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esteemed so highly as they deserved. The natural sciences were 
followed by a few devotees and amateurs, but there was no 
general conception prevalent in society of the enormous import- 
ance of science to a highly civilized community or of the power 
which it was very soon destined to exercise over the thoughts and 
opinions of mankind on all sorts of important subjects. The 
ideas about art were still farther from what we now know to be 
the truth. Art was looked upon as a harmless but trifling and 
rather feminine amusement or else as a degrading profession. 
There was no conception of art as an important means of national 
and individual culture. Even at the present day, it is only the 
more intelligent people in any class who have this conception of 
art. It is generally, but surely, extending itself, and the time will 
surely come when people will wonder how they could ever have shut 
their eyes solong. You have established a Literary and Scientific 
Club in Burnley, but the fine arts do not seem to be especially 
included amongst the subjects of your attention. You have 
followed in this, the natural order of things. Literature is the first 
culture, then science of some kind is added, and finally come the 
fine arts. It is a safe prediction that if Burnley goes on prosper- 
ing either your own club will include the fine arts amongst the 
objects of its particular solicitude, or else there will be a separate 
club for them, like the fine arts clubs which are now springing 
up in London and the largest towns. Industry and manufac- 
tures lead to the fine arts in a curiously inevitable way. See 
how it comes about in a place like Manchester. Men produce 
earnestly and laboriously for many years in the purely industrial 
way, and this plodding industry seems to waken in them a 
curiosity about finer and higher kinds of work which leads them 
ultimately into the region of pure art. All the noblest fine arts 
have been gradually developed out of simple handicrafts, 
Sculpture comes from masonry, painting from house-painting, 
engraving from the work of the silversmith, and great artists in 
old times usually began by being quite simple workmen. This 
humble origin of the fine arts does not prevent them in their full 
development from expressing the very highest conceptions of 
human intellect and genius, but it must always keep them related 
in a more or less distant way to many of the commoner industries. 
‘For my part, I like this relationship. It is good for the mental 
health of a man to have to use his hands and deal with matter 
even when expressing the highest conceptions of his mind, for 
however unreliable talent or genius may be, the laws of matter 
are always reliable, and give a man something to depend upon. 
Now in an industrial district like the manufacturing districts all 
the handicrafts are kept up to a very high state of perfection, and 
eyen continually iMproved by advancing experience. It is 
therefore simply ineVitable that the inhabitants of a busy centre 
