nt?

But, to take a simple instance, one short of that complete
Transformation of Life which should be the main aim of art, to take a
practical problem of modern life, the supply of water to a great city,
consider the grandiose character of the problem, despite, or shall we
say in consequence of, the mighty mechanical agencies now involved in
its solution--the fetching of the water from the far-off pure source,
the hills of rain & of snow, to the city of the plain and the sun, its
storage and distribution, by the immense pulsations of machinery, day &
night, year after year. Is not that a noble problem for the imaginative
faculties of the artist, only less noble than the supply of the Holy
Spirit from the pulpit or the altar, to the massed congregation at
their feet, or than the summons from Tower or Belfry to unity of action
or of prayer, of the separated members of a city or a Church? But such
a problem, since the great days of Rome, is not thought of in connexion
with art, nor is the grandiose character of its solution so much as
dreamed of--the carriage of the water to the city, one long triumphant
procession: and within the city what noble works! first in importance,
the pumping station; how prosaic it sounds! yet to the imagination how
magnificent! that mighty heart, that to the uttermost ambit of the city
drives the far-off burthen of the hills! Then the public fountains in
the great thoroughfares, at the great crossings & in the great squares;
noble works of art, at once to typify and to actualize a city's purity
and to satiate a city's thirst, and for a city's joy and remembrance,
in pleasant shower, to cast into the air the liquid drops which first
fell for it, and fall, on the distant heights of snow. And finally in
each house, in each room, the separate jet, the very taps this time
ablaze with beauty for happy beauty's sake, and happier use!

Again, to take a larger instance--still an instance of machinery. The
people of England, like the people of Rome, have been engaged for a
thousand years or more in making a constitution, a great piece of
machinery, for their own governance, and are still engaged in that
task, and are likely to be engaged in it, perhaps for a thousand years
or more to come. It is a great task, a great problem, ever changing its
conditions with the changes which, with other causes, its own changes
bring about: it is also, or should be, a great work of art as well as
of machinery, in whic