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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 33

The uses of art & Design in Manufacture

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The uses of art & Design in Manufacture.

The subject on which I have been invited to address you this evening—The Uses of Art and Design in Manufactures—is so extensive that, even if ray condensing powers were far greater than they are, I could not hope to do more in one lecture than to bring before you merely some of its most prominent points. I must crave your indulgence therefore from the outset, if I should omit many things on which some of you might expect me to speak, and should deal with others more cursorily than their importance might seem to demand. It is a subject indeed so extensive that it embraces nearly all the long centuries with whose story we are acquainted, and nearly every object of human wants that the hand of man can produce. For there is scarcely an epoch from about the year 1800 B.C., which is the date of the earliest Egyptian ornament we know of, that does not furnish us with some lesson bearing on the relations of art and industry, and there is scarcely an object of daily use that may not be made "a thing of beauty," if it be only touched by the magic of graceful thought, and fashioned with elegant design.

Do not fear, however, that I am going to trouble you now with any dry and learned disquisition on the arts of the past. I shall not carry you back to look at the workmen of ancient Thebes, culling suggestions of beauty from "the flowery Nile," nor weary you with the old story of Greece, and Etruria, and Home. I have no intention to occupy your time with the efforts of the middle ages to express their strong and deeply-implanted feelings according to principles learned from the page 77 broken columns and mouldering arches of a former era; and still less to dwell upon that return to the long-lost verities of antiquity which is described in art-history as the Renaissance. Suffice it for us to know that in the treasury of the past is a rich legacy of thought bequeathed by the masterminds of every country—a legacy of power which, if rightly used, will make us not slavish copyists, but the creators of a living art adapted to our wants, speaking the language of our time, and yet true to those principles consecrated by the sanction of ages. I hope the day will come when, in the Art Gallery of this noble institution, the inhabitants of Victoria will find a large portion of this legacy accumulated for them; and that these heir-looms will be chronologically and scientifically arranged, as they now are in every great public gallery, so as to give a distinct idea of the forms which art took under different circumstances, of its principles, its motives, and technical facts. When that is done, you will require no lecturer to tell you the use of art in manufacture, for you will find them so closely wedded whenever both were in a noble and flourishing condition, that it will be impossible for you to draw a line between them. So close and healthy is the connection between the art which we admire in a picture and the art which allies itself to material use, that, though we have different names for them, they are essentially but one and the same. There is a hierarchy, no doubt, in the different manifestations of talent, and even in the royal doings of genius; but there are the same laws for all, they all have a common origin, and they are all directed to the same end. The study of even the high art of the ancients is as necessary to the artisan who will never paint a picture, as that of Homer and Virgil to the literary student who will never write an epic. In both cases the mind is fortified and refined for whatever work it may be called upon to perform. It is to this art-culture of her working-classes that France owed the proud pre eminence which her manufactures so long held in the markets of the world. In that country, besides the great galleries of Paris, whose preservation from the Vandal fury of the Communists was a source of rejoicing over the whole civilised world, there is scarcely a town that has not a museum and a church adorned with valuable pictures. Lithographs, busts, statuettes, are exposed for sale in every street, and are found in the homes of the humblest ouvriers. Art is everywhere, it meets the eye wherever one turns; and the consequence is, as has been proudly boasted, that sound criticism is page 78 as often heard in France from the lips of a peasant as from those of a prince. To this education of the taste and of the eye are due, in a great measure, the beauty of form and elegance of design which gained for French manufactures so high a position.

But the hand of the art-workman must also receive its art education. From those models consecrated by universal admiration the hand must learn to trace the graceful line, to wind into the subtle wavings of beauty, and to render with ease and promptness the forms which haunt the imagination. Happily, for some time great efforts have been put forth to spread this education of the hand amongst our working-classes. The Schools of Design lately established are doing much to popularise, not only a mere mechanical power of drawing, but that higher power which is derived from drawing properly directed. In the school attached to this institution it could hardly be otherwise, considering the collection of moulds and casts which it possesses, but I am happy to testify here that in all the schools with which I am acquainted I have witnessed an invariable desire to place the best models before the pupils. The education of the hand should however come as I have placed it, after that of the eye and the taste; for it is not generally until after one can appreciate better and see more than others, that the power to execute is widely or ardently coveted. I attribute, therefore, a great part of the success which has attended the establishment of these Schools of Design to the fact that a Gallery of Paintings and Casts had already existed for some years amongst us. For before you form schools, you must create the desire to enter them. You must first scatter the seeds of taste which seek for culture, and light up the love of beauty in the heart—that fruitful love which yearns not only to enjoy, but to produce. This, in fact, is the whole history of all true education of any kind, and this is the work which the National Gallery has been doing, as far as its resources would permit, amongst the inhabitants of Melbourne since it has been founded, and which it will continue to do with still greater effect, in proportion as its resources are wisely augmented.

But it may be said, "You surely do not mean us to give an art-education to our working-men. A little drawing may be useful, but all this dreaming and these high-flown ideas would only make them discontented with their station, and bring many of them to ruin." This is an objection I never hear without a feeling of indignation, which I avow it is page 79 sometimes difficult for me to repress. Art-training then is only good for gentlemen, and no one else! Be it so; hut why should not a workman be also a gentleman? Even now, "many of them," says Ruskin, "are more gentlemen than your idle, useless people." Why, I ask, should they not have the opportunity to become more so, and to become all the better workmen for the change? For whatever gives real refinement to the worker will be found to give beauty to his work. The fact is—and it is a truth which has been long known in the world, though sternly and stubbornly repelled in England until now—that there is in reality nothing more humiliating in a trade than in the profession of a lawyer or a doctor, a man of letters or an artist. Raphael, who painted the "Transfiguration," and was the friend of cardinals and courtiers, was not ashamed to decorate the walls of churches with floriated designs; and Flaxman, who sculptured the "Archangel Michael contending with Satan," did not think it inconsistent with his dignity to furnish designs for the potter's clay and the workman in metal. A great artist once signed his pictures with pride "Francia the goldsmith." The masters of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci were goldsmiths, and to the same craft belonged Ghiberti, who beat out the bronze gates of the Baptistery of Florence. What we want now is workmen like to these, and believe me, if ever we are to have them, we must set our faces resolutely against the dismal doctrine of an age of darkness that art-knowledge or any other knowledge is not good for all men, be they who they may, and against that remnant of the ruder ages which stamps with degradation those who with cultivated minds and skilful hands are employed in ministering to the daily wants of life.

But if art in general is useful to the craftsman, that development of it which enables him to determine the most suitable form of every object he has to make, and to inscribe on it, with truth and beauty, all the facts of its material, its construction and its uses, must in particular be needful. This is what is called the art of design. It is not distinct from other art, being merely a special application of it, and can no more be taught by any fixed rules than the art of Phidias or of Raphael. A good designer must be born an artist, he must moreover be a man of careful observation and of much experience, and his taste must be cultivated by the happy influence of beautiful things. This is not to say he can be taught nothing. He can be helped to a more intimate page 80 communion with nature by learning those secrets which her ardent lovers have ravished from her in every age, and he can be taught those principles which are gathered from the accumulated observation of all those who have gone before him. The leading principles that have been hitherto established, and those about which alone authorities seem to be undivided, I shall now endeavour to lay before you in the shortest and simplest manner that I can. They will teach us better than anything else how useful, even how essential, is this art in almost every branch of manufacture.

All design is either constructive or ornamental. The first principle concerns both divisions. I give it in the words of Mr. Owen Jones—"Construction should be decorated, decoration should never be constructed;" that is to say, that ornament should be subordinate to construction, and should not be designed without reference to it; for a designer might produce an ornament most beautiful in itself, and yet show the grossest stupidity in its application.

With regard to constructive design considered separately, the most important and best-founded principle is the very simple and common-sense one, that an object must fitly answer the purpose for which it is intended. This beauty of fitness is nothing more than truth, without which art would be degraded to a systematic misrepresentation. Utility is the characteristic attribute of the manufactures of all the great eras of art. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a single example amongst articles of classical workmanship, of which it might be said that it was tasteful and elegant, without being particularly adapted to the especial object for which it was originated. Nor is this quite as simple a thing as might at first sight appear, for it is not enough that an object should be useful for its purpose; every portion of it should be designed with reference to the end in view—that a water-jug, for instance, should not only be made so as to hold water, but should have the handle so placed that the water can be taken in and poured out with the greatest ease.

Fitness is a quality demanded of ornamental design also. Perfect figure-drawing, or a beautiful landscape, would be out of place on a cup or platter; delicate tints and patterns of flowers would be inappropriate on the meaner kitchen utensils; and even the bellows that enters into the drawingroom becomes a monstrosity when it displays a moonlight view in Venice, or the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. This much may be said without entering into the lists for or page 81 against either of the two bodies of disputants who occupy the arena of ornamental art. Whether room decoration should be by flat patterns and dead colours, or should be by natural art such as that with which Tintoret adorned the Council Hall at Venice—whether a wall should be merely a background to the living figures in the room, or should be alive with lovely children playing amongst the vine-leaves, as Correggio would have made it—is a question which I need not, even if I were capable to do so, take upon myself to decide. Of one thing I feel certain : that decorative art, when wholly unconventional, may be dignified and beautiful, and wholly in its place in certain surroundings, and that in others it may be much less suitable than the inferior forms of a zigzag or a chequer. I am, therefore, no partisan of the extremists on either side of this dispute. The interiors of noble buildings—abodes of kings, and great edifices of the people—claim the highest efforts of art for their adornment; a spoon, or a snuff-box, or a coal-scuttle, are objects with whose uses high art can have no possible connection. Between the palace and the coal-box there are, however, various fields for decoration, and in these I think the artist must be left wholly to his sense of fitness and his taste. Taking it, then, for granted that conventionalism is often necessary in ornamental art, let me remark here that even good conventionalism can never be produced by a workman who has received no training in the higher departments of art. It has ever been so from Egyptian ornament to the purest mediæval of the thirteenth century; how conventional soever was any great school of decoration in the past, the knowledge of the human figure and the most skilled and perfect drawing are everywhere as distinctly to be traced as in the birds, and cherubs, and wreathed foliage of the cinquecento. The same holds good with regard to the drawing of plants, and fruit, and flowers. Even in conventionalism an accurate knowledge of their forms is essential, for every part of a plant or flower, if properly understood, each member of the vegetable organism, if properly delineated, is a veritable ornament; and when we consider there are about 100,000 species of plants, we may form some idea of the vastness of the treasury here awaiting the student. Nor is this all; the study of these delightful objects with which the great temple of nature is adorned, these "stars of the earth," and all the fair profusion of fruit and foliage that surround us, hold up for ever before us in their silent, fascinating beauty those great laws of repetition and alternation, on which much of the merit of good conventional design must always depend.

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The conventional art finds its special place in the household—amongst the familiar and useful objects of our homes, but it would nevertheless be absurd to lay down the rule that all higher art should be excluded therefrom. In like manner, it may be said that the loftiest forms of art belong to the great public edifices, yet would it be an error to suppose that even here conventional art can find no place. The golden rule, therefore, is one of fitness. When decoration is beautiful and appropriate, it fulfils all the conditions of perfection. The statues of a majestic Gothic cathedral, as they ascend from the eye into the distance, and lose themselves in the shadows of its lofty arches, are rightly and properly conventionalised for the sake of effect, while the girdle of carved stalls and stone bas-reliefs around the choir is of the highest and most exquisite finish. In the same way, a teapot, ornamented with cherubs in high relief, or a carpet, resembling a menagerie marvellous with strange and savage creatures, are specimens of art falsely applied; but a sideboard, substantial, massive in shape, richly sombre in colour, may not unworthily receive the noble decoration of living forms; and I know no well-founded canon of taste that is violated when a cabinet is beautified with the most elegant pictorial composition, the most finished enrichments of sculpture, and the subtlest chromatic harmonies which the skill of the colourist can produce.

Another principle closely connected with this is that every article of manufacture should be not only fit for its use, and fitly ornamented, but by its design it should indicate the purpose to which it is applied, and should never be allowed to convey a false notion of that purpose. All the traps for the eye, in the shape of boxes that have the appearance of well-bound books, bells that look like inverted tulips, sideboards formed on the models of Grecian altars, and flower-stands treated as ruined castles, are false and vulgar in taste, thoroughly bad and irredeemably depraved in art.

And now, looking about for maxims for your guidance, I find the only remaining one about which there is no serious difference amongst authorities, is that concerning the fitness of design to the material to be used. "Every material (I give it in Sir Charles Eastlake's words) is restricted by the nature of its substance to certain conditions of form." Thus glass or any other brittle substance should not be made into the form of a pillar, the obvious idea of which is strength. Neither should glass be used wherever transparency is not page 83 desired. Feathers, or trees, or hair, should not be cut out of marble. Freestone is unfitted for work that requires minute elaboration, and cast iron should never be made to imitate wrought-iron ornament, or stone carving.

These, which are the fundamental principles of design, prove by their bare enunciation how essential is this art in the production of every object of daily use. Fine art produces beauty and elegance, design weds them to utility and fitness, and thus we see in a general way the uses in manufacture of art and design. But it will be well to go a step further than generalities. I shall, therefore, devote the remainder of the time I have to speak to you to compressing into as narrow a compass as possible some definite notions concerning the particular relations between art in its various developments and each of the principal manufactures that supply our ordinary wants.

The most important, perhaps, of all applications of art to handicraft, is that which takes place in the building of houses. In this land of our adoption, where it is the good fortune of so many to build, or create houses for themselves, this part of my subject assumes a special interest. Not only the character of the houses we are now building depends upon us, but that of the future homes of this country, and the street architecture of its cities will be influenced by our example for generations. Hitherto what we have done can hardly be much commended. A few buildings we have in Melbourne of exceptional merit, but in general it may be said that the least interesting town in all England is not more uninteresting than any of the great cities of Australia. All the ebullitions of uneducated taste in architecture, the vitiated copies of Italian buildings, the base vulgarities of design, the tawdry shop-fronts, the stuccoed terraces, and the thousand other abominations which have long been the reproach of the British isles, have been here ignorantly and slavishly reproduced. As in England, we have unfortunately no national taste in architecture, and hence no one would look for uniformity of purpose, singleness of style, or unity of character, such as we find in the cities of continental Europe; but it is surely not too much to expect that every man who has the means to build should have some idea of the difference between good and bad design, and a wholesome horror of all structural deceits; or failing this, that the professional men in whom he trusts should have a distinct and perfect notion of the essential principles of their art. Let me tell you, in a few words, what these principles are, that page 84 you may see how art and design will help you when you are to plan and ornament your homes, or when you are to have them planned and ornamented by others.

Above all things, the house must be adapted to the wants of the family who are to occupy it, and it must be suited to the climate in which it is built. A French chateau would hardly meet the domestic requirements of an ordinary Australian family, and the baronial hall or feudal castle of his Norman forefathers would certainly be an uncomfortable dwelling for an English country gentleman of the present day. For the habits which we have acquired in the island homes of our ancestors, the qualities perhaps most requisite in our houses are those of quiet comfort, seclusion, cheerfulness, and a certain air of importance in which there is no admixture of ostentation. If it be the house of a gentleman, he will in addition to all this require it to have a gentlemanly character, that good society may move within its walls smoothly and pleasantly, and that inside and outside it should be agreeable to a man of cultivated taste.

The consideration of climate is to some extent included in that of comfort. Shady balconies and deep verandahs, courtyards cooled with fountain freshness, and open turret and terraced roof from which to enjoy the evening breeze—all these things are conditions of comfort in our Victorian clime. And yet these are things, be it said in passing, which have hitherto not received the attention they deserve, our houses being more adapted to the gloom and chill of an English winter than to the perennial summer of this bright Australian land.

But climate has a relation to ornament as well as to comfort. The most refined enrichments, the most delicate carvings, which would appear spiritless if seen through a leaden atmosphere, will look well under the brilliant effects of our glowing skies; and the æsthetic merits of Renaissance design, which would in many cases be out of place amid the wind and rain of northern Europe, might be displayed to great advantage in this country of the sun.

One word more, and I shall have done with this portion of my subject. Size and costliness have no more essential connection with art, than the bulk of a man and the balance at his banker's have with his birth and breeding. Size is an accident, and taste costs nothing. Profusion of elaborate ornament, of course, cannot be had without a corresponding profusion of money; but elaborate ornament is not necessary to make a house which every man of taste will feel enjoyment page 85 in looking at. So well is this fact now understood, that it is acknowledged by most people that the homes of even the humblest class may and ought to be artistically designed. Hence it is that we now have philanthropists demanding that the house of the poor man should be tasteful, as well as healthful and commodious, on the principle which I have already enunciated to you, that beauty and use go together, and that the prettiest house will be the best house in every respect wherein a man can make his home and train his children. "The prettiest house," says the author of the Moral Influences of the Dwelling, "will be the healthiest, the most convenient, and the most comfortable; and I am persuaded that great moral results follow from people's houses being pretty as well as healthy."

When the house is built, the next manufactures that challenge our attention are those which clothe the naked walls, the hard floors, and the bare ceilings; and here, again, art comes to our aid, and tells us how this is best done. With regard to the walls, if pictures are to be hung upon them, the truest principles of art dictate that the real mural decoration should be subdued in tone and simple in pattern—that is, the ornament should be drawn in pure outline, and filled in with flat colour, and all appearance of relief should be strictly avoided. It will be necessary, moreover, that its general tone should give force and value to the objects in the room. Stencil-painting, which is much in vogue on the continent of Europe, is very suitable in this case, and a wall so decorated has an air of coolness which should be grateful in a climate such as ours.

Where pictures are not used, the mural ornament becomes more important. The eye rests in this case upon the wall alone, and demands for its gratification a greater play of line, and even, in some cases, roundness and effect of light and shade, for which, whatever Sir Charles Eastlake and Mr. Owen Jones may say, we have the authority of some of the greatest artists that ever lived. In this case, embossed papers, which appear like relievo leather-work, and have all the beauty of the old Moorish wall enrichments, are much to be commended; but what seems most agreeable to our climate, and what in reality is most artistic, is the adornment by frescoes. If we cannot have such works as those with which Bernardo Luini and the other great frescanti decorated the Branaacci Chapel, we may at least have the walls and ceilings of our humblest homes decorated as most Italian country houses are, with arabesques page 86 of various colours, painted in distemper—a simple and inexpensive kind of embellishment, that would render the rooms clean and light, and would, if the surface were smooth and polished, last literally for ages.

While on this subject, I may mention that it was once customary in Italy to decorate the exteriors of buildings as well as the interiors. In the days of Italian splendour and greatness, when her merchants were princes and her cities were thronged with gay cavaliers and noble ladies clad in the rich and picturesque costume of the cinquecento, you might have seen in Venice the facade of the Casa Martello covered with the beautiful work of Tintoret, the Palazzo Bolani decorated exteriorly by the pencil of Paul Veronese, and the Casa d'Oro attracting the eye of every passing gondolier by the graceful forms, the high thoughts, the captivating effects of colour, which Vesentini had lavished thereon. Or you might have admired, about the same period, as you passed through the streets of Cremona, the paintings of Campi and many more on the fronts of the leading houses; and in Brescia you would be charmed almost wherever you turned with the splendid decoration of Lattanzio Gambara, and a host of other distinguished artists. Suitable as such decoration would be in Melbourne, it is not too much to say that not one amongst us will live to see our streets adorned in a similar manner. We have neither the artists amongst us, nor the wealthy men of taste, from whom such things might be expected. But it is well, nevertheless, that we should be reminded from time to time of what has been done in other countries, that we may not be too easily satisfied with the humble efforts in the direction of art and art encouragement which we are making in Victoria, or which for many a year it may be possible for us to make.

Of tapestry as a wall-covering I need not say much. It has a highly rich and picturesque effect, but the costliness of all good fabrics of this description will perhaps for ever confine them to the narrow limits of palaces and churches. In most countries the introduction of paperhangings led to the decline of the manufacture of tapestry; but before that time it was a source of wealth and reputation in many states of Europe. The Gauls, with their quick artistic temperament, seem to have excelled in this manufacture even in the time of the Romans, when the red fabrics of Arras had already acquired a certain renown. In the tenth century we know that the monks of Saumur wove hangings decorated with flowers and page 87 animals; and about the same time we read of one of the Counts of Poitiers offering Robert, King of France, for his assistance in an expedition, a sum of money and a hundred pieces of the tapestry, for which Poitiers was then celebrated. Later on we find Francis I. making tapestry a state manufacture, and Primaticcio furnishing the designs. Henry II. and Henry IV. set up new establishments, and Philibert Delorme and Jean Gobelin are names that have become illustrious under the patronage of the French crown. During this time Italy and Flanders had become equally famous for their tapestries; in Flanders particularly the productions of this kind were of wonderful beauty and perfection. Oudenarde, Brussels, and Arras, will be for ever celebrated in the history of this manufacture. Among the ancient glories of which Arras still preserves a proud remembrance, are a series of tapestries which Robert of Flanders gave to Bajazet as a portion of the ransom for his son, and the ten pieces worked from the designs of Raphael, as a present from the French King to Leo X. In the 15th century the manufacture declined in Italy, and the last piece of Flemish tapestry was made at Brussels in 1781. France alone, of all nations, continues to be renowned for its hangings. The grand design, the perfect execution, the exquisite beauty of the great works of art, which have been produced by the Gobelins manufactory in modern times, are too well known to require any commendation from me.

The list of methods in which art is used in mural decoration would be incomplete without some mention of the sumptuous mosaics which adorn the ancient churches of Italy with their variegated hues and crystalline brilliancy, which repeat the magic of Raphael and Dominichino in St. Peter's, and which for nearly a thousand years—from the fourth century to the revival of tempera—was almost the only sort of wail embellishment employed. Well might Ghirlandajo say that this is the only painting for eternity. There are mosaics in and near Rome of the fourth or fifth century—as that of St. Constanza, which is of the fourth—in almost perfect preservation; and those of the sixth century, in the church of San Vitale, at Ravenna, are as fresh as they were thirteen hundred years ago. In the famous studio of the Vatican this beautiful art is in our day carried to a perfection unknown to the ancients. The number of enamels of different tints and hues preserved there amounts to no less than 10,000, and many of the large copies in St. Peter's have occupied from page 88 twelve to twenty years in their execution. The Florentine mosaics are also famous. The work of this kind, with which the walls of the chapel of the Medici at Florence are so lavishly decorated, is composed of such costly materials as agates, jaspers, lapis lazuli, and the like. In Venice, glass mosaics are made, specimens of which are now to be found in many of the public structures in England, where they are much admired for the old hereditary art, of which even the hated power of the Tedeschi never wholly robbed the "Bride of the Sea."

Turning from the walls and ceiling to the floor, it will be found that mosaics are quite as beautiful and useful here as in the more exalted positions. The antiquity of this mode of floor-decoration, and its common use in ancient times, cannot be doubted, for we read of it in the Book of Esther; and we know that not only Cicero had pavements of this kind placed in all the porticos of his house, but wherever the Roman eagles flew from Britain to Mount Atlas, mosaics followed as an almost indispensable adjunct of the civilisation of the conqueror. Glass tessclation prevailed all over Italy for many centuries. Tesselated marble work, usually of porphyry and serpentine, was used for church purposes for a still longer period, and some of these, as that in the Duomo of Sienna, are large and elaborate compositions in light, half-tint, and shadow.

Another floor-decoration, wherein there is wide scope for art, is that known as parquetry, in which various coloured woods are arranged in geometrical patterns, as may be seen in many of the good old houses in France. This method has been lately adopted in England, and, for many reasons, it is to be hoped that it will one day become common in this country also, where, in the warm, dusty months of summer, it would be so decided a luxury.

For the hall-floor a new branch of manufacture has also been lately started in England. I refer to the cheap and durable, and at the same time beautiful, decoration by encaustic tiles. The happy alliance of art with the resources at the command of the modern workman have enabled the Messrs. Minton to produce tiles as beautiful as those of the ancient Romans, and very little more expensive than common stone pavement.

The use of carpets, which I have purposely reserved for the last, brings me at once to the consideration of textile fabrics, in which a wide field for art display opens up to us, but one page 89 which I must run over hurriedly if I would not exhaust the patience with which you have hitherto been good enough to follow me. In touching even thus lightly, however, on the beautiful productions in this branch of manufacture, we must separate well in our minds the two classes into which it is divided by its ministration—in the one case to personal adornment, and in the other to household use. Everything, from the simplest calico print to the richest damask, if used for furniture, is governed by laws of taste entirely different from those which obtain in the whole range of fabrics intended for dress. Different, however, as are these two classes, for the true and grand traditions of art in both we must place ourselves humbly at the feet of the same teachers—the famous art-workmen of the East. In their sunny regions the sense of beauty seems never to have been wanting, whatever department of manufacture they have occupied themselves with. We have engravings, published in 1750, of vases which were then to be found in the museum of the Emperor Khian Loung, and which for beauty of form and grandeur of decoration cannot be surpassed, and yet these vases belong to an epoch 1800 or 2000 years before Christ, when the Greeks had not even yet been heard of. Who does not know the fame of the jewels of Lahore, the ivory and porcelain of China, the arms of Kurdistan, the lacquer-work of Satzouma, the bronzes and papers of Japan, and (what is more to our present purpose) the damask and velvet of Aleppo and Chiraz, the gauzes and muslins of Gwalior and Agra, the carpets of Smyrna, the satins and nankins of the celestial empire, and that unrivalled production the cashmere shawl, which comes from the valley whose "roses are brightest that earth ever gave"? And yet it is a fact that the stuffs of Babylon and Memphis, of Tyre and Alexandria, of Byzantium and Trebizond, are as beautiful to-day as those which are still manufactured according to the same traditions in Constantinople or Broussa, in Persia, India, or Pekin. These productions are not only beautiful, but they seem to be everlasting. I do not speak now so much of the tables, coffers, cabinets, etagères, vases, and other similar products of oriental manufacture, on which porcelain, mother-of-pearl, shell and graven ivory are encrusted with such marvellous skill, and whose faithful designs and irreproachable harmonies endure for ever as testimonies of the fine and unerring taste of the artist-workmen of these countries. Even those more perishable fabrics, which amongst us "outer barbarians" so soon page 90 lose their brilliancy and beauty, partake in the East of the durability which seems to belong to all Eastern work. In Persia, when summer comes, the marvellous carpets are taken up and placed for a fortnight in the bottom of a river, from which they re-appear more brilliant than ever; and it is well known that many of them are to be seen in that country, which after three or four hundred years' use are as fresh now as when they were first made. France, too, it must be admitted, has held for centuries a high position in carpet manufacture. The magnificent products of the Gobelins, the Savonnerie, and Aubusson, are works worthy of the homes of kings. The carpets of the Gobelins manufactory, in addition to their artistic value, have, like Eastern work, the priceless quality of everlasting solidity. Friction and wear only increase their durability, as they have the effect of drawing closer the knots which fasten the wool to the warp. The Savonnerie carpets are the largest made. They are generally white, with arabesque borders, in which the delicacy of the dyes, the harmony of the colours, and the skilfulness of the workmanship, defy all western competition. At Aubusson, it is well known, the principles of the art and the aptitude for execution are traditions in certain families, and no other place can produce such a staff of workmen. It is worthy of remark, however, that even there, where the apprentice is accustomed from infancy to handle his father's frame, it takes fifteen years to qualify for the work.

The teachings of art with regard to this manufacture are, perhaps, clearer than in reference to mural decorations. Whatever we may think of relief and natural ornament upon the walls and ceiling, I think we can hardly help admitting that flatness is a most wholesome feature in floors. It is uncomfortable to walk over hill and water in a landscape, to trample on living creatures, and to feel in constant danger of being tripped by some other formidable reality; and hence, however excellent these things may be when taken separately, there can be little doubt but that they are bad and false as floor decorations. Floral designs are the only imitations of natural objects that may be properly introduced, and whatever Mr. Wallis and other authorities may say of the want of knowledge of those who admire flowers in carpets, I cannot but think that they are perfectly suitable, and that their effect is artistic in a very high degree. If this be an error, I am quite satisfied in this respect, at least, to err with Mr. Ruskin, who says he "cannot see, since the first thing we page 91 usually do to make the ground fit to be walked upon by any festive procession is always to strew flowers upon it, why we should refuse to have flowers on our carpets."

Other textile articles of furniture, such as window curtains and, in a still greater degree, table linen, should be exceedingly simple in pattern, as it is obvious that the use in one case, and the folds in the other, preclude the possibility of all elaborate ornamentation, which would be distorted on the window and incongruous on the napkin.

And now I approach those manufactures in which art is employed to heighten their power of personal adornment and make them harmonise with the character of the figure which they array. In some respects it is a delicate subject, because I am afraid I can hardly touch it without "fluttering the dovecots of Corioli," displeasing the ladies as well as the fashionmongers, who are their oracles of taste. In this free country, and in free England, our ladies enjoy an almost unlimited liberty in dress as well as in other things. They are restricted neither to the mantilla of "Spain's dark-glancing daughters," nor to the veils and shawls of their Turkish sisters. They dress, in fact, according to their own sweet will, and the use they make of their liberty is to attire themselves all alike in whatever extraordinary costume the last fashion-plates from Europe may introduce. Sometimes the gowns of our wives and sisters are abbreviated petticoats, in which Venuses that may be said to be of the Doric order of architecture are seen to great disadvantage. Sometimes they are lengthened out to an inordinate degree, and a train that would be becoming only in a drawingroom is dragged through the dust of Collins-street, to the infinite inconvenience of the male frequenters of that Rialto of fashion. Sometimes, again, our ladies' dresses are straight and bare as a friar's frock, and anon they are monstrous in their amplitude, and over-abounding in paniers and puffs. As long as the hair is of the new colour, the dress of the style worn two months ago in London, the hat of the latest bandit or gipsy shape, and the ribbons and jewellery in strict accordance with the prevailing mode, they think they have done all that can be required of them by the most exacting critic.

I wish I could place before you some work of Holbein's or of Paul Veronese's—it would teach you more in five minutes of the uses of art in the manufacture of garment materials than I could tell you in hours. Nothing can be nobler than their robe embroideries. The magnificence of colour, the page 92 subtle beauty of design, the harmony of texture and ornament, and the due subordination of all to the prominence of which the figure should never be deprived, are really marvellous to behold. In a general way, however, I may tell you that art requires brocade and such costly material to have a rich treatment, while the pattern on muslin bareges and cotton should be small, and founded on a regular and severe basis. A few more general principles are that the closer the fabric the smaller must be the pattern, that in woollen goods it should closely cover the ground, and that all patterns which cross the fabric so that they run round the dress when made up should be avoided.

Closely connected with textile fabrics, in their double office of household utility and personal decoration, are the manufactures in which the materials are the precious metals and the precious stones. Artists have at all times loved to lavish their labour upon these costly substances, not indeed because of their money value, which is a matter quite unimportant from a purely artistic point of view, but rather for their durability, a quality which every true artist prizes highly on account of the immortality it promises to his work and to his thoughts. The greatest monuments of stone and brass that human genius has produced are long ago lost in the waves of time, but the indestructible gold and the ever-flashing jewel discovered to-day in an Egyptian sepulchre are as perfect as when they were first placed there. Indeed, if gems and golden ornaments had no artistic beauty, but were in the one case badly cut or inappropriately used, and in the other monstrously designed, then indeed we might say with Ruskin that such things were fit only for "the adornments of the chariot and the trappings of the steed." Art it is that gives them their highest value, and makes them fit to take their place on the brow of beauty or on the sceptre of a king. Gems might have been hollowed into cups for the banqueting-hall of Cleopatra; but if they were made the vehicles of no high thought, if no beautiful art was entrusted to their everlasting keeping, then they were fit for nothing better than to hold some costly wine to the lips of a drunken Cæsar. In this, as in every other branch of art-manufacture, the French are by general consent allowed to be pre-eminent for grace and novelty of design, for vivacity of fancy, and for scholarly and well-selected reproductions. The English, while inferior in these respects, have, however, of late years made wonderful progress, and their work, if not quite so rich in art qualities, has ever had a page 93 solidity of structure and an excellence of execution which are by no means undeserving of high praise. It is said that a certain Austrian nobleman never danced without shaking off several hundred pounds value from his diamond ornaments. This I can perfectly understand might happen if the settings were French, but would hardly ever occur, I think, if they were English. The problem which the jeweller has to solve is to unite, as far as possible, the delicacy and beauty of French work to the soundness for which that of our own countrymen is distinguished. In this, as in all other branches of art, we must go back to the concurrent testimony of past ages for the principles of taste by which they are to be guided. It is, therefore, much to be regretted that we have no specimens of ancient jewellery, or even clever reproductions of well-chosen models, to which the student could be directed for instruction or suggestion. If we cannot have a Campana museum, such as was added some time ago to the Louvre; or a priceless collection, such as may be found amongst the treasures of the Hotel Cluny; or examples of the fine historical jewellery of the Italian peasants, such as were lately purchased from Salviato of Rome for the South Kensington Museum—it might be worth the attention of the trustees of this institution to procure some electrotype reproductions or some photographs of the best work of the kind of various epochs, and even to make a beginning of collecting such originals as opportunity and their resources might place within their reach. This would soon rid us of the wretched design and inappropriate ornament with which one is so often shocked in the personal jewellery we notice as we walk through the principal thoroughfares of this city, and which are so different from what would meet the eye on the Pincian in Rome, in the Champs Elysées in Paris, or even in "the Row" in London.

A wide distinction there is between those works in the precious metals which are intended for personal adornment and those designed for use as well as beauty. "In the one case fancy may be indulged," says a popular writer on the subject, "to almost any extent, in the other the utility of the object will govern its form." This beauty of fitness, or truth of construction, rejects every ornament inconsistent with it as a senseless and unjustifiable extravagance. If art, however, be more restricted with regard to form in gold and silver objects of use than in those of mere ornament, it must not be thought that the artist does not find as congenial a field for his labour on the noble service of plate made to be a family heirloom, as on page 94 the parure destined for a royal bride. Some of the most potent wizards of the pencil or the chisel have produced designs for silver work, Perugino, Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Giulio Romano amongst the number; and one man's name (need I say it is Benevenuto Cellini's?) has become immortal by its connection with this work alone. Once the contour is fixed, the enrichments, whatever they are, should grow naturally out of it, or should help to make it, but should certainly never be allowed to disturb it in the slightest degree. In these limits, however, much rich and worthy artwork may be produced. I must say that in this direction I have seen some efforts of our Melbourne silversmiths that could not be described otherwise than as highly meritorious. Presentation plate has sometimes appeared in the windows of one or two of them, which certainly spoke well for the taste of the designers, and their sense of appropriate ornamentation. A want of originality no doubt may be noticed, for the types of the aboriginal, the goat, and the kangaroo, have become almost as fixed as those of man and animal were in the art of the Assyrians; and beyond a fortuitous meeting of these various creatures, with the addition or substitution of an emu or some other specimen of our living curiosities, I am afraid that the invention of our local workers in silver very rarely goes. Works of this kind, more than perhaps any other, should in their entirety convey a thought which every individual ornament would help more clearly to bring out. The thought should meet the eye distinctly and at once, impressed on the whole design, and on every part of it; and even the treatment—large, generous, and free—should aid in giving a sort of frankness and sincerity to its impression.

Talking of personal and house ornamentation, I can hardly avoid saying a word about lace—that delicate and most artistic fabric, which adds such an air of elegance and brightness to the household, and aids so gracefully in enhancing the charms of female beauty. Its classic home is Belgium, but France has long been a powerful rival to that country, and Honiton and Limerick are surely not unknown to fame. Its manufacture has always proved a source of national wealth in Belgium, but it is now more flourishing than in the most palmy days of the Netherlands. Lace-making forms a branch of the public education, and employs, it is said, one-fortieth of the population. This in itself is a proof of the utility of art in manufactures, for it is not only to its fineness, but to its beauty, that Belgian lace owes its world-wide renown. page 95 Brussels lace is unrivalled for its artistic treatment, as well as for its delicacy; and the elaborate and tasteful workmanship of Valenciennes is as well known as its solidity, which gained for it the name of "eternelles Valenciennes." In France the most celebrated centres of this beautiful art-manufacture are Alencon, Normandy, Auvergne, Lille, and Arras. The point d' Alencon is the most costly of all kinds of lace. It is the splendid fabric of which were composed the cuffs, and garters, and shoe-roses, and falling collars, of the magnificent court of Louis XV., and of which such matchless specimens appeared in the corbeille de mariage of the Empress Eugenie. The curtains and bed-trimmings of the cradle presented by the city of Paris to the infant son of Napoleon III. were of this material, and cost nearly £5000. To such value may materials of the cheapest kind be raised by the happy combination of artistic and manual skill.

The uses of art in the making of furniture is a subject which itself alone would require, not one lecture, but a course of lectures to do it justice. One of the first good effects which art-teaching would have upon this manufacture would be to banish for ever many of those forms with which we are so familiar, and in which the greatest amount of ugliness is united to the least possible amount of comfort; to make short work of all those gaudy inflations and pretentious devices which give our modern house-interiors such a shoppy and snobby appearance, and to give our furniture correctness of structural design and appropriateness of ornament, instead of the meaningless imitations, the lawless luxuriance and extravagant caprices which vulgar ostentation has of late years called into existence. "Beauty," says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, "is not to be obtained by capricious ornament such as overloads so many of our modern productions, for unless the maker knows why the particular form and all the ornamental accessories are given to his work, any splendour of decoration which may merely delight the ignorant will only be looked upon by men of good judgment with the greatest dissatisfaction." This is not to say, however, that house furniture should be deprived of all magnificence of ornament. The choicest woods (and any one who passes through our Technological Museum will see what a splendid variety we in this country have to choose from), coloured stones, bronze, ormolu, and Florentine mosaics, may all be used to give imperial opulence to the drawingrooms of the wealthy, if only they are used in accordance with the dictates of good taste. Tarsia, and other sorts of marquetry, may take their page 96 place in homes where economy is studied. But in all good art-workmanship of this kind, whatever be the materials employed, there should be cleverness of design, happy blending of colour, purpose in the placing of each detail, and intent in every touch. With these the result is sure to be satisfactory, whether you use ivory inlays to enliven the sober tones of walnut, and focus the colour in masses of agate and lapis lazuli, or search for polychromatic variety and concord in the juxtaposition of ebony, gold, porcelain, satin-wood, and silvery sycamore. Carving is, however, the most legitimate and appropriate of all means of ornamenting furniture. The display of fancy and the finesse of execution for which there is here so wide a field, is the decoration which a man of taste will prefer to all others. Those who would wish to see in what manner artistic carving may be made to heighten the beauty and consequently the value of household furniture, cannot do better than examine attentively the magnificent Italian chimney-piece, of which we have a copy in our Art Gallery. This noble work of art-manufacture, which formerly belonged to the Counts Petinelli, at Padua, and is supposed to be the production of one of the Lombardi family, who sojourned in that city towards the beginning of the sixteenth century, was purchased in Italy by M. Soulages, for his valuable museum, which is now the property of the English nation. Amid all its rich profusion of ornament—its baluster-shaped shafts unsparingly decorated, its projecting corbels representing marine divinities, its carved mouldings on cornice and entablature, and its figures in full relief upon the frieze—the most perfect harmony of details, and the completest unity of character, as well as the utmost skill and the highest finish, are stamped upon the entire work. Such an example as this will do more than a hundred lectures could do to spread correct notions of the relation between art and handicraft.

And now I must hurry on. The only remaining branches of art-manufacture on which I can touch this evening may be all comprised, in a loose way, under the head of furniture. They are the manufacture of glass, of bronze, of ironware, of porcelain, and pottery.

The glory of glassware might, until very lately, have been said to belong to a past age. No doubt our flint-glass, owing to the use of lead in its composition, is of a much more crystalline purity than was ever dreamed of by Venetian artists; but, unhappily, this very ingredient precludes nearly all possibility of artistic treatment. The material cools so page 97 quickly during manufacture, that no time is left for the display of skilful handiwork or delicate taste. Hence it is that, up to a very recent date, the quaint and elegant forms, the graceful and fantastic ornament, the dainty touches of colour, the mellow and jewel-like effect, which were common to the glass manufactures of Venice in the fifteenth century, were unknown amongst us, outside the curiosity shops where the rare specimens still preserved were sold at ten times their original cost. Neatness indeed we had, and brightness, mathematical precision, and sometimes even nice engraving, but the countless colours and forms of old filagree were gone, and the rich golden lustre of avventurino was no more. To an Italian gentleman of our own time—a scholar and a lover of art—is due the honour of having resuscitated this beautiful industry; and now the glass-workers of Murano, amongst whom the traditions of the lost art had never been entirely forgotten, produce works which will bear comparison with the best productions of former times. Bohemian glass is one which alone never forfeited its reputation, but it must be admitted that until within the last few years its decorations in gold left much to be desired. The green glass of Bohemia is now, however, not only superb in tone and quality of colour, but the contrast with the raised gold is of the most charming and artistic effect. French glass is elegant and correct in taste, like all other art manufactures of that country; and French chandeliers are remarked for a greater perfection of cutting for the purposes of illumination than is generally to be found in similar articles elsewhere. English glass has lately improved considerably in design. We no longer use the inverted cones, from which our grandfathers drank their "fine old tawny," and champagne sparkles now in a broad tazza of elegant shape, instead of being confined in the long narrow glasses which many of us may remember. Water-bottles, claret-jugs, salt-cellars, preserve-jars, flower-stands, vases, all display more refinement than the articles did some fifty years ago, and their value has proportionately risen in the markets of the world.

Glass-painting and glass-staining are branches of art-industry quite different from one another, and the latter, of course, quite distinct from the manufacture of articles in glass. In stained glass the colouring is not superficial, but pervades the substance of the glass, and is obtained by mixing metallic oxides with the glass in a state of fusion. Of these industries however, I need not speak, as art is obviously necessary page 98 wherever colour is employed, and glass-painting, in which Lorenzo Ghiberti, Claude, and Bernard Palissy distinguished themselves, though purely a monumental decoration, approaches so nearly to fine art that its highest merits must be always of an æsthetic nature. A pure and correct style of drawing without any elaboration of detail, and a simple and vigorous rendering of the subject, are the qualities which the painter in glass must before all things endeavour to attain. At a distance the colours and forms should make a harmonious whole, and only on closer inspection should the elements of the general effect be perceived. This is a secret of decoration that has not hitherto been much noticed, but it is nevertheless of the very utmost importance, as I believe that in it lies the solution of many of the difficulties about which ornamentalists are so divided. Good decoration of this kind, proving really pure and true when examined, and yet unobtrusive of form and detail when looked at as merely part of the building it adorns, should, I think, satisfy the followers of nature as well as the orthodox disciples of the conventional school.

The art-industry of decorative bronzes is another of those branches of my subject of which I need say but little. The successful manner in which art has been applied to it in France is a source of immense wealth to that country. And "this success," says a writer on the subject, "is based on the special preparation and education of the workers. . . . Thus, competitors with France must commence, not with the foundry and the workshop, but with the school of art, and gradually train the student in designing and modelling for metal-work, or educate the young worker in the class-room. In no other way can the skill which exists in the extensive ateliers of the bronze manufacturers of Paris be emulated, still less rivalled." The fact that our climate is highly favourable to the display of this material should be an inducement to Australian artists to turn their attention to bronze decoration. Its exquisite and varied tones are imperceptible in a scanty, diffused light, but are brought out in all their sombre and harmonious beauty under the brilliancy and the consequently sharply-defined shadows of an atmosphere so pure and sunny as this of ours.

From bronze to iron is not an abrupt transition. There is scarcely any material which affords wider scope for art than iron, by reason of the ductile and tenacious qualities which it possesses in so eminent a degree. Hence it is that no branch of trade shows more variety of design than that of the ironmonger. Those who have travelled in Italy will know with page 99 what consummate art it has been beaten and dragged into delicate lines, and fair forms, and fantastic imagery, by the old workers of the quattrocento and succeeding century. The town of Siena, the streets of Florence, the garden walls of Brescia, the balconies of Bellinzona, are rich with the freedom and fineness of this ancient art, here rising in sprays of foliage, there twined in capricious tendrils; here falling in tassels, there clustering in wreathed flowers. Two of the little Alpine towns have, to use the words of Ruskin, "complete schools of ironwork in their balconies and vineyard gates." Copies of this work should be constantly before the eyes of those who would learn the use of art in this branch of manufacture, and I know of no fairer examples than the gates of Ghiberti, of which I have had a few of the panels brought here from the School of Design for your inspection. Angelo said they were fit to be the gates of Paradise, and after that they require no further praise. Another very extraordinary specimen of ironwork is that shield in repousse, representing the Apotheosis of Rome, with which visitors to the National Gallery must be familiar, and which is the work of George Sigman, one of the famous old goldsmiths of the imperial city of Augsburg. The influence of such examples would soon rid us of the lacquered ugliness of Birmingham patterns of stoves and fenders, candelabra and coffee urns, which are remarkable for nothing so much as for their meretricious extravagance of style, and we might once more expect to see even fire-dogs made beautiful with art, as they were in the time of Shakespeare—

"——the roof o' the chamber
With golden cherubims is fretted; her andirons
(I had forgot them) were two winking cupids,
Of silver each, on one foot standing nicely,
Depending on their brands."

And now we reach the last branch of manufacture of which I propose to speak, that most ancient and most artistic one which is described under the generic name of ceramic ware. Made of the most worthless of all materials, some of the triumphs of this industry have become, by the power of art, things of inestimable value. Looking through the Sèvres manufactory, as I have often done, and admiring the soft and brilliant colouring, the glowing landscapes, the gay figure subjects, the pictures of the Boucher and Watteau class, the shepherds and shepherdesses in satin, the noblesse of past centuries, the powdered gentilhommes and high-heeled dames page 100 of the court of Louis Quatorze, and the rest of the brilliant pictorial display which there meets the eye, one may well fancy himself in a gallery of paintings, and be disposed to claim for ceramic decoration the dignity of fine art in its highest and most exclusive sense. Pictures I have seen there of which Meissonier might have been proud; flowers worthy of the old Dutch painters; colours such as the bleu de roi and the rose Dubarry, unrivalled for their delicacy of tint; and works which, both for their constructive and ornamental art, were precious beyond their weight in jewels or in gold. Those who are acquainted with the manufactories of Dresden and Berlin also know something of what art can do for porcelain; and whoever has visited the Marquis Ginori's establishment in Florence will treasure the sights he has seen there among the most beautiful reminiscences of his Italian travels. It is well, however, to remark that the Dresden ware, of which we have some examples in the Technological Museum, is by no means the perfection of fictile art. The first European manufactory of porcelain was established at Meissen, near Dresden, but the art of the Saxon capital even in that period, which courtiers used to call its Augustan age, was ever false and extravagant in character. Rococo is the style to which it owes its architectural physiognomy, the statues in its public places are too often those of the German disciples of Bernini, and the paintings with which Heinecken once inundated the state collection are certainly not adapted to elevate the public taste. It is not therefore astonishing if, under such influences, the Government porcelain works produce nothing better than delicate toys in which real æsthetic merit is rarely present. The reproductions on porcelain of four celebrated pictures, which may be seen in the Technological Museum, and which are also of Saxon manufacture, are, however, works of very considerable interest. Considering the many difficulties which attend the process, it must be admitted that they are highly successful. Each of these productions is painted at least three times over, and the colours burned in after each painting, so that not only the very nicest accuracy is needed in allowing for the action of fire upon the pigments, but the most anxious care lest accidents should occur. Notwithstanding all the skill and attention of those who are long accustomed to the work, the colours often turn out unsatisfactory, and frequently twenty plates are destroyed before one comes forth unscathed from the ordeal. These difficulties will of themselves prevent this mode of reproduction from ever becoming popular, but page 101 successful specimens (such as we now see before us) are worthy of attention as examples of the higher capabilities of ceramic art. British factories have produced pottery and porcelain decidedly superior to this Dresden ware, and ever since the days of Wedgwood this industry has been stamped with a beauty and excellence which even in France and Italy is rarely surpassed. No European establishment has yet discovered the secret of the great era of Chinese porcelain, notwithstanding all the chemical knowledge and the artistic resources of our time; but it is satisfactory to us to know that English artisans have produced works which so closely imitate the dolce color d'oriental zaffiro, and all the other characteristics which are associated with the dynasties most renowned in celestial ceramics, that even judges are sometimes deceived. As a proof of this, I may relate an anecdote which I have from excellent authority. Not long ago the warehouse of Mr. Hewett, of King William-street, was visited by some gentlemen learned in pottery, one of whom was celebrated as a liberal and enthusiastic collector. They examined some china of a watery-blue pattern. Suddenly one of the authorities, as if struck with some idea of peculiar importance, drew forth a magnifying-glass and applied it almost tremblingly to the lower part of the plate. A moment was enough. "Ha!" said he, "I thought so—Ming dynasty." The proprietor wisely was silent in the presence of his customers, but as soon as they were gone his first words to a friend who witnessed the scene were—"Ming dynasty! It was made by workmen last year."

I cannot tax your patience any further. There are, of course, many other branches of manufacture of which I might speak, but those which I have mentioned will suffice to give you some notion of the wide and splendid field for human industry and the immense sources of wealth that are opened up by an intelligent union of art and design with the labour of the hand. The value of art-power in the workman is now, however, daily growing throughout the world to be not only appreciated, but absolutely required. Even in England, which was so long a time behind some of the other countries of Europe in this respect, ugly, inartistic designs will not sell at present, and the articles of French manufacture which command the market do so for no other reason than because of their superior beauty. No money or pains are spared to raise the English workman in the scale of artificers, and to place him on a level with his fellow-toilers in other lands. Last page 102 year, in addition to the large sums voted to galleries and other institutions connected with art, £34,000 was spent in schools in which art instruction is given to the working classes, and these schools were attended by 18,690 students in the day, and 7258 at night. Exhibitions are made to aid also in the good work. Besides the South Kensington Museum, which is permanent, not a year passes without displays of art-manufacture for the education of workmen; and last May was opened the first of a series of International Exhibitions in London, which are henceforth to be held annually, and in which an immense field of study is opened to the designer for industrial purposes. In this great movement which is now spreading over the whole earth, it is absolutely necessary that we should take our place. If we do not, the time will come when Victoria, which should be the great manufacturing centre of these southern lands, will have to import perhaps from some neighbouring colony many of the articles used by her own people. Far from us such a disgrace! Shall we not hope rather that the day may come when, in this land of wealth and liberty, as in the free republics of Venice, Pisa, and Florence, and amongst the commercial communities of the Rhine, art may flourish in all the grandeur of creative power, and our workmen may rival the Tafis, the Ghibertis, and the Palissys of old? But, if we wish for such a future, the attention of the working classes must be aroused to the importance of art-instruction. If these words bear the fruit that they should, art-education for the people will henceforth be dealt with in a more thoughtful and liberal manner than in the past, and our manufactures will be amply and worthily represented at the exhibitions held in London every year. Instruction—Rivalry; these are the two souls with which our workmen are to be animated, and the task of doing so is worthy of the noblest minds amongst us. On it depends, in no small degree, the future greatness and prosperity of the new empire which it has fallen to us to found, for we must ever remember that, on these southern shores, which were first pressed by the foot of civilised man within the memory of most of us—

"We are ancients of the earth
And in the morning of the times."