der a vague
impression that the arts of drawing and painting might be, up to a
certain point, taught in a general way to everyone, and would do
everyone equal good; and that each class of operatives might afterwards
bring this general knowledge into use in their own trade, according to
its requirements. Now, that is not so. A wood-carver needs for his
business to learn drawing in quite a different way from a china-painter,
and a jeweler from a worker in iron. They must be led to study quite
different characters in the natural forms they introduce in their
various manufacture. It is no use to teach an iron-worker to observe the
down on a peach, and of none to teach laws of atmospheric effect to a
carver in wood. So far as their business is concerned, their brains
would be vainly occupied by such things, and they would be prevented
from pursuing, with enough distinctness or intensity, the qualities of
Art which can alone be expressed in the materials with which they each
have to do.

3. Now, I believe it to be wholly impossible to teach special
application of Art principles to various trades in a single school. That
special application can be only learned rightly by the experience of
years in the particular work required. The power of each material, and
the difficulties connected with its treatment are not so much to be
taught as to be felt; it is only by repeated touch and continued trial
beside the forge or the furnace, that the goldsmith can find out how to
govern his gold, or the glass-worker his crystal; and it is only by
watching and assisting the actual practice of a master in the business,
that the apprentice can learn the efficient secrets of manipulation, or
perceive the true limits of the involved conditions of design. It seems
to me, therefore, that all idea of reference to definite businesses
should be abandoned in such schools as that just established: we can
have neither the materials, the conveniences, nor the empirical skill in
the master, necessary to make such teaching useful. All specific
Art-teaching must be given in schools established by each trade for
itself: and when our operatives are a little more enlightened on these
matters, there will be found, as I have already stated in my lectures on
the political economy of Art,[59] absolute necessity for the
establishment of guilds of trades in an active and practical form, for
the purposes of ascertaining the principles of Art proper to their
business,