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It has been well observed that the world, more especially the English portion of it, during the last half century, has been in its working dress; that is to say, although we have done some very wonderful things in the way of mechanics, and have produced other things which are marvels of cheapness, yet as regards the production of really beautiful objects, particularly those required in every-day life, we have been behind most other epochs of civilization. Of course there is no prima facie reason why cheap things should be ugly, for a die or mould of a good design costs no more than a bad one; but still the fact remains that the objects in use in every-day life are not beautiful, and it is to effect a change in this respect that the Government have established Schools of Design and the excellent Museum of which I shall have to speak hereafter. Great praise must also be given to the Society of Arts for beginning the movement and carrying it on to the present time; and although the sphere of its action must necessarily be infinitely smaller than that of the Government Schools, yet we should always remember that the initiative of our great English exhibitions of industry came from the Society, and that it is to those exhibitions that we owe the stirring among the dry bones. of industrial art which is now taking place.

In furtherance of the latter object I have been requested by the Council of the Society to give a few lectures, shewing how the arts have formerly been applied to industry; how they are at present applied, and what may possibly be done to increase their application. Now there are various phases of art workmanship: thus a single expensive thing may be done to order, such as a piece of jewellery, or what is called a race cup; or a few expensive things may be turned out, such as Wedgewood's copies of the Portland Vase; but decidedly the best application of art to industry is when a great many copies are made from an exceedingly good pattern. The two former con12

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ditions have very little effect on the progress of art, but the last one is everybody's business; for it just comes to this, Are we to have ugly or beautiful things continually before our eyes? Let us for a moment consider the numberless objects of every-day life made by the aid of machinery or of low-skilled labour, and the question acquires additional force. In ancient times the problem was solved. The Greek saucepan or waterjug was really a work of art, and doubtless cost no more than ours do and indeed, now-a-days, such things ought to cost us much less, considering the great mechanical means at our disposal. When, however, we do get excellent designs they generally turn out to be very dear, and an impression seems to be afloat, that if a thing is beautiful, machinery should have nothing to do with it; hence it only gets into the hands of the few; whereas the real mission of machinery is to reduce pounds to shillings and shillings to pence. This unwillingness to use machinery may, perhaps, be traced to the teaching of Mr. Ruskin and of the late Mr. Pugin, but then these gentlemen have unfortunately been misunderstood. What they battled for was the disuse of purely mechanical means in the production of architectural ornaments. Thus, in a building, they objected to cast leaves in a cornice because one would be exactly like another, and because the undercuttings could not be obtained from a mould; but, as far as I can see, they never objected to the proper employment of machinery as a help to either the artist or workman. In fact, Pugin says in one of his works that had he a cathedral to build, one of the first things he would do would be to set up a lathe to turn the smaller columns. How completely his teaching has been misunderstood will be evident from the following two instances. The first is that of a large firm who turn out very pretty tinned iron door-rings, just the sort of things that we should like to see on all our drawers and all our book-cases. Well, these rings are made by hand, and cost from 3s. 6d. to 1s. 6d. Of course it is needless to say that they are not upon all our drawers and all our bookcases, and if the truth must be told, very few of them are sold at all. Some time ago, a gun-lock maker offered to make a die and supply these identical rings at something like 3d. a-piece all round, if the firm would only take a sufficient quantity-say five hundred: but no, the firm thought that this was a case where the use of machinery should be discouraged, and the consequence is that