13, 1857, 1, 61. " Metaphysical Society, 1875, 175. " Oxford, art teaching, _pref. _ ix. " Working Men's College, 156. " Venice, 141 _n. _ " teaching of: misunderstood, 180. Political economy, has read no modern books on, 1857 _pref. _ political influence of art, 1880 _pref. _ true wealth honoured by, 1. Words fail him to express modern folly, 49. " books of, quoted, &c. : " A Joy for Ever" contains germs of subsequent work, 1880 _pref. _ " revision for press, 1857 _pref. _ " title, 1880 _pref. _ on his own writings, 140. They cost him pain, and he does not expect then to give pleasure, 1880 _pref. _

Barataria, the island of ("Don Quixote "), 65. 

Beauty in art, on what based, vi. 

Bible, The, to be realised as (not only called) God's Word 185. 

 _Quoted, or referred to. _ Job iii. 3, "Let the day perish wherein I was born ... A child conceived, 119. " xxxi. 40, "Let thistles grow instead of wheat, " &c. , 101. Ps. Xxxii. 8, "I will guide thee with mine eye, " 18. " xxxii. 9, "Be ye not as the horse or mule, " 18. " c. 4, "Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, " 1880 _pref. _ Prov. I. 20, "Wisdom uttereth her voice in the streets, " 112 _n. _ " iii. 15, "Wisdom more precious than rubies, " 174. " iii. 16, "Length of days are in her right hand, " &c. , 130. " iii. 17, "Her ways pleasantness and her paths peace, " 120. " xiii. 23, "Much food is in the tillage of the poor, " 7 _n. _ " xxxi. 15, "She riseth while it is yet night, " 9, 58. " xxxi. 25, "Strength and honour are in her clothing, " &c. , 60. Hab. Ii. , its practical lessons, 112 n. " ii. 6, "Woe to him ... That ladeth himself with thick clay, " 112 _n. _ " ii. 12, "Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, " 112 _n. _ " ii. 13, "The people weary themselves for vanity, " 112 _n. _ Zach. Vii. 9, 10, "Execute true judgment ... And let none imagine evil, " &c. , 112 _n. _ Matt. Vii. 16, "Gather figs of thistles, " 133. Luke xix. 26, "To him that hath shall be given, " 181. " xix. 27, "Those mine enemies bring hither and slay them before me, 183. 2 Thess. Iii. 10, "If any work not, neither shall he eat, " 145. 

Books, not to be too cheap, and why, 65. " numbers of, nowadays, and the result, 140. 

Botany, what to learn in, 128. 

Bridle of man, the Eye of God, 18. 

Brotherhood--"All men are brothers, " what it implies, 14. " politically and divinely, 121. 

Browning, E. B. , on Italy, 78 _n. _

Buildings, public, their decoration, 104. 

Capitalist, the, his command over men, 4. 

Carlyle, T. , on the value of horses and men, 18. " "keen words" of, _quoted_, 184. 

Casa Guidi, windows of the, referred to, 36 _n. _

Charity, crowning kingship (Siena fresco), 59. " in preserving health, not in protracting disease, 184. " is guidance, 127. " not a geographical virtue, 81. " true, defined, 118. 

Charon, 3. 

Chartres, 86. 

Cheapness not to be considered in producing art, 37. " of good art, undesirable and why, 62 _seq. _

Cheating disgraceful, but being cheated is not, 89. 

Church-going and life, 14. " restoration, mania for, 86-7. 

Clarke, Dr. Adam, at the Metaphysical Society, 176. 

Cleobis and Bito, death of, 109. " story of, beautiful, 183. 

Clergymen, to preach practically--_e. G. _, on trade, 112 _n. _

Cleverness, best shown in sympathy with the aims of others, 170. 

Clough, Arthur, _quoted_, 185 _n. _

Cocoa-nut, simile from a, as to the cheapness of good art, 64. 

Colour, good, to be lasting, 44. " local, as an element of chiaroscuro, 162. 

Commerce, cowardice and, 177. " frauds of, 151-2. " modern, 1857 _pref. _ xi. 

Competition, a bad thing in education, 135. 

Conservatism, true, 58. 

Country, serving one's, with plough, pen, and sword, 129. 

Cricket, the game of, 128. 

Criticism, mistaken blame worse than mistaken praise, 24. " public, its effect on artists, 24. 

Currency, national, its nature, 149. 

Dante--_Inferno_, the purse round the neck as a sign of condemnation, 4. " " _Lasciate ogni speranza_, 93. 

Deane, Sir T. , on the Oxford Museum, 32. 

Death, as a reward, 183. 

Design, dependent on proportion, 160. " study of, 159. " subjects of, 172-3. 

Development, the direction of human, 175. 

Dialogue on "paternal government, " 121. 

Diamond-cutting, waste of time, 34. 

Dictionary of classical antiquities, woodcuts in, 107. 

"Diletto" and art, 155. 

Diogenes, respected, 2-3. 

Discipline the basis of progress, 16. 

Discovery of men of genius, 20. 

Disobedience destroys power of understanding, 1857 _pref. _ x. 

Drawing as a means of description, 153. " lessons, 156. " to be learnt, as reading or writing, 153, 158. " to scale, to be learnt, 160. 

Dress, art of, 47. " beautiful, essential to great art--_e. G. _, its portraiture, 54. " " characteristics of, 54. " " a means of education, 54. " best, not the costliest, 54. " employment of labour--_e. G. _, ball-dresses, 50. " fashion in, wasted power of design, 45. " fine, the spoils of death, 53. " " as a subject of expenditure, 146. " " under what circumstance, right and wrong, 52. " lace, its value, 171. 

Dürer's engravings, art-models, 169. " " permanency of, 42. " " crest with cock, as art-model, 164. " woodcuts, 40. 

Economy, its true meaning (application: accumulation: distribution), 8 _seq. _ " the art of managing labour, 7, 8. " the balance of splendour and utility, 10. " does not mean saving money, 8. " simile of farm life, 11. " the laws of, same for nation and individual, 12 _seq. _ See s. Almsgiving, Author, Capitalist, Charity, Cheating, Commerce, Currency, Education, Employment, England, Farm, Gentlemen, Gold, Labour, Land, Luxury, Money, National works, Panics, Parish relief, Pension, Political Economy, Poor, Poverty, Property, Trade, Wealth. 

Education, best claimed by offering obedience, 16. " drawing to be part of, 156. " dress as a means of, 54. " eye, the best medium of, 106. " formative, not reformative only, 15. " in Art, author's paper on, 153 _seq. _ " liberty to be controlled by, 128. " manual trade to be learnt by all youths, 128. " modern, 135. " " in England, its bad tendency, 177. " schools of, to be beautiful, 104-5. " refinement of habits, a part of, 104. " waste of, on dead languages, 128. " young men, their, 134. 

Edward I. , progress since the days of, 1857 _pref. _

Emotion, quickness of, is not capacity for it, 132. 

Employment, may be claimed by the obedient, 16. 

England, art-treasures in, their number, 5. " modern, its ugliness, 176. " the rich men of, their duty, 118-9. 

English character, impulse and prudence of, 17. " " self-dependence, 130. 

Envy, vile, 177. 

Europe, no great art, except in, 87. 

Examinations, their educational aim and value, 136. 

Eye, the, nobler than the ear, and a better means of education, 106. 

Faith, frescoes of, Ambrozio Lorenzetti, Siena, 57. " kinds of, 57. 

Famine, how it comes, 133. 

Fancy, as essential to fine manufacture, 172. 

Farm, metaphor of a, applied to national economy, 11. 

Fashion, change of, as wasting power of design, 45. 

Florence, art and dress of, 54. " drawing at, 1400-1500, art-models, 169. 

Fools, the wise to take of the, 118. 

France, art in, great, and beautiful dress, 54. " English prejudice against, 81. " social philosophy in, "fraternité" a true principle, 14. 

Francia, a goldsmith, 46. 

Frescoes, whitewashing of Italian, 85. 

Fraternity implies paternity, 14 (cp. Time and Tide, 177). 

Funeral, English love of a "decent, " 70. 

Gainsborough, his want of gentle training, 28. " learns from Italian art, 82. 

Genius, men of, and art, four questions as to (production, employment, accumulation, distribution), 19. " " their early struggles, due to their starting on wrong work, 23. 

Gentlemen, tradesmen to be accounted, 114. 

Ghiberti's gates, M. Angelo on, 46. " a goldsmith, 46. 

Ghirlandajo, a goldsmith, 46. " M. Angelo's master, 46. 

Giotto's frescoes, Assisi, perishing for want of care, 86. " discovered by Cimabue, 133. 

Glass, cut, waste of labour on, 34. " painted, French 1200-1300, the best, 169. 

God always sends men for the work, but we crush them, 133. " His work, its fulfilment by men, 122. 

Gold, its uses, as a medium of exchange, 150. " " incorruptible and to be used for lasting things, 46. " " not therefore to be used for coinage, 46. 

Goldsmiths, artists who have been, 46. " educational training for artists, 46 _n. _ " work of, 45 _seq. _

Government, enforcement of divine law, 121. " in details, 122 _seq. _ " paternal, 14. " " "in loco parentis, " 16 _n. _ " " defined, 121. " principles of, at the root of economy, 11 " " Faith, Hope, Charity, 57. " to be conservative, but expectant, 58. " to form, not only reform, 15. " to give work to all who want it, 129. 

Great men and the public, 137 " the work they are sent to do, 133

Greatness, the humility of, 137. 

Greece, development of physical beauty, 176. 

Guilds of trade, decoration of their buildings, 116 _seq. _

Hesiod's "Eris", 176. 

Historians, mistaken way of pointing out how great men are fitted for their work, 133. 

Historical painting as a means of education, 106-7. 

History, the study of medięval, as well as ancient, insisted on, 109. 

Horace, "justus, et propositi tenax, " 182. " "prava jubentium, " _ib. _

Horse and man, bridling of, 18. 

Hospitals, decoration of, 114. 

Housewife, her seriousness and her smile, 10. 

Housewifery, perfect, 10. 

Humility of greatness, 137. " the companion of joy and usefulness, 168. 

Illustrations, modern, bad art of, 40. 

Independence, dishonest efforts after, 131. 

Indian shawls, design of, 173. 

Industry, its duty to the past and future, 72. 

Infidelity, modern, 177. 

Invention, national, of new wants, 138. 

Inventors, to be publicly rewarded, but to have no patents, 113. 

Island, desert, analogy of a, and political economy, 110. 

Italy, Austrians in, 78. " cradle of art, 82. " destruction of art in modern, 84. " modern art of, 85. " state of, 1857, 84. " thunderclouds in, "the winepress of God's wrath, " 77. 

Italian character, 84. 

Jewels, cutting of, 52. " modern, bad and costly, 159. " property in, 146. 

Jews, Christian dislike of, 81. 

Keats, quoted, "a joy for ever, " 1880 _pref. _ ix-x. 

King, the virtues of a (Siena fresco), 60. 

Kingship, crowned by charity (Siena fresco), 59. " modern contempt for, 177. 

Labour, a claim to property, 145. " constant, not intermittent, needed, 11. " end of, is happiness, not money, 174. " " to bring the whole country under cultivation, 12. " management of, _is_ economy, 7. " organisation of, no "out of work" cry, 11-12. " " under government, planned, 127-31. " sufficiency of a man's labour for all his needs, 7. " " " nation's " its " 7. 

Labour, _continued_;-- " waste of, in various kinds of useless art, cut-glass, mosaic, &c, 34. " " dress, 50 _seq. _

Lace-making, 52. " machine and hand-made, 170. " value of, in its labour, 171. 

Laissez-aller, a ruinous principle, 16. 

Land, the laws of cultivation, the same for a continent as for an acre, 12. -owners, their duties, 143. 

Law and liberty, 123. " most irksome, when most necessary, 15. " principles of, applied to minor things, 123. " should regulate everything it can, 126. " systems of, none perfect, 124. " to be protective, not merely punitive, 15. 

Legislation, paternal, dialogue on, 121. 

Leonardo da Vinci, an engineer, 21. " " " pupil of Verrocchio, 46. " " "work by, at Florence, 164. 

Leonidas' death, 109. 

Lewis, John, his work, and its prices, 102 n. 

Liberalism in government, true, 58. 

Liberty, law and, 123. " to be interfered with, for good of nation, 123-26. 

Life, battles of early, for men of genius, 23. " ideal of, simplicity _plus_ imagination, 147. 

Literature, cheap, modern, 65. 

Lombard architecture at Pisa and Verona, 76. 

London season, cost of, in dress, 55. 

Look, people will not, at things, 141. 

Lorenzetti, Ambrozio, his frescoes of "government" at Siena, 57. 

Love and Kingship, _see_ s. Charity. 

Luxury, articles of, as "property, " 146. " does not add to wealth, 48. " the influences of, 138. 

Macaulay's false saying, "the giants of one age, the pigmies of the next, " 168. 

Magnanimity, the virtue of, its full meaning, 60. 

Mammon worship, in English commercial centres, 151. 

Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition 1858, 5, 69. " " motto of, "A joy for ever, " 1880 _pref. _

Mansfield Art Night Class, address to, 1873, 166 _seq. _

Manufacture, defined, 169. 

Marathon, 109. 

Marble, a better material for sculpture than granite, 34. 

Marriage, desire for, in girls, 55. 

Medici, Pietro de, orders M. Angelo's snow-statue, 36. 

Menippus, 3. 

Metaphysical Society, author, May 4, 1875, reads paper at, 175. 

Michael Angelo, author's praise of, 36. " " Ghirlandajo's pupil, 46. " " on Ghiberti's gates, 46. " " snow-statue, 36. 

Mill, J. S. , on wealth, 145_n. _ " " on women, 180. 

Misery, always the result of indolence or mistaken industry, 7. 

Mistress, of a house, ideal, described, 9, 10. 

Modernism, contempt for poverty and honour of wealth, 1 seq. _See_ s. Commerce, Education, England, Italy, Wealth. 

Money, a document of title, 148. " God's gift and not our own, and why, 116 _seq. _ " great work never done for, 98, 102. " spending, is to employ labour, 48. " the way we spend it, important, 48-9. 

Morality, mechanical basis of, 176. " not to be limited to a class, 182. 

Moral sense, the, defined, 177. 

Mosaic, Florentine, waste of labour, 34. 

Motive, the only real, and rightness, 81. 

Mourning, English love of, 70. 

Museums, provincial, art-models for, 169. 

National works, as a means of art employment, 24. 

Nations in "brotherly concord and fatherly authority, " 14. " energy of, to be directed, 16. " laws of, to be protective as well as punitive, 14. 

Natural forms, as subjects of design, 172. " History, the study of, to be extended, 155. " Science, and drawing, 156. 

New York, council of, on luxury, 138_n. _

Nottingham lace, 170. 

Novara, battle of, 77. 

Obedience, to what we dislike, 1857 _pref. _

Obstinacy of great men against the public, 137-8. 

Overwork, decried, 11. 

Oxford Museum, Sir T. Deane on the, 32. 

Painter, poverty of early years, 100. " prices paid to a, 98. 

Panics, commercial--_e. G. _, 1857, 151. 

Paper, necessity of good, for water-colour art, 43. 

Parable, The Ten Talents, its practical application, 114-15. 

Parents, noble delight of pleasing one's, possible only to the young, 27. 

Paris, destruction of, 1870-1, 168. 

Parish relief, no more _infra dig. _ than State pensions, 129. 

Patents, no, but private inventions to be publicly rewarded, 113. 

Patriotism, what, 81. 

Pensions, are Government alms, 129. 

Peterborough, Bishop of, paper read at Metaphysical Society, 176, 183, 185. 

Photography, as a means of providing art-models, 164. " collections of Florentine Gallery photos, _ib. _

Pictures, copies of, to be made, but not to be bought, 90. " dealers, and old pictures, 85. " destruction of, 69. " galleries, in all great cities, 91. " " their supervision and curators, 93. " pictorial method of education, 106 _seq. _ " price of, 101, 38. 

Pictures, price of, _continued_:-- " " effect of high prices on artists and on art, 97 _seq. _ " " by living artists, shows not value, but demand, 101. " " by dead and living masters, 103. " " modern prices, 38. " " of oil and water-colour, 102 _n. _ " " to be limited but not too cheap, 66, 95-6. " private possession of, its value, 93-4. " purchase of, private buyers to buy the works of living artists, the public those of dead, 103, 94, 5. " " for ostentation, 101. " " the government to buy great works, 89. " restoration of, notes of, to be kept for reference, 94 _n. _ " " in Italy, 85. " sale of a picture, its politico-economical effect, 132 _n. _ " studies for, tracings, and copies of, to be kept, 90 _seq. _

Pisa, architecture at, 76. " Campo Santo, The, 82. 

Plate, changes of fashion in, deplored, 45. " gold and silver to be gradually accumulated, not melted down and remodelled, 46. 

Ploughing, boys to learn, 128. 

Political economists, their thrift, 89. " Economy, modern books on, 1857 _pref. _ " " the aim of true, 145. " " is citizen's economy, 1857 _pref. _ " " definition and true meaning of, 132 _n. _ " " first principles of, simple but misunderstood, 1857 _pref. _ " " its questions to be dealt with one by one, 38. " " study of, to be accurate, if not deep, 1857 _pref. _ " " secrecy in trade bad, 110 _seq. _ " " _See_ s. Economy. 

Politics, English, 82. " European, 1848, 1857, 80. " _See_ s. Conservatism, Liberalism. 

Poor, the, their right to State education and support, 127. 

Poor, the, _continued_;-- " are kept at the expense of the rich, 127 _n. _ " to be taken care of, 118. 

Poverty, classical writers on, 2. " medięval view of, 4. " modern contempt for, just and right, 1 _seq. _

Posterity, thought for, 72. 

Praise, only the young can enjoy, for the old are above it, if they deserve it, 26. 

Pride, as a motive of expenditure, 79. 

Prize-giving, a bad thing in education, 135. " its true value and meaning, 166. 

Productive and unproductive transactions, 132 _n. _

Progress, modern, since Edward I. , 1857 _pref. _

Property, division of, into things producing (_a_) life, (_b_) the objects of life, 144 _seq. _ " the right of, to be acknowledged, 142. 

Providence, notion of a special, 133. 

Public, the, favour of, 137. " great men and, 137. " impatient of what it cannot understand, 140-1. 

Punishment, the rationale of human, 123. 

Purse-pride, modern and ancient, 2. 

Railway speed, 86. 

Raphael's Disputation, 147. 

Religion, national, its beauty, _pref. _

Rembrandt's "spotted shell" as a model in etching, 164. 

Renaissance architecture at Verona, 76. 

Restraint, the law of life, 16. 

Reverence for art, a test of art power, 167. 

Reynolds, Sir J. , learns much from Italian art, 82. " portraits of, models of art, 169. 

Rich, the duty of the strong and, 118. 

Riding, as part of education, 128. 

Rowing, as part of education, 128. 

St. Albans, Duke of, reads paper for author at Mansfield, 166 _n. _

St. Louis' chapel at Carcassonne, painting, 86. 

Salvation, not to be limited to a class, 182. 

School Board, the, 177. 

Schools of art, bare schoolrooms do not fix the attention, 105. " " decoration of, reasons for, 104. " " proposals for, 132. 

Science, controversy in, too much nowadays, 175. " education in, 128. " the bridal city of, 175. 

Selection, Natural, and Social Policy, paper by author, 175. 

Shakespeare's Cliff, 89. 

Siena, frescoes of Antonio Lorenzetti, 57. 

Smith, Adam, 1857 _pref. _

Soldiers of the ploughshare as well as of the sword, 15. 

Speculation, commercial, 151. 

Spider, web of a, 170. 

Street, Mr. , on the Ducal Palace, 141 _n. _

Students in art, not to aim at being great masters, 168. 

Surfaces, drawing of round, &c. , 161. 

Sympathy, the cleverness of, 170. 

Systems, not easily grasped, 128. 

Taste, defined, 154. " education of, 160. 

Tennyson, _In Mem. _ LV. "Of fifty seeds, she often brings but one to bear, " 133 (_cp. _ Time and Tide, 67). 

Thought, not to take the place of fact, 141. 

Time, man is the true destroyer, not, 74. 

_Times_, The, Nov. 23, 1857, referred to, 138 _n. _

Tintoret's St. Sebastian (Venice), perishing, 86. 

Titian, eternally right, 157. " sketch by (Florence), 164. " woodcuts of, 70. 

Tombs, English waste of money on, 78. 

Trade, art-faculty, its employment in design in, 30. " freedom from rivalry, healthful, 110 _seq. _ " government direction of, 129. " guilds, decoration of their buildings, 110 _seq. _

Trade, guilds, _continued_:-- " " under public management, 114. " secrecy of, bad, 110 _seq. _ " true co-operation in, what, 112. " youths to learn some manual, 128. 

Tradesmen, their modern social position wrong, 114. 

Truth, dependent on justice and love, 152. 

Turner, prices of his pictures, when a boy, 98. " his want of gentle training, 28. 

Ugliness, is evil, 177. 

Usury, a "mortal sin, " 185. 

Utility, not to be the sole object of life, 10. 

Vellum, for water-colour drawing, 43. 

Venice, art of, aided by beautiful dress, 54. " Ducal Palace, chronology of the capital, 141 _n. _

Verona, amphitheatre of, 76. " battle-fields of, 77. " greatest art-treasury in the world, 76 _seq. _ " typical of Gothic architecture, 76. 

Veronese, P. , eternally right, 157. " "Family of Darius, " purchased by National Gallery, for £14, 000, 55. 

Verrocchio, a goldsmith, 46. " master of Leonardo, 46. 

Virtues, the, fresco of, by A. Lorenzetti, at Siena, 57. " winged (Siena), _ib. _ _seq. _

Wages, fixed rate of, advocated, 113, 129. 

Wall-paper, 159. 

Wants, the invention of new, 138. 

War, destruction of works of art by, 75. 

Water-colour drawings, perishable, and why, 42. " " to be on vellum, not paper, 43. 

Wealth, author's respect for true, 1. " duty and, 119-20. " earned and inherited, 143. 

Wealth, _continued_:-- " freedom of spending, to be allowed, 142. " how gained, 117. " means well-being, 147. " medięval view of, 4. " modern honour paid to, 1, 2. " power of, 4. " principles of, 114 _seq. _ " works of art, how far they are, 132 _n. _

Wealthy, the, "pilots of the State, " 119, 142. " " claims of the poor on, 143. " " way in which they should spend their money, 143. 

Wisdom, preciousness of, 174. 

Women, education of, drawing, 158-9. " J. S. Mill on the position of, 180. 

Woodcuts, cheap and nasty, 40. 

Wordsworth's essay on the Poor Law Amendment Bill, 16 _n. _

Workhouses, to be worthy their name, 114. 

Working-men's College, drawing at the, 156. 

Youth, encouragement good for, 26 _seq. _ " of a nation, to be guarded, 134. " work of a, necessarily imperfect, but blameable, if bold or slovenly, 25. 

THE END. 

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Edinburgh & London