Hopes and Fears for Art | Page 6

present, so also, and that I think is no little matter,
they call our attention at every step to that history, of which, I said
before, they are so great a part; for no nation, no state of society,
however rude, has been wholly without them: nay, there are peoples not
a few, of whom we know scarce anything, save that they thought such
and such forms beautiful. So strong is the bond between history and
decoration, that in the practice of the latter we cannot, if we would,
wholly shake off the influence of past times over what we do at present.
I do not think it is too much to say that no man, however original he
may be, can sit down to-day and draw the ornament of a cloth, or the
form of an ordinary vessel or piece of furniture, that will be other than a
development or a degradation of forms used hundreds of years ago; and
these, too, very often, forms that once had a serious meaning, though
they are now become little more than a habit of the hand; forms that
were once perhaps the mysterious symbols of worships and beliefs now
little remembered or wholly forgotten. Those who have diligently
followed the delightful study of these arts are able as if through
windows to look upon the life of the past:- the very first beginnings of
thought among nations whom we cannot even name; the terrible
empires of the ancient East; the free vigour and glory of Greece; the
heavy weight, the firm grasp of Rome; the fall of her temporal Empire
which spread so wide about the world all that good and evil which men
can never forget, and never cease to feel; the clashing of East and West,

South and North, about her rich and fruitful daughter Byzantium; the
rise, the dissensions, and the waning of Islam; the wanderings of
Scandinavia; the Crusades; the foundation of the States of modern
Europe; the struggles of free thought with ancient dying system--with
all these events and their meaning is the history of popular art
interwoven; with all this, I say, the careful student of decoration as an
historical industry must be familiar. When I think of this, and the
usefulness of all this knowledge, at a time when history has become so
earnest a study amongst us as to have given us, as it were, a new sense:
at a time when we so long to know the reality of all that has happened,
and are to be put off no longer with the dull records of the battles and
intrigues of kings and scoundrels,--I say when I think of all this, I
hardly know how to say that this interweaving of the Decorative Arts
with the history of the past is of less importance than their dealings
with the life of the present: for should not these memories also be a part
of our daily life?
And now let me recapitulate a little before I go further, before we begin
to look into the condition of the arts at the present day. These arts, I
have said, are part of a great system invented for the expression of a
man's delight in beauty: all peoples and times have used them; they
have been the joy of free nations, and the solace of oppressed nations;
religion has used and elevated them, has abused and degraded them;
they are connected with all history, and are clear teachers of it; and,
best of all, they are the sweeteners of human labour, both to the
handicraftsman, whose life is spent in working in them, and to people
in general who are influenced by the sight of them at every turn of the
day's work: they make our toil happy, our rest fruitful.
And now if all I have said seems to you but mere open-mouthed praise
of these arts, I must say that it is not for nothing that what I have
hitherto put before you has taken that form.
It is because I must now ask you this question: All these good
things--will you have them? will you cast them from you?
Are you surprised at my question--you, most of whom, like myself, are
engaged in the actual practice of the arts that are, or ought to be,
popular?
In explanation, I must somewhat repeat what I have already said. Time
was when the mystery and wonder of handicrafts were well

acknowledged by the world, when imagination and fancy mingled with
all things made by man; and in those days all handicraftsmen were
ARTISTS, as we should now call them. But the thought of man became
more intricate, more difficult to express; art grew a heavier thing to
deal with, and its labour was more divided among