) 
32 
‘‘ workmanship ” in the highest sense of the human expression— 
not merely the workmanship they indulged in in Lancashire and 
Yorkshire, but real handicrafts which resulted in the production 
of those things, as Milton said ‘‘ which the world will not 
willingly let die.” There is nothing lives but workmanship which 
is the expression through the artist’s instincts. He did not care 
whether they chose the Sphinx or the works of Raphael, or the 
poems of Tennyson or Burns, the music of Wagner or the folk 
music of all countries. Whatever they described as the work of 
the nation, unless it was artistically expressed it had no real 
living power—no winging power for the future. Ifany of them 
should hit on a good epigram he believed it would be winged for 
future enjoyment. Jord John Russell said once in the House of 
Commons of a certain member (probably of the opposition), that 
he was “ conspicuous by his absence.’’ A happily coined phrase 
like that was invaluable ; they could not help but use it. It was 
happy in the artistic form of the idea they wanted to express. 
There were hundreds of similar instances. He once made quite 
a reputation by using an epigram made by another in saying 
after dinner when a dish was offered, ‘‘I take a Jittle because I can 
resist everything but temptation.” (Laughter). He trusted they 
were all familiar with the passage from Ruskin on the fourth 
page of the synopsis which had been distributed among them. 
In the actual workmanship of the Country you see the char- 
acter of the people in a much more wonderful way than in their 
literature. He remembered Thackeray saying what a value it 
would have been to him while studying Greek if he had studied 
it in Greece itself in the presence of the workmanship of the 
ancient Greeks who produced that wonderful literature. It would 
have been a real thing to him, who was a litterateur of the first 
rank himself. He could not but think that the Russians in their 
wonderful literature were revealing themselves as a nation. 
They had produced marvellous musicians; and there was the 
wonderful work of Tolstoy, perhaps the greatest man living 
—the most gifted man living, not only as a_ personality, 
but a genius. Some of his works like ‘War and Peace” 
are certainly in the front rank of modern productions. But 
there is even a more marvellous writer—probably not so well 
known as Tolstoy—named Tourguénief, who revealed the Russian 
people to themselves in a most astonishing way, He published a 
book about 1840, ‘Notes of a Spertsman.’’ He had a small estate, 
with half a score of serfs. He went about shooting, and in those 
notes of a sportsman he revealed the condition of the Russian 
people. The book was considered so dangerous by the Russian 
authorities of the time that he was condemned to remain on his 
own estate for ten years—a prisoner on his own estate. ‘That 
was because of his artistic power which revealed some of the 
