other; it shuts out even what might be called redeeming infirmities; it blinds men to the sense of beauty, as much as to the perception of justice and right; cases might perhaps be named of countries, where greediness for money holds the widest sway, and where unmitigated ugliness is the principal characteristic of industrial products. On the other hand, I do not believe it is extravagant to say, that the pursuit of the element of Beauty, in the business of production, will be found to act with a genial, chastening, and refining influence on the commercial spirit; that, up to a certain point, it is in the nature of a preservative against some of the moral dangers, that beset trading and manufacturing enterprise; and that we are justified in regarding it not merely as an economical benefit; not merely as that which contributes to our works an element of value; not merely as that which supplies a particular faculty of human nature with its proper food; but as a liberalising and civilising power, and an instrument, in its own sphere, of moral and social improvement. Indeed it would be strange, if a deliberate departure from what we see to be the law of Nature, in its outward sphere, were the road to a close conformity with its innermost and highest laws. 9. But now let us not conceive that, because the love of Beauty finds for itself a place in the general heart of mankind, therefore we need never make it the object of a special attention, or put in action special means to promote and to uphold it. For after all, our attachment to it is a matter of degree, and of degree which experience has shown to be, in different places, and at different times, indefinitely variable. We may not be able to reproduce the age of Pericles, or even that which is known as the Cinque-cento; but yet it depends upon our own choice, whether we shall or shall not have a title to claim kindred, however remotely, with either, aye or with both, of those brilliant periods. What we are bound to, is this to take care, that everything we produce shall, in its kind and class, be as good as we can make it. When Dr. Johnson, whom I suppose that Staffordshire must ever reckon among her most distinguished ornaments, was asked by Mr. Boswell, how he had attained to his extraordinary excellence in conversation, he replied, he had no other rule or system than this; that, whenever he had anything to say, he tried to say it in the best manner he was able. It is this perpetual striving after excellence. on the one hand, or the want of such effort on the other, which, more than the original difference of gifts (certain and great as that difference may be), contributes to bring about the differences we observe in the works and characters of men. Now such efforts are more rare, in proportion as the object in view is higher, the reward more distant. 10. It appears to me that, in the application of Beauty to works of utility, the reward is generally remote. A new element of labour is imported into the process of production; and that element, like others, must be paid for. In the modest publication, which the firm of Wedgwood and Bentley put forth under the name of a Catalogue, but which really contains much sound and useful teaching on the principles of industrial Art, they speak plainly on this subject to the following effect: : "There is another error, common with those who are not over-well acquainted with the particular difficulties of a given art; they often say, that a beautiful object can be manufactured as cheaply as an ugly one. A moment's reflection should suffice to undeceive them."* 11. The beautiful object will be dearer, than one perfectly bare and bald; not because utility is curtailed or compromised for the sake of beauty, but because there may be more manual labour, and there must be more thought, in the original design. "Pater ipse colendi Haud facilem esse viam voluit."+ Therefore the manufacturer, whose daily thought it must and ought to be to cheapen his productions, endeavouring to dispense with all that can be spared, is under much temptation to decline letting Beauty stand as an item to lengthen the account of the costs of production. So the pressure of economical laws tells severely upon the finer elements of trade. And yet it may be argued that, in this as in other cases, in the case for example of the durability and solidity of articles, that which appears cheapest at first may not be cheapest in the long run. And this for two reasons. In the first place, because in the long run mankind are willing to pay a price for Beauty. I will seek for a proof of this proposition in an illustrious neighbouring nation. France is the second commercial country of the world; and her command of foreign markets seems clearly referable, in a great degree, to the real elegance of her productions, and to establish in the most intelligible form the principle, that taste has an exchangeable value; that it fetches a price in the markets of the world. *Catalogue, p. 95. I quote from the sixth edition: it is in French, and is the only one I have seen. † Georg. I. 122. Some of the quotations were not delivered orally. 12. But, furthermore, there seems to be another way, by which the law of nature arrives at its revenge upon the short-sighted lust for cheapness. We begin, say, by finding Beauty expensive. We accordingly decline to pay a class of artists for producing it. Their employment ceases; and the class itself disappears. Presently we find, by experience, that works reduced to utter baldness do not long satisfy. We have to meet a demand for embellishment of some kind. But we have now starved out the race, who knew the laws and modes of its production. Something, however, must be done. So we substitute strength for flavour, quantity for quality; and we end by producing incongruous excrescences, or even hideous malformations, at a greater cost than would have sufficed for the nourishment among us, without a break, of chaste and virgin Art. 13. Thus, then, the penalty of error may be certain; but it may remain not the less true that the reward of sound judgment and right action, depending as it does not on to-day or to-morrow, but on the far-stretching future, is remote. In the same proportion, it is wise and needful to call in aid all the secondary resources we can command. Among these instruments, and among the best of them, is to be reckoned the foundation of Institutes, such as that which you are now about to establish; for they not only supply the willing with means of instruction, but they bear witness from age to age to the principle on which they are founded; they carry down the tradition of good times through the slumber and the night of bad times, ready to point the path to excellence, when the dawn returns again. I heartily trust the Wedgwood Institute will be one worthy of its founders, and of its object. 14. But now let us draw nearer to the immediate cha racter and office of him, whom I may call our hero. His most signal and characteristic merit lay, as I have said, in the firmness and fulness with which he perceived the true law of what we termed Industrial Art, or in other words, of the application of the higher Art to Industry; the law which teaches us to aim first at giving to every object the greatest possible degree of fitness and convenience for its purpose, and next at making it the vehicle of the highest degree of Beauty which, compatibly with that fitness and convenience, it will bear; which does not, I need hardly say, substitute the secondary for the primary end, but which recognises, as part of the business of production, the study to harmonise the two. To have a strong grasp of this principle, and to work it out to its results in the details of a vast and varied manufacture, is a praise, high enough for any man, at any time, and in any place. But it was higher and more peculiar, as I think, in the case of Wedgwood, than in almost any other case it could be. For that truth of Art, which he saw so clearly, and which lies at the root of excellence, was one, of which England, his country, has not usually had a perception at all corresponding in strength and fulness with her other rare endowments. She has long taken a lead among the nations of Europe for the cheapness of her manufactures: not so for their beauty. And if the day shall ever comc, when she shall be as eminent in true taste, as she is now in economy of production, my belief is that that result will probably be due to no other single man in so great a degree as to Wedgwood. 15. This part of the subject, however, deserves a somcwhat fuller consideration. There are three regions given to man for the exercise of his faculties in the production of objects, or the per |