ying out, that all-round harmony, which are possible
only when the artist is altering to his individual taste some shape
already furnished by tradition or subduing to his pleasure some
problem insisted on by practical necessity.

Meanwhile, all round these galleries crammed with useless objects
barely pretending to any utility, round these pavilions of the
Decorative Arts, the Exhibition exhibits (most instructive of all its
shows) samples of the most marvellous indifference not merely to
beauty, peace and dignity, but to the most rudimentary aesthetic and
moral comfort. For all the really useful things which men take
seriously because they increase wealth and power, because they save
time and overcome distance; all these "useful" things have the naive
and colossal ugliness of rudimentary animals, or of abortions, of
everything hurried untimely into existence: machines, sheds, bridges,
trams, motor-cars: not one line corrected, not one angle smoothed, for
the sake of the eye, of the nerves of the spectator. And all of it,
both decorative futility and cynically hideous practicality (let alone
the various exotic raree shows from distant countries or more distant
centuries) expect to be enjoyed after a jostle at the doors and a
scurry along the crowded corridors, and to the accompaniment of every
rattling and shrieking and jarring sound. For mankind in our days
intends to revel in the most complicated and far-fetched kinds of
beauty while cultivating convenient callousness to the most elementary
and atrocious sorts of ugliness. The art itself reveals it; for even
in its superfine isolation and existence for its own sake only, art
cannot escape its secondary mission of expressing and recording the
spirit of its times. These elaborate aesthetic baubles of the
"Decorative Arts" are full of quite incredibly gross barbarism. And,
even as the iron chest, studded with nails, or the walnut press,
unadorned save by the intrinsic beauty and dignity of their
proportions, and the tender irregularities of their hammered surface,
the subtle bevelling of their panels; even as these humble objects in
some dark corner of an Italian castle or on the mud floor of a Breton
cottage, symbolise in my mind the most intense artistic sensitiveness
and reverence of the Past; so, here at this Exhibition, my impressions
of contemporary over-refinement and callousness are symbolised in a
certain cupboard, visibly incapable of holding either linen or
g