National Casting Esiahlishments. 37 



enormous — such is the difficulty of procuring workmen. The 

 cure for this, as in all branches of commerce, is to create com- 

 petition, and this will be effected by the education of workmen 

 in schools; and that their tastes may flow in a proper channel, 

 the purest models must be set before them. 



Enough, perhaps, has been said to prove the necessity of the 

 introduction of good models, and a government which wishes 

 to encourage art and ameliorate taste, cannot do so better than 

 by such means ; all experience gathered from the history of 

 art proving, that where the best models have existed, schools of 

 the highest character have been formed : and we may antici- 

 pate that, by the introduction of like models into this country, 

 and their being placed in situations accessible to all, taste and 

 art of every description will be purified and improved, and a 

 necessary consequence must be, the extensive and well-directed 

 patronage of art by a wealthy and tasteful people. 



It is not necessary to dwell longer upon the great benefits which 

 must ensue to our native art from filling the country with the 

 finest models of the art of the best ages : — the proposition is self- 

 evident. Undertaken by government on a liberal scale, the 

 project will certainly succeed, as by opening in London and 

 the other great cities in Great Britain, extensive exhibitions of 

 statues, bas-reliefs, and ornamental casts of every description, 

 there cannot be a doubt that all who require such models will 

 study with eagerness, and that when they can do so they will 

 purchase the casts with avidity. 



The advantages to general education will also be great ; in- 

 stead of the imperfect, and often absurd, ideas of the mytho- 

 logy and arts of the ancients conveyed to our youth by the 

 prints in the books they study, the facility with which sta- 

 tues of the divinities of the ancients, bas-reliefs, their habits 

 and customs, costumes and arms, and authenticated busts of 

 all the great characters of antiquity, may be procured, will un- 

 questionably greatly benefit our classic and other students, 

 ameliorate their tastes by habituating them to the constant ob- 

 servation of beautiful forms, impress them at an early age with 

 love and respect for art, and give them a tenfold interest in 

 their studies, A series of historical busts should be in every 



