THE 
 
 STUDY OF BEAUTY, 
 
 AND 
 
 ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 TWO PAPERS 
 
 BY 
 
 T. C. HORSFALL, 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, D.C.L., LL.D., 
 
 HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY 
 FELLOW OF CORPUS-CHRISTI COLLEGE. 
 
 HonJjon 
 
 MACMILLAN AND 
 1883. 
 
 PRICE SIXPENCE. 
 
 CO. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/studyofbeautyartOOhors 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 T HAVE been asked by Mr. Horsfall to write a 
 ^ few words of introduction to the following 
 papers. The trust is a frank one, for our friend- 
 ship has been long and intimate enough to assure 
 their author that my feelings, and even practical 
 convictions in many respects differ from his, and in 
 some, relating especially to the subjects here treated 
 of, are even opposed to his ; so that my private 
 letters (which, to speak truth, he never attends to a 
 word of) are little more than a series of exhortations 
 to him to sing — once for all — the beautiful Cavalier 
 ditty of " Farewell, Manchester," and pour the dew 
 of his artistic benevolence on less recusant ground. 
 Nevertheless, as assuredly he knows much more of 
 his own town than I do, and as his mind is evidently 
 made up to do the best he can for it, the only thing 
 left for me to do is to help him all I can in the hard 
 task he has set himself — or, if I can't help, at least 
 to bear witness to the goodness of the seed he has 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 set himself to sow among thorns. For indeed, the 
 principles on which he is working are altogether 
 true and sound ; and the definitions and defence of 
 them, in this pamphlet, are among the most im- 
 portant pieces of Art teaching which I have ever 
 met with in recent English literature, — in past Art- 
 literature, there cannot of course be anything 
 parallel to them, since the difficulties to be met and 
 mischiefs to be dealt with are wholly of to-day. 
 And in all the practical suggestions and recom- 
 mendations given in the following pages I not only 
 concur, but am myself much aided as I read them, 
 in the giving form to my own plans for the museum 
 at Sheffield ; nor do I doubt that they will at once 
 commend themxselves to every intelligent and candid 
 reader. But, to my own mind, the statements of 
 principle on which these recommendations are based 
 are far the more valuable part of the writings, for 
 these are true and serviceable for all time, and in all 
 places : while in simplicity and lucidity they are far 
 beyond any usually to be found in essays on Art, 
 and the political significance of the laws thus defined 
 is really I believe here for the first time rightly 
 grasped and illustrated. 
 
 Of these, however, the one whose root is deepest 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 and range widest will be denied by many readers, 
 and doubted by others, so that it may be well to say 
 a word or two farther in its interpretation and 
 defence — the saying, namely, at page 22, that "faith 
 cannot dwell in hideous towns," and that "familiarity 
 with beauty is a most powerful aid to belief." This 
 is a curious saying, in front of the fact that the 
 primary force of infidelity in the Renaissance times 
 was its pursuit of carnal beauty, and that nowadays 
 (at least so far as my own experience reaches,) more 
 faith may be found in the back streets of most cities 
 than in the fine ones. Nevertheless the saying is 
 wholly true; first, because carnal beauty is not true 
 beauty ; secondly, because, rightly judged, the fine 
 streets of most modern towns are more hideous than 
 the back ones; lastly, and this is the point on which 
 I must enlarge, because universally the first con- 
 dition to the believing there is Order in Heaven, is 
 the Sight of Order upon Earth ; Order, that is to 
 say, not the result of physical law, but of some 
 spiritual power prevailing over it, as, to take instances 
 from my own old and favourite subject, — the ordering 
 of the clouds in a beautiful sunset, which corresponds 
 to a painter's invention of them ; or the ordering of 
 the colours on a bird's wing, or of the radiations of 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 a crystal of hoarfrost or of sapphire, concerning any 
 of which matters, men, so called of science, are 
 necessarily and for ever silent, because the distribu- 
 tion of colours in spectra and the relation of planes 
 in crystals are final and causeless facts, orders, that 
 is to say, not laws. And more than this, the infidel 
 temper which is incapable of perceiving this spiritual 
 beauty has an instant and constant tendency to 
 delight in the reverse of it, so that practically its 
 investigation is always, by preference, of forms of 
 death or disease ; and every state of disorder and 
 dissolution, — the affectionate analysis of vice in 
 modern novels being a part of the same science. 
 And, to keep to my own special field of study — the 
 order of clouds, — there is a grotesquely notable 
 example of the connection between infidelity and the 
 sense of ugliness in a paper in the last Contemporary 
 Review, in which an able writer, who signs Vernon 
 Lee but whose personal view or purpose remains to 
 the close of the essay inscrutable, has rendered with 
 considerable acuteness and animation the course of 
 a dialogue between one of the common modern men 
 about town who are the parasites of their own cigars^ 
 and two more or less weak and foolish friends of 
 hesitatingly adverse instincts : the three of them, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 7 
 
 however, practically assuming their own wisdom to 
 be the highest yet attained by the human race ; and 
 their only diversion on the mountainous heights of 
 it being by the aspect of a so-called — " preposterous" 
 sunset — described in the following terms : — ■ 
 
 A brilliant light, which seemed to sink out of the landscape 
 all its reds and yellows, and with them all life ; bleaching the 
 yellowing cornfields and brown heath ; but burnishing into 
 demoniac energy of colour the pastures and oak woods, brilliant 
 against the dark sky as if filled with green fire. 
 
 Along the roadside the poppies, which an ordinary sunset 
 makes flame, were quite extinguished, like burnt- out embers; the 
 yellow hearts of the daisies were quite lost, merged into their 
 shining white petals. And, striking against the windows of the 
 old black and white chequered farm (a ghastly skeleton in this 
 light), it made them not flare, — nay, not redden in the faintest 
 degree, but reflect a brilliant speck of white light. Everything 
 was unsubstantial, yet not as in a mist ; nay, rather substantial, 
 but flat, as if cut out of paper and pasted on, the black branches 
 and green leaves, the livid, glaring houses, with roofs of dead, 
 scarce perceptible red (as when an iron turning white-hot from 
 red-hot in the stithy grows also dull and dim). 
 
 " It looks like the eve of the coming of Antichrist, as described 
 in mediaeval hymns," remarked Vere : " the sun, before setting 
 never more to rise, sucking all fife out of the earth, leaving it but 
 a mound of livid cinders, barren and crumbling, through which 
 the buried nations will easily break their way when they arise," 
 
 As I have above said, I do not discern the pur- 
 pose of the writer of this paper ; but it would be 
 impossible to illustrate more clearly this chronic 
 insanity of infidel thought which makes all nature 
 
8 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 spectral ; while, with exactly correspondent and 
 reflective power, whatever is dreadful or disordered 
 in external things, reproduces itself in disease of the 
 human mind affected by them. 
 
 The correspondent relations of beauty to morality 
 are illustrated in the following pages in a way which 
 leaves little to be desired ; and scarcely any room 
 for dissent ; but I have marked for my own future 
 reference the following passages, of which I think it 
 will further the usefulness of the book that the 
 reader should initially observe the contents and 
 connection. 
 
 1 (p. 15, line 6-10). Our idea of beauty in all 
 things depends on what we believe they ought to be, 
 and do, 
 
 2 (p. 17, line 8-17). Pleasure is most to be 
 found in safe and pure ways : and the greatest 
 happiness of life is to have a great many little 
 happinesses. 
 
 3 (p. 24, line 10-30). The wonder, and sorrow, 
 that in a country possessing an Established Church, 
 no book exists which can be put into the hands of 
 youth to show them the best things that can be done 
 in life, and prevent their wasting it. 
 
 4 (p. 28, line 21-36). There is every reason to 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 believe that susceptibility to beauty can be gained 
 through proper training in childhood by almost 
 every one. 
 
 5 (p. 29, line 33-35). But if we are to attain to 
 either a higher morality or a strong love of beauty, 
 such attainment must be the result of a strenuous 
 effort and a strong will. 
 
 6 (p. 41, line 16-22). Rightness of form and 
 aspect must first be shown to the people in things 
 which interest them, and about the rightness of 
 appearance in which it is possible for them to care 
 a great deal. 
 
 7 (p. 42, line I -10). And, therefore, rightness 
 of appearance of the bodies, and the houses, and the 
 actions of the people of these large towns, is of more 
 importance than rightness of appearance in what is 
 usually called art, and pictures of noble action and 
 passion and of beautiful scenery, are of far greater 
 value than art in things which cannot deeply affect 
 human thought and feeling. 
 
 The practical suggestions w^hich, deduced from 
 these principles, occupy the greater part of Mr. 
 Horsfall's second paper, exhibit an untried group of 
 resources in education; and it will be to myself the 
 best encouragement in whatever it has been my 
 
 B 
 
lO 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 hope to institute of Art School at Oxford, if the 
 central influence of the University may be found 
 capable of extension by such means, in methods 
 promoting the general happiness of the people of 
 England. 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 Brantwood, 
 
 28th June, 1883. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Of the two papers reprinted in this pamphlet one was 
 read at the Congress at Nottingham of the Association 
 for the promotion of Social Science, and the other to the 
 Manchester Field Naturalists' Society. I publish them in 
 this form in the hope that they may call the attention of a 
 few persons to the great importance of making the training 
 needed for giving familiarity with beautiful things part of 
 the education of every child. I have also the hope that 
 they may be the means of inducing some persons in and near 
 Manchester to give help to the work of the Committee of 
 the Manchester Art Museum, who are now engaged in 
 forming the loan collections for schools, described on pages 
 35-38, and in forming the collections for the Museum. 
 
 The Committee have already received gifts of money 
 and of works of art of considerable value, but, as the 
 schools which they wish to provide with collections are 
 very numerous, and as good examples of the products of 
 many kinds of art are needed for the Museum, they require 
 at least ^5,000 — and could make very good use of 10,000 — 
 more than they have yet received. 
 
 A pamphlet containing a fuller explanation than is given 
 in these papers of the Scheme of the Art Museum can be 
 obtained by sending an addressed wrapper, bearing a half- 
 penny stamp, either to one of the Honorary Secretaries, — 
 Mr. J. G. Winter, Oak House, Farnworth, near Bolton, and 
 Mr. R. Newton, 24, York Place, Oxford Road, Manchester, 
 — or to myself. 
 
 T. C. HORSFALL. 
 
 Bollin Tower, 
 
 Alderley Edge, 
 
 near Manchester. 
 
The Study of Beauty. 
 
 HOUGH it is impossible to give an exact definition of 
 
 Beauty, it is possible, and for my purpose to-day it seems 
 desirable, to make a few statements of almost unquestionable 
 truth respecting its nature. There is a kind of beauty perceived 
 by the eye which has a close analogy to some of the simpler 
 kinds of beauty perceived by the ear in music. Colours, 
 seen singly, and certain colours seen together, give pleasure to 
 our senses, as certain sounds and combinations of sounds do, 
 partly by giving activity to part of our nervous system which needs 
 activity for health. This is probably also the case with certain 
 forms. 
 
 But the pleasure felt in seeing colours and forms, and in 
 hearing sounds, is hardly ever due only to this cause. The 
 effect on our feelings and thoughts of even the simplest thing, 
 and even the first time it is perceived, is probably made some- 
 what different from what it would otherwise be by recalling 
 the effect, or part of the effect, of something more or less 
 similar ; and a second experience of the same thing is complicated 
 by association with the effects of the first experience. Shake- 
 speare's Northumberland tells us that "the tongue of the first 
 bringer of unwelcome news sounds ever after as a sullen bell, 
 remembered knolling a departing friend," and almost every 
 thing we see, almost every sound we hear, in very early life is 
 either a bringer of unwelcome or of welcome news to some part 
 of our nature, or has a close connection with some bringer of 
 such news ; and thus almost everything gains the power of pro- 
 ducing on us pleasant or unpleasant impressions, to some of which 
 we give the names of beauty and ugliness. 
 
14 
 
 THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 It is interesting to think of some of the innumerable ways 
 in which associations between things and pleasant sensations 
 must form at the beginning of our lives, partly for our intellect, 
 partly for that part of our nervous system which is affected by 
 outside things, which has a life and memory of its own and 
 affects our intellect profoundly, but of which the intellect seldom 
 takes note. For instance, our whole system feels that warm 
 sunshine is good for it, and in Spring, when the cold and 
 darkness of Winter are replaced, for a few days at least, by 
 sunshine, we gain new pleasure from it. But in Spring innu- 
 merable colours and forms, which Winter had destroyed, also 
 return, and give our nervous system pleasure by causing 
 healthy activity and by reviving the memory of past pleasure ; 
 and sunshine and bright colours and revived forms being 
 enjoyed together, each of them gains associations for the nervous 
 system and the intellect with the pleasure caused by the others. 
 Associations of innumerable kinds, which have much to do with 
 our finding some things beautiful and others ugly, are formed in 
 countless other traceable and untraceable ways. I shall speak of 
 only one. We find certain lines or colours often in things which 
 we admire or love, or which cause some other strong feeling in 
 us, and when the lines or colours are seen by us in other things 
 the feeling or thought which they cause is affected by the feeling 
 or thought caused by the things in which we have before seen 
 them. Thus, certain combinations of lines give by association 
 the idea of great immovable strength, others, that of a supple 
 strength applicable to innumerable purposes. Though, as I have 
 said, the pleasure given us by colour or form must almost always 
 be affected by association, and association must almost always 
 involve some activity of intellect, I shall, for the sake of con- 
 venience, call the kinds of beauty I have hitherto spoken of, 
 sensuous beauty. Respecting this kind of beauty it seems to me 
 certain that it owes its charm to its giving to part of our nervous 
 system activity which is conducive to health, — that it is as certain 
 that a thing which we feel to have sensuous beauty gives part of 
 our system that which it requires for health as that a kind of food 
 which we think of as pleasant to the palate gives us something 
 conducive to health. 
 
 There is another very important element in beauty besides the 
 
THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 15 
 
 sensuous element. When we feel that a person, or that a thing which 
 we know has some function to perform, is beautiful, that means in 
 the main that the appearance of the person or thing tells us that he 
 or it has the qualities which we believe he or it ought to have. In 
 other words, in these cases beauty, in the main, is an appearance 
 of rightness. There is no doubt at all about this. Our idea of 
 what beauty is in human beings, in pictures, in houses, in chairs, 
 in animals, in cities, in everything in short which we know to have 
 a use, in the main depends on what we believe that human 
 beings, pictures, and the rest ought to be and do. Consequently 
 not only is there a great difference between the ideas of different 
 people as to what beauty is in persons and things, but also the 
 idea of each of us as to what beauty is in any given thing changes 
 as he forms new views as to what the thing ought to be. In 
 " Hyperion " Keats writes, " 'tis the eternal law that first in 
 beauty shall be first in might." This statement is of the same 
 kind as the statement that it is an eternal law that two and two 
 shall make four. The appearance given by primacy in might is just 
 as much an essential part of our idea of primacy in beauty as 
 equivalence to two and two is of our conception of four. This 
 element in beauty I shall call the intellectual element. 
 
 I propose now to consider whether knowledge and love of 
 beauty are of much use to people, and, if we find that they are, 
 whether we Manchester people know enough of, and care enough 
 for, beauty; and, further, if we find that we do not care as much for 
 it as we ought to do, how we can increase our own knowledge and 
 love of it, and how those who do care much for it can best 
 induce those who do not, to try to do so. 
 
 There is one aspect of the matter which, as a Manchester 
 man, I must deal with first. Knowledge of beauty, which implies 
 love of beauty, has great pecuniary value. The power of making 
 good designs is of great importance in many of the trades which 
 give employment to so large a part of the population of England,— 
 in calico printing, the making of most kinds of textile fabrics, the 
 making of pottery, glass, metal-work, and in many other trades. 
 Makers of designs cannot attain excellence unless they have a 
 strong love of beauty ; and a community in which love of beauty 
 is common will therefore have great advantages in the competition 
 with others. Look now at the influence of knowledge of beauty on 
 
1 6 ' THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 happiness. It is obvious that but for the beauty of one extremely 
 beautiful thing, sunshine, we should lose some of the keenest 
 physical pleasure we know; but just imagine what a poor, wretched, 
 motiveless life we should all have if we ceased to feel the charm 
 of beauty in other things ; if women and children, if blue sky and 
 clouds, if sea and lake and river, if flowers and leaves and birds, 
 and the other innumerable beautiful things we see, ceased to 
 seem beautiful to us, and we could hope to see nothing of 
 which the appearance could give us a pleasanter sensation than 
 is caused by the appearance of a cotton mill or a row of Man- 
 chester houses. Under such conditions we should all soon die 
 of dullness, or seek escape from dullness in the indulgence of 
 physical appetites, which would kill our higher life. For it is 
 certain that pleasant sensation of some kind is necessary for 
 health ; that the life of man which has been likened to " a tale 
 that is told" must, in one sense, be a sensation story; that the 
 deprivation of wholesome pleasant sensation causes a craving 
 which few people can long resist, and that therefore it is our duty 
 to so order our lives, and, as far as we can, those of other 
 people, that the craving may be prevented by pleasant sensations 
 conducive to physical, mental, and moral health. If this truth 
 were generally known the well-meaning people, who see with much 
 distress that so many of their fellow-creatures seek pleasant sensa- 
 tions from the excessive use of beer and spirits and tobacco and 
 opium and in other injurious ways, would not confine their efforts 
 for the welfare of their fellow-creatures so much as they now do 
 to attempts to close public-houses, but would take a great deal 
 of trouble to train all children, and all other people who have not 
 yet formed bad habits, to form the habit of finding pleasant 
 sensations in other and safer ways. Mr. Coventry Patmore in 
 " The Angel in the House " has a beautiful comparison between 
 the experience of Ulysses and that of Orpheus in the presence of 
 the Sirens, which so admirably expresses this truth that I must 
 quote it here : — 
 
 " The music of the Sirens found 
 
 Ulysses weak, though cords were strong ; 
 But happier Orpheus stood unbound, 
 And shamed it with a sweeter song. 
 
THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 17 
 
 His mode be mine. Of Heav'n I ask, 
 May I, with heart-persuading might, 
 
 Pursue the Poet's sacred task 
 Of superseding faith by sight, 
 
 Till ev'n the witless Gadarene, 
 
 Preferring Christ to swine, shall know 
 
 That life is sweetest when it's clean." 
 
 Of these safer kinds of pleasant sensation there is no source so 
 abundant as, and none more wholesome than, that which is opened 
 in Nature and Art to those who acquire a strong love of beauty. 
 Every bank in every country lane, every bush, every tree, the sky 
 by day and by night, every aspect of Nature, is full of beautiful 
 form or colour or of both, for those whose eyes and hearts and 
 brains have been opened to perceive beauty. Richter has some- 
 where said that Man's greatest defect is that he has such a lot of 
 small ones. With equal truth it may be said that the greatest 
 happiness Man can have is to have a great many little happi- 
 nesses, and therefore a strong love of beauty, which enables almost 
 every square inch of unspoiled country to give us pleasant sensa- 
 tions, is one of the best possessions we can have. Indeed, when 
 one has a very strong love of beauty, pleasant sensations may be 
 gained in places where people in whom the love is less strong 
 would feel only pain. Professor Newton once wrote to me : — 
 
 " An artist who knew Flaxman told me that he once walked 
 with him through St. Giles'. The great sculptor was for ever 
 stopping him, and pointing out some group of ragged, squaUd 
 children, in which his artistic eye saw the elements of a beautiful 
 composition in terra cotta. His companion, though also an 
 artist, was driven to despair when it became clear to him that he 
 was so inferior to Flaxman in the faculty of seeing. He could 
 see in each group only the squalor and the rags \ he had not 
 arrived at that higher stage of cultivation when the eye can 
 separate and abstract the beauty, though so closely associated 
 with dirt and rags." 
 
 Of course, Flaxman's love of beauty would make him suffer 
 keenly from the squalor and misery of St. Giles', and strongly 
 desire that it should be replaced by a state of things more con- 
 ducive to the existence of beauty, and therefore it would be a 
 
i8 
 
 THE STUDt OF BEAUTY. 
 
 mistake to suppose that his love of beauty tended to make him 
 tolerant of the degradation of his fellow-creatures. 
 
 I believe that, whoever will even for a few minutes only do what 
 I asked you to do — try to imagine what a miserable place the world 
 would be for us, if all its beauty were destroyed, will be prepared 
 to admit that as the deprivation of what beauty we do notice would 
 make us so miserable, probably one of the best ways of increasing 
 our happiness would be to train us to notice some of the great 
 quantity of beauty on which the eyes of all of us rest, but which 
 only the few Flaxmans see. 
 
 Is the pleasure which beautiful things give to those who have 
 great susceptibility to beauty simply pleasant sensation of which 
 the best that can be said is that it prevents our seeking noxious 
 pleasure and itself is innocuous, that it does not ruin us in health 
 and waste our means and cause neglect of duty and every kind of 
 physical and mental and moral degradation as the pleasure given 
 by drinking so often does ? Far more than this can be truly said 
 of it. It is in great measure through this pleasure that people 
 who have sane minds (observe this condition) acquire knowledge 
 of, and reverence for, the highest qualities of human nature, 
 deep religious feeling, desire for, and insight into, the nature of a 
 noble morality. 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that strong love of beauty, which 
 implies love of many beautiful things, gives us knowledge of and 
 exercises some of the highest powers of our nature, besides 
 bringing home to our intellect the wonderfulness of the universe 
 in which we find ourselves. To love beauty is of course to love 
 beautiful things. We are very apt, when the sound of a statement 
 becomes so familiar to us that we can say : " Oh, that's a truism," 
 to feel that we are absolved from the duty of taking to heart what 
 it tells us. This is I fear the case with Wordsworth's line : " We 
 live by admiration, hope, and love," which is now regarded as a 
 truism, — that is a truth of which everyone has absorbed all the 
 nutriment, — but which is, in fact, a truth of meaning so full and 
 deep that the more we think of it the fresher and less truismatic 
 we find it. What we really love we tend to resemble and to 
 become ; and hope and admiration are but names for love. But 
 think of the more obvious effects of the love of a beautiful thing. 
 There is a short poem by Wordsworth which everyone knows — 
 
THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 19 
 
 that phrase generally meaning that the thing it applies to has heeji 
 known by about one person in every thousand and forgotten by 
 nine of every ten of those who have once known it, — well, there 
 is I say a short poem of Wordsworth's : " The Daffodils,"" known to 
 everyone, in which Wordsworth describes how in a lonely walk he 
 suddenly came on a "crowd, a host, of golden daffodils." stretching 
 in a long hne, continuous, as the stars of the milky way, beneath 
 the trees by the side of a lake. After a few lines, describing the 
 dancing of the waves and of the flowers, he says : — 
 
 "I gazed — and gazed — but little thought 
 
 What wealth the show to me had brought : 
 For oft, when on my couch I lie 
 
 In vacant or in pensive mood, 
 They flash upon that inward eye 
 
 Which is the bliss of solitude ; 
 And then my heart with pleasure fills, 
 
 And dances with the daftbdils." 
 
 If we have a strong love of beauty, the most beautiful things 
 we see become part of ourselves. That scene became part of 
 Wordsworth, not because he simply saw it, but because when he 
 saw it his whole nature was so susceptible to beauty that he felt 
 its beauty deeply and loved it; and the fact that the beauty of 
 that lovely scene as of so many others had become part of his own 
 nature, and the pleasure and love which filled his heart, when the 
 beauty returned to his inward eye,"' would sufiice to prove to him 
 that Alan's nature has affinity with and love for all that is beautiful 
 in this wide, beautiful world. Surely that knowledge, not known 
 coldly by the intellect, but felt in heart as well as brain, tends to 
 make our nature seem to him who has the knowledge a thing 
 which deserves to be carefully guarded from pollution by sin and 
 brutality. 
 
 What the influence may be on conduct and on happiness, of 
 the thought and feeling excited or strengthened by strong love 
 of beauty in people of sane and active mind, I will read part of 
 Wordsworth's beautiful " Lines written above Tintern Abbey " to 
 show. This is another of the poems which " everyone knows." 
 
 Five years have past ; five summers, with the length 
 Of five long winters ! and again I hear 
 
20 
 
 THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 These waters, rolling from their mountain springs 
 With a soft inland murmur. — Once again 
 Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, 
 That on a wild secluded scene impress 
 Thoughts of more deep seclusion ; and connect 
 The landscape with the quiet of the sky. 
 The day is come when I again repose 
 Here, under this dark sycamore, and view 
 These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, 
 Which at this season, with their unripe fruits. 
 Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves 
 'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see 
 These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines 
 Of sportive wood run wild : these pastoral farms. 
 Green to the very door ; and wreaths of smoke 
 Sent up, in silence, from among the trees ! 
 With some uncertain notice, as might seem, 
 Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, 
 Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire 
 The Hermit sits alone. 
 
 These beauteous forms, 
 Through a long absence, have not been to me 
 As is a landscape to a blind man's eye : 
 But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din 
 Of towns and cities, I have owed to them 
 In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, 
 Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart ; 
 And passing even into my purer mind, 
 With tranquil restoration : — feelings too 
 Of unremembered pleasure : such, perhaps. 
 As have no slight or trivial influence 
 On that best portion of a good man's life. 
 His little, nameless, unremembered, acts 
 Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust. 
 To them I may have owed another gift, 
 Of aspect more sublime ; that blessed mood. 
 In which the burthen of the mystery. 
 In which the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world. 
 
THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 21 
 
 Is lightened : — that serene and blessed mood, 
 In which the affections gently lead us on, — > 
 Until, the breath of this corporeal frame 
 And even the motion of our human blood 
 Almost suspended, we are laid asleep . 
 In body, and become a Uving soul : 
 While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things. 
 
 If this 
 
 Be but a vain belief, yet oh ! how oft — 
 In darkness and amid the many shapes 
 Of joyless dayhght; when the fretful stir 
 Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, 
 Have hung upon the beatings of my heart- 
 How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, 
 O sylvan Wye 1 thou wanderer thro' the woods. 
 How often has my spirit turned to thee ! 
 
 I have already said that knowledge and love of beauty are 
 one of the chief aids to the growth of religious feeUng, and 
 probably this statement hardly needs evidence to prove its truth, 
 to those at least who love beauty. For to love beauty is to see 
 it almost everywhere, to have, that is, our power of loving, — and 
 love is an essential part of religion,— strengthened by constant 
 activity. And if one love strongly the beauty which is almost 
 everywhere in the world, though one will not be led to knowledge 
 of, or belief in, any set of dogmas, and much scepticism of brain 
 may still exist, the heart at least must find it almost impossible 
 to doubt that this " world unfathomably fair " has a maker and 
 controller not less loving than powerful. We know that many of 
 the writings which give expression to the deepest religious feeling 
 express also a deep sense of the beauty of the world. Who can 
 read the beautiful 19th Psalm : " The heavens declare the glory of 
 God j and the firmament sheweth His handiwork," &c., and 
 those verses in the 65th Psalm, which describe the preparation of 
 the harvest, " Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly : Thou 
 settlest the furrows thereof : Thou makest it soft with showers : 
 Thou blessest the springing thereof. . . . The pastures are 
 
22 
 
 THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 clothed with flocks ; the valleys also are clothed with corn ; they 
 shout for joy, they also sing," who, T say, can read Psalms Hke these 
 if only he himself loves the beauty of Nature well enough to feel 
 their meaning, and fail to perceive that the beauty of the earth is 
 one of the strongest foundations to the writer of his faith in the 
 love of God ? Wordsworth's poetry is full of similar evidence. 
 Keble, in his beautiful lines on St. Matthew, seems to be almost 
 convinced that faith cannot dwell in hideous towns, and, though 
 he admits that it can and does, he evidently feels that familiarity 
 with beauty is a most powerful aid to belief. 
 
 I should certainly think that there cannot be any doubt, did I 
 not know that many sensible people feel great doubt, that a strong 
 love of beauty must make those who have it more desirous and 
 more able to live rightly than they would otherwise be, — in other 
 words, that there is a close connection between love of beauty and 
 morality. For, as I have said, what we feel to be beauty is in 
 most things not only qualities of appearance which give pleasure 
 directly to our senses, but is in great measure the appearance of 
 qualities of essence which we know that the thing ought to have, — 
 that is, delight in beauty is to a great extent delight in, approval 
 of, an appearance of Tightness. If we learn to feel keen delight in 
 the appearance of Tightness in one set of things, is it not certain 
 that we shall be led, that, at least, we shall be helped, if we have 
 sane and active minds, to desire an appearance of Tightness in all 
 things, and especially in those which have the greatest power to 
 affect our welfare ? Where can we draw the line ? If we learn to 
 care a great deal for beauty in pictures, and sculpture, and blue 
 china, and textile fabrics, and architecture ; if we care very much 
 for the appearance of these things, when it reveals that they possess 
 the qualities which we believe that they ought to have, is it 
 possible for anyone but an idiot to stop there ? Can we fail to 
 care a thousand times more that our children shall be beautiful, 
 that our own life shall be beautiful, that the community of 
 which we form a part shall be beautiful ? And as an appear- 
 ance of Tightness can only be given to a thing by its being 
 right, must not a strong love of beauty lead us to take a great 
 deal of trouble to get things right ? In the region of those 
 things with which morals are concerned, and hardly anything 
 which we have anything to do with lies outside that region, love 
 
THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 23 
 
 of, desire for, beauty of appearance, and love of, desire for, moral 
 Tightness are not two mutually helpful feelings. They have 
 coalesced and become one. For we cannot exclude the idea of 
 outside, of appearance, from that of inside, of essence, or that of 
 outside from that of inside, and desire rightness in one without 
 desiring it in the other also. 
 
 If it be true that strong love of beauty strongly tends to give 
 to those who feel it, and who also have sane and active minds, the 
 good results which I have said it does tend to give, there ought, it 
 maybe objected, to be a larger number of people admirable in all 
 the relations of life than we actually find, and of the good people 
 we do meet with all ought to be intent on communicating to all 
 their fellow-creatures the love of beauty to which, if I am right, all 
 good people must themselves owe so much. I do not intend to 
 deny that we are sane, but I shall by-and-by show that we are all 
 of us living under conditions which make a strong love of beauty 
 very rare, and I will at once assert that that kind of activity of 
 mind and feeling which goes on working till it reaches the con- 
 clusions to which what it accepts as truth logically leads is very 
 rare. Not to speak of our wiUingness, under the influence of 
 laziness and selfishness, to abstain from arriving at conclusions 
 which would make strenuous exertion an obvious duty, there is in 
 all or most of our minds a tendency to become deeply interested 
 in the mere details of what we care for, and in the enjoyment of 
 this interest to omit to make efforts of will to be influenced for 
 good by what good influence the interesting subject may have ; 
 and unless we exert our will no influence is strong enough to carry 
 us on our right course. Look for a moment from love of beauty 
 to religion. Who can read the New Testament and doubt that the 
 truths of Christianity were intended to make us love our neighbours 
 as ourselves, and develop and give proof of our love of God by 
 love of our fellow-creatures, and therefore to lead us to make it 
 one of the chief objects of our lives to bring all the influences we 
 find most conducive to our welfare to bear on others who need 
 them. And yet of the rehgious societies, containing thousands of 
 people of sane mind who desire to be guided by what they read 
 in the New Testament, there is not one which makes it one of its 
 chief objects to discover what are the influences most conducive 
 to welfare and to bring them to bear on the life of every member 
 
24 
 
 THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 of the community. No, the details have proved too interesting, 
 and no religious society passes beyond them and wills to be 
 carried forward by the stream of good influence. I cannot claim for 
 strong love of beauty that it has a greater power to make us desire 
 rightness than knowledge of the principles of Christianity has to 
 make us love our neighbour as ourself ; but I am very sure that of 
 what willingness we have to love our neighbour as ourself and to 
 desire rightness, we owe most to our knowledge of Christianity 
 and our knowledge and love of beauty. 
 
 It must be evident to everyone who watches life carefully that 
 hardly anyone reaches the objects which all should live for who 
 does not strive to reach them, and that at present not one person 
 in a hundred so much as knows what are the objects which should 
 be sought in life. It is astounding, therefore, that in a country 
 which possesses an Established Church, richly endowed Universi- 
 ties, and even several Professors of Education, no book exists which 
 can be put into the hands of every intelligent youth, and of every 
 intelligent father and mother, showing what our wisest and best 
 men believe are the best things which can be done in life, and what 
 is the kind of training which makes the doing of these things 
 most easy. It is often said that each of us can profit only by his 
 own experience, but no one believes that. No one can see how 
 many well meaning persons mistake means for ends and drift into 
 error and sin, simply because neither they nor their parents have 
 known what course should be steered, and what equipment is 
 needed, in the voyage of life, — no one can see this and doubt that 
 a " guide book to life," containing the results of the comparison 
 of the experiences of even half-a-dozen able and sincere men, 
 would save countless people from wasting their lives as most lives 
 are now wasted. 
 
 Till those who have the control of our early training, and till each 
 of us on reaching the age when each must take the guidance of his 
 own Hfe receives in some form clear knowledge both of what objects 
 are best worth living for, and what training best fits for gaining them, 
 I fear that knowledge of Christian doctrine and knowledge of 
 beautiful things will continue to be regarded by most of those who 
 gain them chiefly as ends instead of, as they ought to be, chiefly as 
 means. One thing, however, is certain, — that without these kinds 
 of knowledge no one can reach any high level of welfare. 
 
THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 25 
 
 The reason why all sensible people do not see that everyone 
 ought to be carefully trained to love beauty is not far to seek. 
 We all have some love of beauty and owe to it part of our deepest 
 convictions, best feelings, most sustaining hopes ; but our love of 
 beauty has chiefly been gained in very early life, and we can as 
 little imagine what much poorer creatures we should be if we had 
 not gained it, as we can how much lower our views of life would 
 be if we had not known the love of parents in infancy, or how 
 much weaker our sense of duty if we had not been judiciously 
 thrashed in days which we no longer remember. 
 
 This subject is one which is of great importance, and ought to 
 be of great interest, to every community, even to a community, if 
 such a one existed, in which the conditions of life were very favour- 
 able to the gaining by everyone of knowledge of beauty. It is of 
 extreme importance to the educated classes in England, on whom 
 education, and the possession of some leisure and wealth, imposes 
 the duty of endeavouring to establish a mode of life for all classes 
 fitted to maintain them in physical, mental, and moral health. For 
 the conditions under which the majority of the people even of the 
 middle and higher classes in England are living are not favourable 
 to the acquisition of much knowledge and strong love of beauty, and 
 the conditions under which the working classes are living in those 
 large towns, which already contain more than half our population 
 and seem destined to contain at least five-sixths of it, are more 
 unfavourable to the acquisition of a sense of beauty than, I believe, 
 any conditions which affect elsewhere, or ever have affected, the 
 life of human beings. Here is some evidence as to the ignorance 
 of Nature prevailing amongst children in parts of Manchester. 
 Doubtless ignorance as complete prevails in similar districts 
 in all our large towns. Mr. H. E. Oakeley, Her Majesty's 
 Inspector of Schools, says : " I have often found in places 
 like x\ncoats and Bradford, that children scarcely know what 
 a flower is, and have seldom if ever seen a primrose or a 
 violet. A short time ago, a young lady, daughter of a clergy- 
 man, came from the country to a school in Ancoats to give 
 a lesson before me, as a preliminary step towards becoming a 
 certificated mistress. She selected as her subject ' The Bee,' 
 and commenced her lesson by placing a picture of a bee before 
 the class. The children looked blanker and duller as she went 
 c 
 
26 
 
 THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 on, and after a few minutes (seeing tears in the poor girl's eyes 
 who felt she was failing), I interposed, and found by speaking to 
 the children that they had never seen a bee and had no idea 
 what it was like, or where it might be found." Ignorance of what 
 a bee is Uke and of where it may be found may not at first seem to 
 be very serious evils. But remember that ignorance of what a 
 bee is like involves ignorance complete or almost complete of all 
 natural objects, of the beauty of grass and flowers and birds and 
 trees, and, in short, of all that natural beauty, recollection of 
 which is, as it were, the back-ground to nearly everything which 
 passes over the stage of our consciousness. And remember, too, 
 that people's minds and feelings will have, must have, thoughts and 
 sensations which must be in great measure the result of what their 
 eyes and ears are famiUar with, and then, if you will also remember 
 that these children while they are forming their views of life, their 
 hopes and desires, are quite familiar with the sights and sounds 
 of the lowest parts of our town, the fact of their not knowing 
 what a bee is like will seem to you, as it does to me, rather a 
 terrible one. The last Report of the Head Master of the Man- 
 chester School of Art supplies some notable evidence as to the 
 influence of this ignorance of beautiful things on the aptitude of 
 Manchester workpeople for gaining that skill in design which is 
 so necessary for success in many kinds of manufacture. Mr. 
 Miickley writes : — 
 
 "Owing to this neighbourhood always having been so very 
 utilitarian in its character, there appears to me to have been but 
 little chance for the cultivation of an art instinct among the popu- 
 lation, and without this faculty at the root mere teaching cannot 
 produce great results. With the masses art is neither understood 
 nor cared for, and the chief work of a teacher for a long time to 
 come, I am convinced, should be mostly confined to an endeavour 
 to create an art fibre, so to speak, in those with whom he may 
 come in contact as pupils ; the sowing of art seeds carefully and 
 well, so that the next generation may get the benefit of the work ; 
 and should he be fortunate enough to see, now and then, a soli- 
 tary plant spring up in health from his sowing, he must be satis- 
 fied, for he will get no more. It has been assumed that designers 
 for ornamental art might be produced in Manchester as in other 
 places. This is assuredly a mistake, as there are no materials by 
 
THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 27 
 
 which they may be educated, no sources from which they may 
 derive ideas ; in short, no food on which they could feed." 
 
 Are the chances in the struggle with manufacturers in other 
 countries so much in our favour that we can afford to let the 
 greater part of the population remain burdened with an ignorance 
 of natural form and colour which must prevent them from ever 
 becoming good designers ? Are they so predisposed to strong 
 religious feeling, elevated views of human nature, desire for 
 rightness, that ^ve can safely let them lack any of the influences 
 tending to give these desirable feelings ? And are they so averse 
 to degrading, brutalising pleasures of sense that we can, consis- 
 tently 'with duty, let them remain ignorant of those pure and 
 elevating pleasures of sense which for most people are necessary 
 as a protection against the temptations of the lower sensual 
 pleasures ? 
 
 Such ignorance of beauty in nature, and, I hardly need add, 
 in art too, as is common amongst the inhabitants of the poorer 
 parts of large towns, is not found of couise in many people of the 
 other classes. AVe, I repeat, all of us are more or less familiar 
 with some beautiful things, and owe to that familiarity, whether 
 we are conscious of the debt or not, much of what happiness and 
 civilisation we possess. But signs that our love of beauty is of 
 the most incomplete and untrained kind are visible everywhere. 
 There is hardly a house in which hangings of bad and discordant 
 colours, furniture of extreme ugliness, " ornaments " of ridiculous 
 shape, are not common. A Frenchman has wittily said that, as a 
 rule, an EngHshwoman's clothes are lists in which mutually hostile 
 colours meet for mortal combat. Nine people out of every ten who 
 attempt to arrange flow^ers show that they do not at all know how to 
 make forms and colours co-operate to give a beautiful effect. All 
 this proves that we do not notice, and therefore do not get pleasure 
 from, a hundredth part of the beauty we see, and that we are 
 incapable of receiving more than a very small part of the pleasure 
 from the beauty we do notice which it could give us. 
 
 There is one proof seen everywhere, that love both of the 
 sensuous and of the intellectual elements of beauty in most im- 
 portant things is very rare. Everyone who studies beauty and 
 health knows that the lines of the waist of the Venus of Milo 
 and those of the ankles of the Diana of Versailles are not only 
 
28 
 
 THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 the most beautiful which a woman's body can have, but also 
 those which a healthy body must have, and yet, though attempts 
 at suicide in some ways, — cutting one's throat or throwing 
 oneself into a pond, for instance, — are punished by law, girls 
 still under the control of their parents are allowed both by their 
 legal guardians and by the public to make themselves hideous 
 and to commit partial suicide, by tight-lacing and wearing high- 
 heeled boots. 
 
 I must ask the same question respecting our class which I 
 asked respecting the working class. Is goodness, is high think- 
 ing, is love of rightness, so common in our class, so easy of 
 attainment for us and our children ; are we and they so averse to 
 degrading sensual pleasures and mean thoughts and feelings, that 
 we can afford to lack the largest measure attainable of knowledge 
 and love of beauty ? 
 
 Only one answer can be given by sensible people to this 
 question, but some persons will probably say that much know- 
 ledge and love of beauty can be attained only by persons of 
 exceptional endowment, that the majority cannot possibly acquire 
 great sensitiveness to beauty. Happily, however, this is not the 
 case. That which is true with regard to music is true with 
 regard to beauty of form and colour. Because a great many 
 grown-up people in spite of great efforts find it impossible to sing 
 correctly or even to perceive any pleasantness in music, it used 
 to be commonly supposed that a great many people are born 
 without the power of gaining love of, and skill in, music. Now 
 it is known that it is a question of early training, that in every 
 thousand children there are very few, — not, I believe, on an 
 average, more than two or three, — who cannot gain the power of 
 Ringing correctly and of enjoying music, if they are taught well 
 in childhood while their nervous system can still easily form 
 habits and has not yet formed the habit of being insensible to 
 differences of sound. 
 
 There is every reason to believe that susceptibiUty to beauty 
 of form and colour can also be gained through proper training in 
 childhood by almost everyone. And though probably there are 
 many grown-up people who from lack of early training cannot 
 hope to gain a strong sense of beauty, it is quite certain that 
 everyone, however old, who has some sense of it, may greatly 
 
THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 29 
 
 increase it, and that those who are hardly conscious of having any 
 may acquire a strong love of, at least, some kinds of beauty. One 
 of the best trained lovers of beauty I know, who is now an elderly 
 man, tells me that he finds his perception of beauty stronger every 
 year. 
 
 There is an old saying that one ought not to argue about 
 tastes, which implies that liking goes chiefly by mere fancy. The 
 saying is as untrue as many another, old and new. If it were true, 
 training of the eye would not lead different persons to care for the 
 same things. Yet, when people pay much attention to colour, 
 though at first their ideas as to what is beautiful may be very 
 different, their study brings about agreement amongst most of 
 them. Everyone who studies colour carefully feels the beauty of 
 the combinations of colours used by Titian and Veronese in their 
 pictures, and there is almost as complete agreement respecting 
 the colours used in other kinds of art by Mr. Morris. It is safe 
 to take for granted that beauty of colour is a name for a relation 
 between certain colours and healthy, sensitive human nature as 
 unvarying as is the relation between musical sounds and healthy 
 sensitive ears. 
 
 It may be of some use to mention some of the conditions 
 which seem to me necessary for the gaining by a community 
 or an individual of a strong love of the sensuous and the intel- 
 lectual elements in beauty. The first thing needed is will to 
 gain it. Wordsworth in one of his poems speaks of the gain 
 which comes to us through " a wise passiveness," and asks : — 
 
 " Think you 'mid all this mighty sum 
 
 Of things for ever speaking, 
 That nothing of itself will come, 
 
 But we must still be seeking?" 
 
 This question was asked of life by " Esthwaite Lake," not of that 
 in Manchester. In such circumstances as ours there is no such 
 thing as "a wise passiveness." If we are to attain to a high 
 morality or to strong love of beauty, attainment must be the result 
 of strenuous effort, of strong will. Such will cannot be felt in 
 this busy life of ours by many people till the minority who have 
 time for thought effectively teach that without a high morality, 
 without a strong love of beauty, the best happiness attainable 
 
30 
 
 THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 here cannot be gained. When strong will to gain love of beauty 
 is felt then certain obvious rules will be observed. In the 
 grimly humorous " Essay on Murder considered as one of the 
 Fine Arts," De Quincey says : "If once a man indulges himself 
 in murder, very soon he comes to think Httle of robbing; and from 
 robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking ; and 
 from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon 
 this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many 
 a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps 
 he thought little of at the time. Principiis obsta, that's my rule." 
 On the other hand, we know that the habitual commission of small 
 sins soon makes us indifferent to greater sins : that he who 
 habitually Hes and is habitually selfish is not unlikely to become 
 a thief, and that the thief may easily become, in heart at least, a 
 murderer. The same is true respecting love of beauty. It is not " 
 probable that anyone will begin a course of crime by a murder, 
 but we people of large towns are trained to acquiesce in conduct 
 which in the sphere of love of beauty is what murder is in 
 the sphere of morals. Our earliest years are passed in, our 
 feelings and thoughts are trained by, a community which makes 
 the existence of most kinds of beauty, — from that of unbrutalised 
 workpeople down to that of unspoiled grass, — almost impossible by 
 the smoke of its chimneys, and which would think the substitution 
 of stoves for open fireplaces far too high a price to pay for clean air 
 in which all kinds of beauty could thrive. Till this unwillingness 
 to accept the banishment of beauty for the sake of keeping 
 smoky fireplaces is got rid of, we cannot hope, as a community, 
 to possess very keen sense of the beauty of things of less 
 importance to us than the air we breathe, the sky over our 
 heads, our neighbours, our clothes, and all the rest of the things 
 which smoke makes hideous. The voluntary surrender of beauty 
 in a?iy important thing must inevitably lessen our power of feeling 
 beauty in less important things. Similarly, if we accustom our- 
 selves to being indifferent as to whether the common things for 
 every day use which surround us are beautiful or not in form 
 and colour, we are certain to lack the power of knowing whether 
 other things, pictures and sculpture for instance, are beautiful. 
 We must strive to have beauty in everything, small and great, 
 unimportant as well as important, but most of all in important 
 
THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 31 
 
 things. A strong rational desire for beauty will find innumerable 
 means for gaining its object. As it is only in childhood that the 
 keenest susceptibility to beauty can be acquired, and one of the 
 kinds of beauty which rational people most long for is that which 
 good training gives to their fellow-creatures, such people will, of 
 course, take great care that their own children shall, while they 
 are very young, see as often as possible, and be led to notice and 
 enjoy as much as possible, beauty in both Nature and Art ; and 
 they will also give as much help as they can to the work under- 
 taken in Manchester by the Art Museum Committee, who are 
 placing in schools beautiful hangings, casts of fine sculpture, beau- 
 tiful pictures of those beautiful natural objects which town children 
 see sometimes, but see so seldom that now they hardly notice 
 them, and who are also placing in the Museum beautiful things 
 suitable for everyone's use in houses, as well as good pictures and 
 sculpture, and other works of art. Such people will also them- 
 selves carefully observe the beauty of colour and form in natural 
 objects, and study carefully those works of art which the persons 
 whose judgment they think most trustworthy tell them are the 
 best, and they will use in their houses only or chiefly things which 
 they believe to be beautiful. 
 
 The great length which this paper has already reached forbids 
 my explaining more fully the means which seem to me to be the 
 best for spreading knowledge and love of all wholesome kinds of 
 beauty, and for making love of beauty conduce to desire and power 
 to live rightly. I pass from this part of the subject the more 
 wilUngly that a list of them is contained in the scheme of the 
 Manchester Art Museum, of which anyone of my hearers can 
 obtain a copy. 
 
 I have also said very little about the study in Art of those 
 kinds of beauty which are peculiar to Art, This I do not much 
 regret to leave undone. For till strong love of the beauty of 
 Nature is common, power to get much good from those expres- 
 sions in good works of art of artists' impressions of natural 
 beauty, which necessarily differ much from attempts to imitate 
 that in the appearance of Nature which is perceived by almost 
 every eye, will not be common; and those who gain a strong 
 love of natural beauty will feel, with little training, some of 
 the charm which good artists give to their expression of that 
 
32 
 
 THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 which in natural beauty has most impressed them or seems to 
 them most expressible. Only of one use of art in the study 
 of beauty will I speak here. In " Fra Lippo Lippi," Mr. 
 Browning says : — 
 
 " we're made so that we love 
 First when we see them painted, things we have passed 
 Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see ; 
 And so they are better, painted — better to us, 
 Which is the same thing. Art was given for that— 
 God uses us to help each other so. 
 Lending our minds out." 
 
 This indicates one of the uses we can make of art in helping 
 ourselves and other people, especially children, to feel the beauty 
 of Nature. Show people the best pictures you can get of beautiful 
 common things ; make them notice the beauty of form, all the 
 curves and combinations of lines, and the beauty of colour, and 
 when they next see the thing which the picture represented, they 
 will see in it beauty which, but for the picture, they would not 
 see. 
 
 In conclusion, I will say a few words on means for making 
 other people desire to acquire a love of beauty, and on things to 
 be avoided by those who wish to make other people desire to love 
 beauty. 
 
 Mr. Oscar Wilde is a member of a coterie in London which 
 professedly sets great store on the acquisition of culture, and 
 culture includes love of beauty. Mr. Wilde has announced in 
 some verses his desire to devote himself to culture and to avoid 
 taking the side either of God or of the enemies of God. Now, 
 whatever a man's religion may be, the side of God means for him 
 the side of rightness, goodness, unselfish service of others, and so 
 Mr. Wilde declares that the beauty which he loves leaves him 
 careless about these things. To say that one feels this does not 
 seem to me to be the right way to make love of beauty seem 
 desirable. The right way to make love of beauty desired is that 
 those who love it shall live lives so full, so honourable, so useful, 
 that their fellow-creatures may easily believe that love of beauty 
 strengthens the desire, and increases the power, to do those right 
 things of which the rightness is felt by everybody. 
 
33 
 
 Art in Large Towns. 
 
 T TAKE for granted that the object which we wish to attain by 
 bringing the influence of art to bear on the masses of the 
 population in our large towns, is the giving to them of the 
 power and the wish to discriminate between beauty and ugliness, 
 in order that they may give beauty to their work, and that they 
 may get much of the pleasure and happiness which beautiful 
 things can give. 
 
 Probably the best way to discover by what means the masses 
 of the population in towns can be enabled to gain the power and 
 the wish to discriminate between beauty and ugliness, is to observe 
 how those people have been trained who have the power and the 
 wish. All the people possessed of great sensibility to beauty who 
 are known to me have, in infancy, habitually seen beautiful things, 
 especially beautiful natural objects, — flowers, trees, grass, birds, 
 butterflies, clean clouds, blue sky, and during the years in which 
 the feelings and the mind receive their earliest impressions, have 
 gained innumerable pleasant associations with the beautiful things 
 amidst which they have lived. They have also very early been 
 led by the influence of older people to notice some of the diffe- 
 rences between beautiful and ugly things. Art, too, has very early 
 begun to have an important part in their training. The influence 
 of many beautiful things which they could never see reached them 
 through pictures, and, by the same means, the influence on their 
 
 * A Paper read at the Nottingham Congress of the National Association for 
 the Promotion of Social Science, September, 1882, on the question: "In 
 what way can the Influence of Art be best brought to bear on the Masses of 
 the Population in large Towns ?" 
 
34 
 
 ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 thoughts and feelings of beautiful things which they sometimes saw 
 was often renewed and strengthened. 
 
 It would, perhaps, be rash to say that this is the only kind of 
 training which can give a strong sense of beauty ; but children, 
 under favourable conditions, begin at so early an age to enjoy the 
 beauty of some beautiful things, their thoughts and feelings so 
 early get a strong bias from those of the people with whom they 
 live, and modes of feeling and thinking acquired in early life are 
 often so persistent, that I am sure I do not over-estimate the 
 effect on after-life of the influences felt in infancy and childhood 
 when I say that, as a rule, a strong love of beauty will be gained 
 only by those who in childhood habitually see beautiful things, 
 have many pleasant associations with them, and are taught, by 
 persons whose opinion they care for, to perceive their beauty. 
 
 We learn also, I think, from observation that of those persons 
 who have gained sensibility to beauty many partly lose it if they 
 cease for a long time to see beautiful things, and to have their 
 thoughts and feelings busied with them. 
 
 Our question, then, may be restated thus : How can we enable 
 the children who live in towns to see beautiful things habitually ? 
 how can we get people whose opinion the children care for to 
 teach them to perceive and enjoy the beauty of the beautiful 
 things they see ? and, when the children grow up, how can we 
 enable them to still have beautiful things near them, and keep their 
 feelings and their thoughts busy with the beauty of such things ? 
 
 As children who gain a strong love of beauty will probably 
 try as they grow up to have beautiful things round them, an 
 answer to the first of my questions will give part of the answer 
 needed for the others. 
 
 Happily a very large proportion of the children in our towns 
 now spend some time in school, and school is, of course, a place 
 in which they can be enabled to at least see some beautiful things. 
 But the same difficulty besets the education in schools of the 
 sense of beauty in children which besets the education in schools 
 of all other kinds of feeling, — the difficulty, namely, that the in- 
 fluence of parents and home is the strongest of the influences 
 felt by most children, and more than neutralises those felt in 
 sithools if opposed to them. Efforts must, therefore, be made to 
 bring art influence to bear on children in their homes also. Such 
 
ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 35 
 
 efforts are worth making for the sake of the parents also, of whom 
 many, by living in or close to the country, others in various other 
 ways, have gained some knowledge of beautiful things and some 
 degree of sensibility to beauty. 
 
 I must, as preface to the suggestions I am about to make, say 
 that most of them are embodied in the scheme of the Committee 
 of the Manchester Art Museum, who, during the last three years, 
 have made extensive collections of the works of art needed for 
 carrying out their scheme, and will begin active work so soon as 
 the Manchester Town Council completes a gallery which it has 
 promised to build for the museum in one of the Manchester 
 public parks. 
 
 A very large proportion of the children who live in large towns 
 never, or very rarely, see anything in or near their homes which 
 is beautiful. They have no chance of becoming familiar with 
 birds and flowers, trees and grass, and ferns. But most even of 
 the children who live farthest away from the country see such 
 things occasionally, and as it is chiefly on holidays that they see 
 them, many of them, no doubt, have pleasant associations with 
 the mass of half noticed, indistinctly remembered things which 
 their eyes fall on in the country and in town parks. 
 
 If sensibiUty to beauty is to be common in town-people, 
 the slight acquaintance with beautiful things thus gained must 
 be increased by the help of art. Believing this to be so, the 
 Committee of the Manchester x\rt Museum intend to offer to 
 the School Boards, and to other managers of elementary 
 day-schools and Sunday schools, in Manchester and Salford, 
 small loan collections of pictures, of casts, of pottery, and 
 of textile fabrics, to be placed on the walls of the schools. 
 Each thing in the collections will be provided with a clearly 
 printed explanation, and, when this is possible, with a descrip- 
 tion of the process by which it is made. Each collection will 
 include some good coloured pictures of common wild and garden 
 flowers, ferns, grasses, forest trees, common birds, moths, and 
 butterflies, and some pictures, — engravings, photographs, and even 
 chromo-lithographs, — of such pretty places as town children see 
 when they are taken out of town, — country lanes, woods, fields, 
 farmyards, shipping, and coast scenery, — and of buildings and 
 places and events which they read of in the Bible and in their 
 
36 
 
 ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 geographical and historical lesson-books. The pottery in the 
 collections will consist of well-shaped cups, jugs, and other things 
 used in every house. 
 
 It is hoped that the School Board and the other managers 
 of schools will give facilities for the delivery by members of 
 the committee, and by other persons who are willing to take 
 part in the work, of short familiar addresses to the children 
 on the objects contained in the collections ; and it has been 
 proposed that the teachers shall be induced to encourage the 
 study of the collections by the offer of prizes to those who 
 most successfully teach drawing as an extra subject, and use 
 the pictures lent to the school as drawing models. We are 
 also making great use of labels which are attached to the 
 pictures. We know that many workpeople would buy good 
 etchings and engravings, and good coloured representations of 
 flowers and other beautiful things, if they knew how cheaply 
 many such pictures can be bought, and we believe that this would 
 be the case also with many children. Each of the less costly 
 pictures therefore in our school collections has its price and the 
 price of its frame clearly printed on one of the labels which I 
 have referred to. We hope to make arrangements for facilitating 
 the purchase by children or their parents of pictures and other^, 
 works of art, like those contained in the school collections, and in 
 those collections in the Art Museum which I shall refer to later. 
 Other labels give the title and price of the cheapest books which 
 contain accounts, both interesting and trustworthy, of the things 
 represented in the pictures. For example, our pictures of birds 
 have labels giving the titles, the prices, and the publishers' names 
 of good cheap editions of White's " Selborne " and of Johns's 
 " British Birds in their Haunts," and our pictures of wild flowers 
 and common garden flowers have labels giving the price and title 
 of Hulme's " Familiar Wild Flowers " and " Familiar Garden 
 Flowers." As we wish our pictures not only to foster love of the 
 beauty of nature but also to excite interest in, and love of, the 
 beauty of art, and to give knowledge of artistic treatment and of 
 art methods and processes, we propose to place side by side a few 
 examples of the representations given by different arts of the same 
 objects, and to call attention to the differences and resemblances of 
 the effects attained by the different methods. For example, we shall 
 
ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 37 
 
 place a copy of the coloured plates of birds from Gould's British 
 Birds, which have lithographed outHnes, and are coloured by hand, 
 side by side with woodcuts of the same birds from Bewick and from 
 Yarrell, and by means of a label we shall call attention to such 
 points as the mode in which local colour is represented in black 
 and white, and shall invite comparison of the coloured plates and 
 woodcuts with carefully made water-colour drawings of the same 
 birds contained in the Art Museum. Another label accompanying 
 these sets of pictures tells the children that clear descriptions of 
 the processes of wood-cutting, lithography, etching, &c., and all 
 the appHances used in these processes, are to be seen in the Art 
 Museum. We are obliged to use some chromo-lithographs, as it 
 is necessary to give some idea of the colour of the things repre- 
 sented, but they are always accompanied by an explanation of the 
 defects inseparable from the process of colour-printing, and by a 
 reference to good pictures in the museum of the same objects. 
 
 The labels accompanying the cups and jugs and other well- 
 shaped examples of pottery will give the prices at which similar 
 things can be bought, and short remarks on the merits of the 
 objects shown. Attempts to write criticism of the kind needed 
 are full of peril, but it is possible to point out that a handle is 
 well and firmly placed, that a jug stands well and pours out 
 well : and if children are led to notice points of even this simple 
 kind they will be nearer to the possession of the power of just 
 criticism of shape than most grown up people are. Simple 
 authoritative statements made by competent judges that the shape 
 and colour of an object shown are good, are also of much value. 
 
 Mr. William Morris has kindly promised to write us brief 
 explanations of the principles on which the patterns of some of 
 the textile fabrics shown in the school collections were designed. 
 
 We hope eventually to provide every school with a large 
 well-shaped glass case for growing plants, which will keep some 
 beautiful natural objects before the children's eyes, and perhaps 
 induce some of them to grow plants at home. We hope, also, 
 eventually to place at least two good casts from Greek sculpture 
 in every school in order that every child may know what the 
 bodies of men and women should be like. 
 
 It is hoped that children who are led to look with attention 
 at the pictures in the school collection will, when they see any of 
 
38 
 
 ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 the things represented, look at them with more interest, and that, 
 having seen the things, they will then gain more pleasure from 
 the pictures. 
 
 We find much difficulty in carrying into practice the scheme 
 which I have described. I have brought the scheme under the 
 notice of the Social Science Association in the hope that, if it be 
 approved of, the Council may be recommended to endeavour to 
 facilitate, by action which I am about to indicate, the completion 
 of our work in Manchester, and the doing of similar work in other 
 large towns. 
 
 It is obvious that the pictures of flowers, trees, birds, &c., 
 which are placed in schools, if they are to be useful, must be 
 both true to nature and beautiful ; and as there are many schools, 
 and each school needs many pictures, it is equally obvious that 
 the pictures must not be very costly. We have had no difficulty 
 in obtaining coloured pictures of wild flowers, common and 
 garden flowers, butterflies and moths. Many of the plates in 
 Mr. Hulme's books on Wild and Garden Flowers are good 
 enough for our purpose, and cost only a few pence each. The 
 same may be said of Mr. Morris's books on Moths and Butter- 
 flies. But we find that no good coloured pictures of common 
 English trees can be obtained at present, and that good coloured 
 plates of birds cannot be obtained at prices which we can afford 
 to pay. The pubhshers of the late Mr. Gould's book on British 
 Birds, for instance, charge 7s. 6d. for each plate. Mr. W. 
 Walker, the editor and completer of Mr. Harding's well-known 
 series of lithographic studies of English trees, who is a member 
 of our committee, has very kindly offered to prepare for us a 
 series of good coloured plates of English trees, accompanied by 
 coloured studies on a large scale of their branches and leaf forms, 
 if we make a comparatively small grant of money towards the cost 
 of the work. Mr. H. E. Dresser, the author of the important work 
 "The Birds of Europe," which contains beautiful plates, has most 
 generously offered us the use of all the original drawings made for 
 him of those English birds which are represented in his book, and 
 has offered also to have these and other drawings lithographed 
 and coloured by hand for us at cost price by the trained staff 
 employed by him. We desire to accept his offer, but as we need 
 pictures of fifty or sixty English birds, and the set, about 250, of 
 
ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 39 
 
 copies of each bird would cost us many pounds, the work is 
 much too costly to be undertaken by a committee which has 
 innumerable uses for its funds. As we believe that the work is 
 of great importance, and as 250 copies of each bird are more 
 than we need, we proposed to the Science and Art Department 
 that it should either have copies made, and provide us with 
 those which we need at cost price, or else make us a grant 
 towards the cost of the work if we get it done on condition that 
 we undertake to sell superfluous copies to other towns at cost 
 price. But the Department, while admitting the importance of 
 the proposed work, replies that it has not the power to take either 
 of the two courses which we have suggested. I venture to urge 
 that this Section recommend that the Council request the Science 
 and Art Department to seek to acquire the power of preparing 
 and of sehing at cost price to persons or societies interested in 
 public education representations of trees, birds, and other beautiful 
 natural objects, good in respect both of fideHty to nature and 
 of artistic quality. 
 
 If this course be not taken, or if it be taken in vain, then I 
 would suggest that the committees of schools of art, or of other 
 bodies interested in the diffusion of knowledge and love of beauty, 
 associate themselves with the Committee of the Manchester Art 
 Museum in the preparation of such representations. Our Com- 
 mittee has already a considerable collection of excellent water- 
 colour drawings of English wild flowers and common wild birds, 
 and would gladly place them at the service of an association, if 
 one be formed, or of the Science and Art Department. 
 
 I have dealt at probably excessive length with the kinds of 
 work which may be done in schools, because, as I have already 
 said, there is more chance of developing love of beauty in chfldren 
 than in older people. I must speak more briefly of the ways 
 which seem to me the best for bringing the influence of art to bear 
 on grown up people. Only comparatively small results can be 
 expected from efforts to bring this influence to bear in towns till, 
 by the prevention of all preventible smoke (that is, by the preven- 
 tion of at least nine-tenths of that which is now emitted from 
 factory chimneys, and of at least half of that now made by fires in 
 houses), it is made much easier for workpeople to keep their 
 clothes, houses, and themselves clean, and till, by the provision 
 
40 
 
 ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 of playgrounds and of gymnasia, open till late at night, the children 
 of workpeople are enabled to get physical exercise during the 
 hours of daylight in fine weather in some other place than the 
 filthy street, and to get recreation after dusk, and in wet weather, 
 in places less brutalising than public-houses or low music halls; 
 but as smoke prevention and the provision of playgrounds and 
 gymnasia are ways of fostering love of art too indirect to be con- 
 sidered here I must pass them by. 
 
 In spite of the filthiness of town air, and of the mischief due 
 to lack of places of wholesome recreation for children and young 
 people in towns, a considerable measure of success in spreading 
 knowledge and love of beauty may, I believe, be attained by 
 means of a sensibly managed art gallery ; and it is certain that if 
 art galleries can be made to spread amongst workpeople love 
 of beauty, which includes hatred of ugliness, art galleries will be 
 effective means for bringing on that good time when the working 
 classes shall insist on smoke prevention, and on the provision of 
 places for physical exercise. 
 
 Our Manchester Art Museum will be placed, as I think all 
 such galleries should be, in a district filled with workpeople's 
 houses. 
 
 As we intend that the museum shall contain only things 
 which must make those who study them think nobly" both of 
 the world and its Maker, and of that wonderful human nature 
 whose powers are revealed by art, we feel that no sensible person 
 can object to its being open on Sunday afternoons and evenings, 
 as well as on the evenings of all work days. As Sunday is the only 
 day on which many workpeople can go to a museum, we know 
 that if ours is to be of great usefulness, it must be open on Sunday. 
 As we get much innocent, or rather beneficent, pleasure . our- 
 selves from seeing beautiful things on Sundays, and know that our 
 class has been freed, by having opportunities for studying such 
 things on Sundays, from strong temptation to spend that day in 
 worse ways, and as we profess a religion which makes it a duty to 
 place other people under those conditions which we have found 
 to be the best for ourselves, we know that we ought to open 
 our museum on Sundays. As then we know that it may be, 
 that it ought to be, and that it must be, I hardly need add 
 that it will be, opened on Sunday afternoons. We shall, of 
 
ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 41 
 
 course, give rest on other days to those attendants who are 
 employed on Sundays. 
 
 It has, I believe, been found in nearly all art galleries that 
 people will not come often to them if the galleries contain only 
 things to be seen. To induce people to come often and to stay 
 long in our museum, we propose to have good music on one or 
 two evenings each week. 
 
 In the choice of the contents of a gallery which is intended to 
 make people love art, there is one principle to be observed which 
 is so obviously of immense importance that I almost dread lest a 
 statement of it be regarded by my audience as an insult, but 
 which is so entirely disregarded by the managers of all art galleries 
 known to me, that I doubt whether the persistent enunciation of 
 it is not the most useful work which the Art Section of this 
 Association could do for the next few years. 
 
 The principle I refer to is, that, as art is the giving of right or 
 beautiful form, or of beautiful or right appearance, if we desire to 
 make people take keen interest in art, if we desire to make them 
 love good art, we must show it them when applied to things which 
 themselves are very interesting to them, and about the Tightness 
 of appearance of which it is therefore possible for them to care a 
 great deal. Though the truth of this statement will probably not 
 be denied by anyone who has thought about art, a very different 
 theory is acted on by a considerable number of cultivated, or 
 " cultured " people, with the result of making most of their 
 fellow-creatures believe that art is but a plaything for idle people. 
 The language and action of many "cesthetic" persons show 
 that they believe beautiful rightness of appearance to be precious 
 almost in proportion to the worthlessness of that to which the 
 appearance is given, so that melHfluous verses, with no meaning 
 to draw attention from their lovely sound, fairly represent what is 
 accepted as the most important art by many who profess to be 
 lovers of art, but who, in effect, are its bitterest enemies. Success 
 in bringing the influence of art to bear on the masses of the popu- 
 lation in large towns, or on any set of people who have to earn their 
 bread and have not time to acquire an unhealthy appetite for non- 
 sense verses or nonsense pictures, will certainly only be attained 
 by persons who know that art is important just in proportion 
 to the importance of that which it clothes, and who themselves 
 
 D 
 
42 
 
 ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 feel that Tightness of appearance of the bodies, and the houses, 
 and the actions, in short of the whole life, of the population of 
 those large towns which are now, or threaten soon to be, "Eng- 
 land," is of far greater importance than rightness of appearance 
 in all that which is usually called "art," and who feel, to speak of 
 only the fine arts, that rightness of appearance in pictures of 
 noble action and passion, and of beautiful scenery, love of which 
 is almost a necessary of mental health, is of far greater importance 
 than art can be in things which cannot deeply affect human 
 thought and feeling. 
 
 I claim for these suggestions which I am offering that they are 
 the outcome of the thought about art of men who love art with 
 the reasonable love, to which all true art is dear, but which feels 
 the difference between great and little ; and that these sugges- 
 tions are not such as commend themselves to persons who fill the 
 air with factory smoke, and subscribe to a picture gallery in the 
 belief that dwellers in filthy towns will be refined by seeing gilt 
 frames and painted canvases, or such as would be devised by 
 young ladies who believe that they set an example of love of art 
 by taking much trouble in learning to make water-colour drawings, 
 but at the same time do their best to spoil the most important 
 thing they have the shaping of, — their own bodies, — by tight lacing, 
 and by wearing high-heeled boots. Acting on the principle of 
 which I have spoken, we propose showing in the Art Museum 
 applications of good art to those things which are most interesting 
 to the people whom we wish to influence j and in order to induce 
 them to give attention to what we show them, we shall use the 
 same system of labels which I described when speaking of 
 schools, — labels containing explanations of subjects, statements of 
 price, brief criticism, and, in the case of pictures of incidents taken 
 from history or any kind of literature, references to books giving 
 a description of the scenes represented. 
 
 The museum will contain a collection of casts from antique 
 sculpture, carefully chosen for the purpose of showing noble 
 representations of human beauty and of the finest art treatment, 
 and the merits of the casts will be proclaimed by means both of 
 labels and of brief lectures. 
 
 From what I have next to mention we expect much good 
 to result. A space of the size of a small house will be par- 
 
ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 43 
 
 titioned off in the museum, and will be provided with the few 
 pieces of furniture which are needed in a small house, all 
 strong and simple, of good form and good workmanship. The 
 walls will be of pleasant colour, and so prepared that they 
 can be washed, and a few good pictures will hang on them. 
 The curtains, the crockery, will be of good material, good 
 shape, and good colour. The window will be provided with a well- 
 shaped glass case for growing plants. Mr. William Morris has 
 kindly promised to take charge of the fitting up of this model 
 house, and we believe that his work in it will cause as marked an 
 improvement in the appearance of many small houses in Man- 
 chester, as his work has already caused in a great number of large 
 houses all over the country. 
 
 We shall have in the museum small collections of examples, 
 or copies of examples, of the finest products of most of the indus- 
 trial arts, and we shall make great efforts to induce all who look 
 at these collections to think why the things in them are worth 
 showing. It is probable that the largest results will be gained 
 from our system of explanation and criticism when it is applied 
 to those things which are used by the greatest number of people. 
 Pottery, for instance, being used in every house, offers one of the 
 best means which can be used for giving knowledge of the prin- 
 ciples of rightness of appearance. The man who learns why of 
 two cups in the museum, the counterparts, perhaps, of two in his 
 own house, one is better in shape and colour than the other, will 
 have acquired principles of criticism which he will often apply 
 when he uses his own cups, and which will probably lead him to 
 try to estimate the merits of the form of other things in his house, 
 and eventually to replace those which he discovers to be ugly by 
 others of better shape. For we often find that when we possess 
 one beautiful thing, of which we have learnt to feel the beauty, it 
 makes us desire that all the things which surround it shall also be 
 beautiful. 
 
 Our collections, or part of our collections, of pictures will, I 
 think, be very different from the collections existing in other art 
 galleries. 
 
 We believe that every town should have one collection of 
 pictures to tell everyone who enters it, in the beautiful language 
 of art, of all that is best worth knowing of the place and its 
 
44 
 
 ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 surroundings, and its history, and to make him feel, if it 
 is in him to feel, the best influences which nature and history 
 can exert, as well as those of art. So we desire that part 
 at least of our museum collection shall do this for Manchester 
 people. We intend to have a series of pictures of all the 
 most beautiful places near the town, of the most interesting 
 buildings in and near it, of the most remarkable incidents 
 in its history, of the wild flowers, birds, and butterflies found 
 near it. We have already acquired some pictures for this 
 series, but such a collection necessarily takes a long time to 
 form. Of the best of our pictures of beautiful scenery we 
 intend to have copies, perhaps etchings or photo-engravings, or 
 even chromo-lithographs, and we hope that many of these copies 
 will find their way into workpeople's houses. We shall have many 
 other kinds of pictures of course, respecting which all I need say 
 is that a clear, brief explanation of the subject will accompany 
 each picture, and that, if the subject be one which is not familiar 
 to most workpeople, its connection with familiar things will be 
 pointed out. Some of the pictures of the series have served to 
 prove that with regard to art, as with regard to most other things, 
 the law holds good that to him that hath shall be given. It is 
 those workpeople who care for botany or ornithology whom we 
 find most interested in our pictures, because the pictures of flowers, 
 or birds, which they examine for the sake of their subjects, make 
 the whole collection interesting to them. 
 
 I must only add, in the fewest words possible, that we have 
 formed large collections of good etchings, engravings, photo- 
 engravings, and other kinds of pictures, of which good examples 
 can be bought for a low price, and that we state the price of most 
 of them, in order that workpeople may see how much good art 
 can be obtained by those who have fair wages °, that we have 
 obtained many pictures representing events in the fife of Christ, 
 and other important events, persons, and places ; and that, for 
 the purpose of obtaining close attention to the difference of effects 
 produced by different processes, we place some of Mr. Ward's 
 wonderfully accurate facsimile copies of Turner's water-colour 
 drawings side by side with etchings and engravings of the same 
 drawings, and form some groups containing pictures, water-colour 
 drawings, and engravings, of similar objects. 
 
ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 45 
 
 If the women in towns could be niduced to dress more neatly, 
 there would be so much greater a chance for both men and women 
 to gain a healthy sense of beauty, that it is most desirable that an 
 attempt should be made to bring about an improvement in 
 women's dress. The only way in which it could be effected 
 w^ould be by ladies, when they appear in public, wearing dresses 
 which in cheaper material would be suitable for poorer women. 
 We have a hope, though but a faint one, that this way may be 
 tried by some of the ladies w^ho have promised to take part in the 
 work of the museum. 
 
 The work of forming collections to show the people of a 
 town beauty of appearance in things they care for, or can be 
 led to care for, is interesting, but it takes a great deal of 
 time, and needs much close attention. And as comparatively 
 few people see the need of it, or have time or power to join in 
 it, it necessarily falls heavily on a small number of persons. 
 The question is often asked : Is it worth the trouble it gives ? To 
 this question I have no hesitation in answering that until the 
 work needed for familiarising the population of large towns with 
 good art is done, no class of people connected with towns will be 
 able to live a life of civiUsed happiness. The acquisition by the 
 "masses" of the population of our towns of knowledge and love 
 of art would obviously have at least one good result. The lack 
 of good designers w^hich is felt in so many branches of industry in 
 England would not exist. But this is one of the least of the evils 
 which would be removed or lessened by the diffusion of love of 
 art. The people w^ho live in and near crowded towns have, it 
 seems to me, two states to choose between, — one in which beauty 
 of many kinds shall be known and loved by the majority of the 
 people of all classes; the other, the existing state, in which a very 
 large number of the w^orking classes are brutalised by their sur- 
 roundings, and a very large number of the richer class live in 
 brutalising indifference to their brutaUty. 
 
 It is surely- unquestionable that knowledge and love of art 
 are necessary for the happiness of the workpeople who live in 
 the crowded parts of towns. They are exposed to the strongest 
 temptations. It is always hard for them to escape the demo- 
 ralising influence of filthiness of home, of clothes, of person. 
 They must find it hard to resist the temptation to seek relief 
 
46 
 
 ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 in drinking and in exciting games of chance, from the weariness 
 and depression caused by breathing the foul air of the town, 
 and seeing hardly anything that is not begrimed with soot. Of 
 the two sets of motives which, apart from reUgious motives, 
 tend to make people behave well, — the belief that they will 
 be punished if they do ill, and the belief that they will be 
 rewarded if they do well, — the lower classes of workpeople can 
 hardly feel the hope of reward, — the stronger and more searching 
 in its effects of the two. They know that drunkenness and 
 debauchery will, if indulged in, probably ruin them in purse and 
 in health, but the dull life, containing almost nothing that can 
 excite healthy thought and feeling, which is the best they can 
 hope to gain by good conduct for themselves and their families, — 
 this cannot have the stimulating influence of a reward. They 
 will not feel the influence of the set of motives which, after those 
 given by religion, are the strongest which can incite human beings 
 to try to live rightly, till they can know that, if they are indus- 
 trious and temperate, a fair amount of happiness for themselves 
 and for their families is within their reach. 
 
 Of the changes needed to enable workpeople to know this, 
 one certainly is the bringing of the influence of art to bear on 
 them, so that they may gain the power of making their homes 
 more beautiful, and in their own homes, and in public galleries, 
 may see pictures and other works of art which can excite healthy 
 thought and healthy feeling. 
 
 Religion gives religious people stronger motives for resisting 
 temptation than are given by the expectation of such rewards 
 for good conduct as I have mentioned ; and because this is so, 
 many people who are willing to join in efforts to give direct 
 religious teaching to the lowest classes in towns, are not wiUingto 
 join in efforts to bring wholesome kinds of recreation with in 
 their reach. 
 
 It behoves us then, — those of us who desire to bring the 
 influence of art to bear on the masses, — to declare the truth that 
 thousands of people in towns must be incapable of healthy 
 religious feeUng unless they first feel the influence of art. 
 
 If a behef in the greatness and goodness of the Maker of the 
 world is to be felt, — and it is of the essence of healthy religion,— 
 the greatness and beauty of His works must be felt in those 
 
ART IN LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 47 
 
 years of childhood in which mind and feeling form life-long 
 habits, and it is only by help of art that the influence of the 
 beauty of the world can be made to reach the feelings and 
 thoughts of town children. The means which are necessary for 
 giving them a strong sense of beauty are also necessary for 
 enabling them to have healthy religious feeling. 
 
 The richer class of town people have, I believe, almost as 
 much to gain as the working classes from the bringing of the 
 influence of art to bear on the masses. As a class they need, for 
 their moral health, nobler, more interesting occupation for their 
 leisure time than they now have, and this they will probably not 
 obtain till they study the arts more carefully for their own pleasure, 
 and use the arts much more fully for the public advantage. But 
 the ughness and emptiness of the Hfe of the masses of the popula- 
 tion in large towns must cause no little distress to those people 
 of the educated class who have the strongest love of the highest 
 forms of beauty, and who, in a happier state of things, would 
 naturally set an example of love of art, and of generous use of it 
 for the pubHc good. It must be impossible for most people of 
 this kind to think of art as much more than the plaything of a 
 class, while it fails to affect the thoughts and feelings of the 
 masses. And those well-to-do people who are not distressed by 
 the condition of our town populations are, of course, unfitted by 
 dulness of perception or of feeling for setting a good example, 
 either in the study of art or in the use of it for the public good. 
 
 Till, then, the masses are trained to feel the charm of good art, 
 it is improbable that any great improvement will take place in the 
 way in which the well-to-do classes spend their leisure time. 
 
 The work needed to bring the influence of art to bear on the 
 masses of the population in large towns ought, it seems to me, to 
 be undertaken, or at least to be heartily supported, by all who 
 desire the welfare of any class of their fellow-countrymen. 
 
 A. IRELAND AND CO., PRINTERS, PALL MALL, MANCHESTER.