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adaptation of every object to its proper end. Mr. Gladstone 

 says : 



" His most signal and characteristic merit lay, as I have 

 said, in the firmness and fulness of his perception of the true 

 law of what we term 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 substitute the secondary for the 

 primary end, but recognises as part of the business the study 

 to harmonise the two. To have a strong grasp of this prin- 

 ciple, 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 excel- 

 lence, 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 come when she shall be as eminent in taste as she 

 is in economy of production, my belief is that the result will ' 

 probably be due to no other single man in so great a degree* 

 as to Wedgwood. This part of the subject, however, deserves 

 a somewhat fuller consideration. There are three regions 

 given to man for the exercise of his faculties in the produc- 

 tion of objects, or the performance of acts, conducive to 

 civilisation and to the ordinary uses of life. Of these, one 

 is the homely sphere of simple utility. What is done, is 

 done for some purpose of absolute necessity, or of immediate 

 and passing use. What is produced, is produced with an 

 almost exclusive regard to its value in exchange, to the market 

 of the place and day. A dustman, for example, cannot be 



