255 



beauty- Indeed, the term is often used in a more limited sense, as applying 

 only to works which are produced solely for their beauty — such as pictures, 

 statues, and so on ; which are therefore called, par excellence, works of Art. 

 But it is clear that the term is capable of a much wider application ; because, 

 if we make anything for a special use, if it be only a toasting foi-k, we can 

 conceive a vast variety of forms in which it may be moulded, all of which 

 may equally subserve the same end, but which may differ widely from one 

 another in ornament and in beauty. In so far as the thing is a machine 

 for doing a particular work, it is beyond the cognizance of Art • but in so far 

 as it is more or less beautiful, it is a work of Art. 



Hence it is, that not only objects which are made solely for creating 

 pleasure, such as pictures and statues, but things which are in the first instance 

 designed for physical utility, are equally works of Art. Thus our churches, 

 our houses, our chairs and tables, our fire-irons and our clothes, our carriages 

 and our crockery, all bear witness, not only to the skill of the workman, but 

 to the inventive fancy of the artist ; and the graceful curvature of a chignon 

 has no more claim to the dignity of Art than the delicate colouring of a 

 tobacco-pipe ; though the one objeat is designed to enhance the beauty of 

 women, the other the comfort of men ; nor does it alter the result that the 

 former as signally fails, as the latter succeeds in its mission. 



In short, there is nothing upon which man bestows labour, which does 

 not come more or less within the realm of Art. Hence it is that the study 

 of Art is co-ordinate with the study of mankind. It is not only in monuments 

 and pictures and statues, but in every specimen of handicraft, that we read 

 the history of the people by and for whom they were made. A people thus 

 unconsciously writes its own history in the daily works of its hands. For 

 by these records we learn not only what its workmen and artists could do, but 

 what the people for whom they worked used to admire. The artist not only 

 acts upon, but is reacted upon by the age and race in which he lives. When 

 he aims at producing the beautiful, he is influenced by the consciousness of 

 what his patrons, the public, will accept or recognise as beautiful. It is the 

 same with the poet. In his creations, the poet unconsciously assimilates the 

 standard of his readers. If he describes a hero, he describes a character such 

 as his age and race recognises as heroic. Thus Homer has not only handed 

 down to us poems which have for centuries commanded the interest and 

 admiration of mankind, but he has preserved to us for ever the great historic 

 fact, what was the true type of a hero in the mind of an ancient Greek. 

 And thus, too, the legends of King Arthur's table teach us what was regarded 

 for centuries in England as the highest standard and model of chivalry. So 

 it is in Art. From the works of past ages, we learn what sort of thing 

 it was which a people admired at the time those works were produced. And 

 it is owing to this sympathy between the artist and his race and age, that 

 we trace a distinctive character in the Art of the different nations of antiquity, 

 which can never be mistaken for one another. Thus the Assyrian, the 

 Egyptian, the Greek, the Roman, the Saxon, the Byzantine, the Moorish, and 

 so on, all present peculiar characteristics of style and design and workmanship, 

 which are easily recognised. And there is, moreover, a sort of relation, 

 which it is far easier to appreciate than to describe in language, between the 

 productions of the artist and those of the poet and the historian of the same 

 age and people. Perhaps the most striking instance of this is that presented 

 by the Assyrian sculptures discovered by Mr. Layard, and now in the British 

 Museum. Often have I been powerfully moved when gazing on those strange 

 monuments, made, as they are, of the most perishable material, and yet almost 

 miraculously preserved for us for more than two thousand years, by being 

 buried in the warm and dry sand of the desert — often have I thought that 



