160 Sir Robert Kane on the 
gether with the older and more established orders of Uni- 
versity degrees. 
There is still another means of industrial education shady ) 
in some degree existing among us, and which, although not 
special to this country, like the institutions of the National 
Schools and Queen’s University, but only here as a part of 
the general arrangements for the United Kingdom, is yet so 
fully in the spirit of our local ideas, and so much in harmony 
with our general tastes and tendencies, that it should promise 
when well organised, to yield the most abundant and most 
profitable fruit. We refer to the means of education in in- 
dustrial art—in design and decoration, in architecture, and 
finally, in all that range of subjects which extend from the 
purely intellectual conceptions of ideal art to the merely utili- 
tarian construction of material. Few would be disposed to 
question the general diffusion among our people of an appre- 
ciation of artistic propriety—of taste in disposition of forms, 
and arrangement of colours, which is not so generally found 
in the sister kingdom; and we have every hope that, by 
means of the Schools of Design already in action, and by 
such further development in that branch as may be found 
expedient, our national capabilities may be rendered fully 
available for advancement in the various departments of in- 
dustry, in which a large proportion of the value of the pro- 
duct depends upon the artistic excellence of its design, in 
construction or decoration, in form or colour. And if we run 
our eye over any catalogue of industrial objects, we shall find 
that, by this one department of education alone, a means of 
honourable and remunerative employment of a very high cha- 
racter would be opened to our artizan and middle ean to 
an almost unlimited extent. 
In addition to those means of instruction which, extending 
through the country at large, and to be regarded, although 
collaterally, of great value for industrial objects, are so prin- 
cipally by their action on general education, and by, there- 
fore, preparing the soil for more special and deeper cultiva- 
tion, we have in the metropolis of Ireland also institutions 
which have borne excellent fruit, and have exercised no 
slight influence on the industrial position to which Ireland 
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