d in the English horse. Would not such a
chamber of chivalry have, in its kind, a quite indisputable authority
and historical value, not to be shaken by any future impudence or
infidelity?

Or again in Staffordshire, would it not be easily answered to an honest
question of what is good and not, in clay or ware, "This will work, and
that will stand"? and might not a series of the mugs which have been
matured with discrimination, and of the pots which have been popular in
use, be so ordered as to display their qualities in a convincing and
harmonious manner against all gainsayers?

205. Nor is there any mystery of taste, or marvel of skill, concerning
which you may not get quite easy initiation and safe pilotage for the
common people, provided you once make them clearly understand that there
is indeed something to be learned, and something to be admired, in the
arts, which will need their attention for a time; and cannot be
explained with a word, nor seen with a wink. And provided also, and with
still greater decision, you set over them masters, in each branch of
the arts, who know their own minds in that matter, and are not afraid to
speak them, nor to say, "We know," when they know, and "We don't know,"
when they don't.

To which end, the said several branches must be held well apart, and
dealt with one at a time. Every considerable town ought to have its
exemplary collections of woodwork, iron-work, and jewelry, attached to
the schools of their several trades, leaving to be illustrated in its
public museum, as in an hexagonal bee's cell, the six queenly and
muse-taught arts of needlework, writing, pottery, sculpture,
architecture, and painting.

206. For each of these, there should be a separate Tribune or Chamber of
absolute tribunal, which need not be large--that, so called, of
Florence, not the size of a railway waiting-room, has actually for the
last century determined the taste of the European public in two
arts!--in which the absolute best in each art, so far as attainable by
the communal pocket, should be authoritatively exhibited, with simple
statement that it is good, and reason why it is good, and notification
in what particulars it is unsurpassable, together with some not too
complex illustrations of the steps by which it has attained to that
perfection, where these can be traced far back in history.

207. These six Tribunes, or Temples, of Fame, being first set with their
fixed criteria, there should