326 IDENTIFICATION OF THE ARTISAN AND ARTIST. 



any one vrho gave evidence of genius, and reward liim as lie deserved. 

 It is not patronage, bat honor, that art wants. 



Now, speaking of the department to which I have just alluded, there 

 is a passage worth quoting from Mr. Ward's book, "The World and its 

 Workshop,*' on the difl'erence between English and French designers in 

 the textile fabrics. " France has studiously cultivated the art of design, 

 and advanced its professors to the rank of gentlemen; in England, on 

 the contrary, with some exception, it has been degraded to a mechanical 

 employment, and remunerated at weekly wages. France has, in conse- 

 quence, a species of industry to which we have no claim — the pro- 

 duction of design for exportation." Now, having drawn these general 

 conclusions, we must come to some practical applications. The first, 

 that we must avoid making too great a separation between that char- 

 acter of art which it is proposed, now, to impart to our products and 

 the higher dej^artmeuts of arts. I have observed that the sei)aration 

 of art iuto two departments, high and low, seems to be dangerous, 

 and it will, perhaps, prove fatal. You may educate a great number of 

 good desiguers, persons who will make tolerable drawings, and with 

 rapidity; but the influence upon these which are considered the lower 

 stages of art must come, not from below, but from above; it is only art 

 in its highest department that gives the true feeling of proportion, the 

 right sense of harmony, whether in color or in design, that gives also 

 that sense and feeling of the adaption and propriety of things to their 

 purpose, which is indispensable. Any one must be surprised at seeing 

 tKe extraordinary combination of the styles of different countries and 

 times in our works of art, from the want of a regular artistic education. 

 I therefore think that the first thing which must be done is to try an 

 education which will not give merely a great degree of elementary 

 artistic power, but that, while we give what may be called the rudiments 

 of art to every one, if possible, so as to give them all the opportunity 

 of developing a higher taste and power, if thej^ possess it, we must not, 

 in looking beyond that, satisfy ourselves with the idea that we can 

 educate a great number of artisans to a middling degree of artistic 

 feeling, in the hope that thereby we may influence the character of our 

 manufactures; but we must endeavor to combine the two, to bring 

 down the high art to mingle with the lower, in the feeling that it is the 

 common interest and duty of artists to im^irove the ijroductive arts, 

 and to carry into actual icorlc — not merely into design — the powers which 

 they possess. 



The evidence of Mr. Skene, before the committee of the House of 

 Commons, is to the same effect. He and Mr. Potter, and every other 

 writer I have seen, agreed that we are not equal with the French in the 

 more delicate operations of art applied to manufactures, and especially 

 in textile fabrics; and he gives this reason: "The system of France is 

 very different from that of this country, because in France artists of the 

 first eminence employ their time — and make it a most pi^ofitable part 



