he right surroundings, for remember that the real test and virtue of a
workman is not his earnestness nor his industry even, but his power of
design merely; and that 'design is not the offspring of idle fancy: it is
the studied result of accumulative observation and delightful habit.' All
the teaching in the world is of no avail if you do not surround your
workman with happy influences and with beautiful things. It is
impossible for him to have right ideas about colour unless he sees the
lovely colours of Nature unspoiled; impossible for him to supply
beautiful incident and action unless he sees beautiful incident and
action in the world about him.

For to cultivate sympathy you must be among living things and thinking
about them, and to cultivate admiration you must be among beautiful
things and looking at them. 'The steel of Toledo and the silk of Genoa
did but give strength to oppression and lustre to pride,' as Mr. Ruskin
says; let it be for you to create an art that is made by the hands of the
people for the joy of the people, to please the hearts of the people,
too; an art that will be your expression of your delight in life. There
is nothing 'in common life too mean, in common things too trivial to be
ennobled by your touch'; nothing in life that art cannot sanctify.

You have heard, I think, a few of you, of two flowers connected with the
aesthetic movement in England, and said (I assure you, erroneously) to be
the food of some aesthetic young men. Well, let me tell you that the
reason we love the lily and the sunflower, in spite of what Mr. Gilbert
may tell you, is not for any vegetable fashion at all. It is because
these two lovely flowers are in England the two most perfect models of
design, the most naturally adapted for decorative art--the gaudy leonine
beauty of the one and the precious loveliness of the other giving to the
artist the most entire and perfect joy. And so with you: let there be no
flower in your meadows that does not wreathe its tendrils around your
pillows, no little leaf in your Titan forests that does not lend its form
to design, no curving spray of wild rose or brier that does not live for
ever in carven arch or window or marble, no bird in your air that is not
giving the iridescent wonder of its colour, the exquisite curves of its
wings in flight, to make more precious the preciousness of simple
adornment. For the voices that have their dwelling in sea and mountain
are not the c