nit of design,' which contains all the principles of
decoration, and exhibited a design of a nude figure with an axe couched
in an architectural spandrel, a figure which he was careful to explain
was, in spite of the axe, not that of Mr. Gladstone. The designer then
leaving chiaroscuro, shading and other 'superficial facts of life' to
take care of themselves, and keeping the idea of space limitation always
before him, then proceeds to emphasise the beauty of his material, be it
metal with its 'agreeable bossiness,' as Ruskin calls it, or leaded glass
with its fine dark lines, or mosaic with its jewelled tesserae, or the
loom with its crossed threads, or wood with its pleasant crispness. Much
bad art comes from one art trying to borrow from another. We have
sculptors who try to be pictorial, painters who aim at stage effects,
weavers who seek for pictorial motives, carvers who make Life and not Art
their aim, cotton printers 'who tie up bunches of artificial flowers with
streamers of artificial ribbons' and fling them on the unfortunate
textile.

Then came the little bit of Socialism, very sensible and very quietly
put. 'How can we have fine art when the worker is condemned to
monotonous and mechanical labour in the midst of dull or hideous
surroundings, when cities and nature are sacrificed to commercial greed,
when cheapness is the god of Life?' In old days the craftsman was a
designer; he had his 'prentice days of quiet study; and even the painter
began by grinding colours. Some little old ornament still lingers, here
and there, on the brass rosettes of cart-horses, in the common milk-cans
of Antwerp, in the water-vessels of Italy. But even this is
disappearing. 'The tourist passes by' and creates a demand that commerce
satisfies in an unsatisfactory manner. We have not yet arrived at a
healthy state of things. There is still the Tottenham Court Road and a
threatened revival of Louis Seize furniture, and the 'popular pictorial
print struggles through the meshes of the antimacassar.' Art depends on
Life. We cannot get it from machines. And yet machines are bad only
when they are our masters. The printing press is a machine that Art
values because it obeys her. True art must have the vital energy of life
itself, must take its colours from life's good or evil, must follow
angels of light or angels of darkness. The art of the past is not to be
copied in a servile spirit. For a new age we require a new form.