e Gates of Paradise.

Have then your school of design, search out your workmen and, when you
find one who has delicacy of hand and that wonder of invention necessary
for goldsmiths' work, do not leave him to toil in obscurity and dishonour
and have a great glaring shop and two great glaring shop-boys in it (not
to take your orders: they never do that; but to force you to buy
something you do not want at all). When you want a thing wrought in
gold, goblet or shield for the feast, necklace or wreath for the women,
tell him what you like most in decoration, flower or wreath, bird in
flight or hound in the chase, image of the woman you love or the friend
you honour. Watch him as he beats out the gold into those thin plates
delicate as the petals of a yellow rose, or draws it into the long wires
like tangled sunbeams at dawn. Whoever that workman be help him, cherish
him, and you will have such lovely work from his hand as will be a joy to
you for all time.

This is the spirit of our movement in England, and this is the spirit in
which we would wish you to work, making eternal by your art all that is
noble in your men and women, stately in your lakes and mountains,
beautiful in your own flowers and natural life. We want to see that you
have nothing in your houses that has not been a joy to the man who made
it, and is not a joy to those that use it. We want to see you create an
art made by the hands of the people to please the hearts of the people
too. Do you like this spirit or not? Do you think it simple and strong,
noble in its aim, and beautiful in its result? I know you do.

Folly and slander have their own way for a little time, but for a little
time only. You now know what we mean: you will be able to estimate what
is said of us--its value and its motive.

There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to
write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it
would be impossible to overestimate--not to the artist but to the public,
blinding them to all, but harming the artist not at all. Without them we
would judge a man simply by his work; but at present the newspapers are
trying hard to induce the public to judge a sculptor, for instance, never
by his statues but by the way he treats his wife; a painter by the amount
of his income and a poet by the colour of his necktie. I said there
should be a law, but there is really no necessity for a new law: nothing
could be