finding
steady work for all, with adequate wages and decent homes, we need not
look for Art in these lowest ranks. We have to do, therefore, not with
the very poor at all, but with the respectable poor--the families of
skilled mechanics, _employes_ in regular work, workmen in breweries,
ship-yards, and factories independent handicraftsmen, clerks,
cashiers, accountants, writers, small shopkeepers, and all that great
host which is perpetually occupied in increasing the wealth of the
country by labour which, at least, permits them to live in comfort.
All these people have leisure; most of them, except the shop
assistants, have no work in the evening; they are all possessed of
some education. There is no reason at all why they should not, if they
could be only got to desire it, become students in some of the
branches of Art.

Let us, then, always with reference to this one city and this one
class of its inhabitants, ascertain what has been done already to
create a love of Art. The most important thing as yet attempted is the
Bethnal Green Museum. It is, for our purposes, also the most
instructive, because it has hitherto been, I consider, a complete and
ignominious failure. That is to say, it was established and is
maintained as an educational museum, it was especially designed to
create and develop a knowledge of Art and it has not done so. It was
opened in 1872 with, among other things, the magnificent collection of
pictures lent by Sir Richard Wallace; during the twelve years of its
existence it has exhibited other collections of considerable interest:
but the education, the free library, and the classrooms promised at
the outset have never been forthcoming. It is, in fact, a dumb and
silent gallery. One may compare it to a Board School newly built,
provided with all the latest appliances for education--with books,
desks, seats, blackboards, and everything, including crowds of pupils,
but left without a teaching staff, the pupils being expected to teach
themselves. Why not? There are the books and there are the desks, So
with this museum. You cannot learn anything of Art without the study
of artistic work. Here is the artistic work. Why do not the people
study it? They certainly come to the place; they come in large
numbers; on free days when it is open until ten at night they average
over two thousand a day all the year round. And if you take the
trouble to watch them, to follow them about, and to listen to their
co