bearing on this matter of purchase, than the keeping down of prices to
a rational standard. And that is, that you pay your prices into the
hands of living men, and do not pour them into coffins.
For observe that, as we arrange our payment of pictures at present, no
artist's work is worth half its proper value while he is alive. The
moment he dies, his pictures, if they are good, reach double their
former value; but, that rise of price represents simply a profit made by
the intelligent dealer or purchaser on his past purchases. So that the
real facts of the matter are, that the British public, spending a
certain sum annually in art, determines that, of every thousand it pays,
only five hundred shall go to the painter, or shall be at all concerned
in the production of art; and that the other five hundred shall be paid
merely as a testimonial to the intelligent dealer, who knew what to buy.
Now, testimonials are very pretty and proper things, within due limits;
but testimonial to the amount of a hundred per cent. on the total
expenditure is not good political economy. Do not, therefore, in
general, unless you see it to be necessary for its preservation, buy the
picture of a dead artist. If you fear that it may be exposed to contempt
or neglect, buy it; its price will then, probably, not be high: if you
want to put it into a public gallery, buy it; you are sure, then, that
you do not spend your money selfishly: or, if you loved the man's work
while he was alive, and bought it then, buy it also now, if you can see
no living work equal to it. But if you did not buy it while the man was
living, never buy it after he is dead: you are then doing no good to
him, and you are doing some shame to yourself. Look around you for
pictures that you really like, and in buying which you can help some
genius yet unperished--that is the best atonement you can make to the
one you have neglected--and give to the living and struggling painter at
once wages, and testimonial.
104. So far then of the motives which should induce us to keep down the
prices of modern art, and thus render it, as a private possession,
attainable by greater numbers of people than at present. But we should
strive to render it accessible to them in other ways also--chiefly by
the permanent decoration of public buildings; and it is in this field
that I think we may look for the profitable means of providing that
constant employment for young painters of which we were speaking last
evening.
The first and most important kind of public buildings which we are
always sure to want, are schools: and I would ask you to consider very
carefully, whether we may not wisely introduce some great changes in the
way of school decoration. Hitherto, as far as I know, it has either been
so difficult to give all the education we wanted to our lads, that we
have been obliged to do it, if at all, with cheap furniture and bare
walls; or else we have considered that cheap furniture and bare walls
are a proper part of the means of education; and supposed that boys
learned best when they sat on hard forms, and had nothing but blank
plaster about and above them whereupon to employ their spare attention;
also, that it was as well they should be accustomed to rough and ugly
conditions of things, partly by way of preparing them for the hardships
of life, and partly that there might be the least possible damage done
to floors and forms, in the event of their becoming, during the master's
absence, the fields or instruments of battle. All this is so far well
and necessary, as it relates to the training of country lads, and the
first training of boys in general. But there certainly comes a period in
the life of a well-educated youth, in which one of the principal
elements of his education is, or ought to be, to give him refinement of
habits; and not only to teach him the strong exercises of which his
frame is capable, but also to increase his bodily sensibility and
refinement, and show him such small matters as the way of handling
things properly, and treating them considerately.
105. Not only so; but I believe the notion of fixing the attention by
keeping the room empty, is a wholly mistaken one: I think it is just in
the emptiest room that the mind wanders most; for it gets restless, like
a bird, for want of a perch, and casts about for any possible means of
getting out and away. And even if it be fixed, by an effort, on the
business in hand, that business becomes itself repulsive, more than it
need be, by the vileness of its associations; and many a study appears
dull or painful to a boy, when it is pursued on a blotted deal desk,
under a wall with nothing on it but scratches and pegs, which would have
been pursued pleasantly enough in a curtained corner of his father's
library, or at the lattice window of his cottage. Now, my own belief is,
that the best study of all is the most beautiful; and that a quiet glade
of forest, or the nook of a lake shore, are worth all the schoolrooms in
Christendom, when once you are past the multiplication table; but be
that as it may, there is no question at all but that a time ought to
come in the life of a well-trained youth, when he can sit at a
writing-table without wanting to throw the inkstand at his neighbour;
and when also he will feel more capable of certain efforts of mind with
beautiful and refined forms about him than with ugly ones. When that
time comes, he ought to be advanced into the decorated schools; and this
advance ought to be one of the important and honourable epochs of his
life.
106. I have not time, however, to insist on the mere serviceableness to
our youth of refined architectural decoration, as such; for I want you
to consider the probable influence of the particular kind of decoration
which I wish you to get for them, namely, historical painting. You know
we have hitherto been in the habit of conveying all our historical
knowledge, such as it is, by the ear only, never by the eye; all our
notion of things being ostensibly derived from verbal description, not
from sight. Now, I have no doubt that, as we grow gradually wiser--and
we are doing so every day--we shall discover at last that the eye is a
nobler organ than the ear; and that through the eye we must, in reality,
obtain, or put into form, nearly all the useful information we are to
have about this world. Even as the matter stands, you will find that the
knowledge which a boy is supposed to receive from verbal description is
only available to him so far as in any underhand way he gets a sight of
the thing you are talking about. I remember well that, for many years of
my life, the only notion I had of the look of a Greek knight was
complicated between recollection of a small engraving in my pocket
Pope's Homer, and reverent study of the Horse Guards. And though I
believe that most boys collect their ideas from more varied sources and
arrange them more carefully than I did; still, whatever sources they
seek must always be ocular: if they are clever boys, they will go and
look at the Greek vases and sculptures in the British Museum, and at the
weapons in our armouries--they will see what real armour is like in
lustre, and what Greek armour was like in form, and so put a fairly true
image together, but still not, in ordinary cases, a very living or
interesting one.
107. Now, the use of your decorative painting would be, in myriads of
ways, to animate their history for them, and to put the living aspect of
past things before their eyes as faithfully as intelligent invention
can; so that the master shall have nothing to do but once to point to
the schoolroom walls, and for ever afterwards the meaning of any word
would be fixed in a boy's mind in the best possible way. Is it a
question of classical dress--what a tunic was like, or a chlamys, or a
peplus? At this day, you have to point to some vile woodcut, in the
middle of a dictionary page, representing the thing hung upon a stick;
but then, you would point to a hundred figures, wearing the actual
dress, in its fiery colours, in all actions of various stateliness or
strength; you would understand at once how it fell round the people's
limbs as they stood, how it drifted from their shoulders as they went,
how it veiled their faces as they wept, how it covered their heads in
the day of battle. _Now_, if you want to see what a weapon is like, you
refer, in like manner, to a numbered page, in which there are
spear-heads in rows, and sword-hilts in symmetrical groups; and
gradually the boy gets a dim mathematical notion how one scimitar is
hooked to the right and another to the left, and one javelin has a knob
to it and another none: while one glance at your good picture would show
him,--and the first rainy afternoon in the schoolroom would for ever fix
in his mind,--the look of the sword and spear as they fell or flew; and
how they pierced, or bent, or shattered--how men wielded them, and how
men died by them.
108. But far more than all this, is it a question not of clothes or
weapons, but of men? how can we sufficiently estimate the effect on the
mind of a noble youth, at the time when the world opens to him, of
having faithful and touching representations put before him of the acts
and presences of great men--how many a resolution, which would alter and
exalt the whole course of his after-life, might be formed, when in some
dreamy twilight he met, through his own tears, the fixed eyes of those
shadows of the great dead, unescapable and calm, piercing to his soul;
or fancied that their lips moved in dread reproof or soundless
exhortation? And if but for one out of many this were true--if yet, in a
few, you could be sure that such influence had indeed changed their
thoughts and destinies, and turned the eager and reckless youth, who
would have cast away his energies on the race-horse or the
gambling-table, to that noble life-race, that holy life-hazard, which
should win all glory to himself and all good to his country,--would not
that, to some purpose, be "political economy of art"?
109. And observe, there could be no monotony, no exhaustibleness, in the
scenes required to be thus portrayed. Even if there were, and you
wanted for every school in the kingdom, one death of Leonidas; one
battle of Marathon; one death of Cleobis and Bito; there need not
therefore be more monotony in your art than there was in the repetition
of a given cycle of subjects by the religious painters of Italy. But we
ought not to admit a cycle at all. For though we had as many great
schools as we have great cities (one day I hope we _shall_ have),
centuries of painting would not exhaust, in all the number of them, the
noble and pathetic subjects which might be chosen from the history of
even one noble nation. But, beside this, you will not, in a little
while, limit your youths' studies to so narrow fields as you do now.
There will come a time--I am sure of it--when it will be found that the
same practical results, both in mental discipline and in political
philosophy, are to be attained by the accurate study of mediæval and
modern as of ancient history; and that the facts of mediæval and modern
history are, on the whole, the most important to us. And among these
noble groups of constellated schools which I foresee arising in our
England, I foresee also that there will be divided fields of thought;
and that while each will give its scholars a great general idea of the
world's history, such as all men should possess--each will also take
upon itself, as its own special duty, the closer study of the course of
events in some given place or time. It will review the rest of history,
but it will exhaust its own special field of it; and found its moral and
political teaching on the most perfect possible analysis of the results
of human conduct in one place, and at one epoch. And then, the galleries
of that school will be painted with the historical scenes belonging to
the age which it has chosen for its special study.
110. So far, then, of art as you may apply it to that great series of
public buildings which you devote to the education of youth. The next
large class of public buildings in which we should introduce it, is one
which I think a few years more of national progress will render more
serviceable to us than they have been lately. I mean, buildings for the
meetings of guilds of trades.
And here, for the last time, I must again interrupt the course of our
chief inquiry, in order to state one other principle of political
economy, which is perfectly simple and indisputable; but which,
nevertheless, we continually get into commercial embarrassments for want
of understanding; and not only so, but suffer much hindrance in our
commercial discoveries, because many of our business men do not
practically admit it.
Supposing half a dozen or a dozen men were cast ashore from a wreck on
an uninhabited island, and left to their own resources, one of course,
according to his capacity, would be set to one business and one to
another; the strongest to dig and cut wood, and to build huts for the
rest: the most dexterous to make shoes out of bark and coats out of
skins; the best educated to look for iron or lead in the rocks, and to
plan the channels for the irrigation of the fields. But though their
labours were thus naturally severed, that small group of shipwrecked men
would understand well enough that the speediest progress was to be made
by helping each other,--not by opposing each other: and they would know
that this help could only be properly given so long as they were frank
and open in their relations, and the difficulties which each lay under
properly explained to the rest. So that any appearance of secrecy or
separateness in the actions of any of them would instantly, and justly,
be looked upon with suspicion by the rest, as the sign of some selfish
or foolish proceeding on the part of the individual. If, for instance,
the scientific man were found to have gone out at night, unknown to the
rest, to alter the sluices, the others would think, and in all
probability rightly think, that he wanted to get the best supply of
water to his own field; and if the shoemaker refused to show them where
the bark grew which he made the sandals of, they would naturally think,
and in all probability rightly think, that he didn't want them to see
how much there was of it, and that he meant to ask from them more corn
and potatoes in exchange for his sandals than the trouble of making them
deserved. And thus, although each man would have a portion of time to
himself in which he was allowed to do what he chose without let or
inquiry,--so long as he was working in that particular business which he
had undertaken for the common benefit, any secrecy on his part would be
immediately supposed to mean mischief; and would require to be accounted
for, or put an end to: and this all the more because whatever the work
might be, certainly there would be difficulties about it which, when
once they were well explained, might be more or less done away with by
the help of the rest; so that assuredly every one of them would advance
with his labour not only more happily, but more profitably and quickly,
by having no secrets, and by frankly bestowing, and frankly receiving,
such help as lay in his way to get or to give.
111. And, just as the best and richest result of wealth and happiness to
the whole of them would follow on their perseverance in such a system of
frank communication and of helpful labour;--so precisely the worst and
poorest result would be obtained by a system of secrecy and of enmity;
and each man's happiness and wealth would assuredly be diminished in
proportion to the degree in which jealousy and concealment became their
social and economical principles. It would not, in the long run, bring
good, but only evil, to the man of science, if, instead of telling
openly where he had found good iron, he carefully concealed every new
bed of it, that he might ask, in exchange for the rare ploughshare, more
corn from the farmer, or, in exchange for the rude needle, more labour
from the sempstress: and it would not ultimately bring good, but only
evil, to the farmers, if they sought to burn each other's cornstacks,
that they might raise the value of their grain, or if the sempstresses
tried to break each other's needles, that each might get all the
stitching to herself.
112. Now, these laws of human action are precisely as authoritative in
their application to the conduct of a million of men, as to that of six
or twelve. All enmity, jealousy, opposition, and secrecy are wholly, and
in all circumstances, destructive in their nature--not productive; and
all kindness, fellowship, and communicativeness are invariably
productive in their operation,--not destructive; and the evil principles
of opposition and exclusiveness are not rendered less fatal, but more
fatal, by their acceptance among large masses of men; more fatal, I say,
exactly in proportion as their influence is more secret. For though the
opposition does always its own simple, necessary, direct quantity of
harm, and withdraws always its own simple, necessary, measurable
quantity of wealth from the sum possessed by the community, yet, in
proportion to the size of the community, it does another and more
refined mischief than this, by concealing its own fatality under aspects
of mercantile complication and expediency, and giving rise to multitudes
of false theories based on a mean belief in narrow and immediate
appearances of good done here and there by things which have the
universal and everlasting nature of evil. So that the time and powers of
the nation are wasted, not only in wretched struggling against each
other, but in vain complaints, and groundless discouragements, and empty
investigations, and useless experiments in laws, and elections, and
inventions; with hope always to pull wisdom through some new-shaped slit
in a ballot-box, and to drag prosperity down out of the clouds along
some new knot of electric wire; while all the while Wisdom stands
calling at the corners of the streets, and the blessing of Heaven waits
ready to rain down upon us, deeper than the rivers and broader than the
dew, if only we will obey the first plain principles of humanity, and
the first plain precepts of the skies: "Execute true judgment, and show
mercy and compassion, every man to his brother; and let none of you
imagine evil against his brother in your heart."[14]
[Note 14: It would be well if, instead of preaching continually
about the doctrine of faith and good works, our clergymen would simply
explain to their people a little what good works mean. There is not a
chapter in all the book we profess to believe, more specially and
directly written for England than the second of Habakkuk, and I never in
all my life heard one of its practical texts preached from. I suppose
the clergymen are all afraid, and know their flocks, while they will sit
quite politely to hear syllogisms out of the epistle to the Romans,
would get restive directly if they ever pressed a practical text home to
them. But we should have no mercantile catastrophes, and no distressful
pauperism, if we only read often, and took to heart, those plain
words:--"Yea, also, because he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home,
who enlargeth his desire as hell, and cannot be satisfied,--Shall not
all these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against
him, and say, 'Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his: and to
him that _ladeth himself with thick clay_'?" (What a glorious history in
one metaphor, of the life of a man greedy of fortune!) "Woe to him that
coveteth an evil covetousness that he may set his nest on high. Woe to
him that buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a city by
iniquity. Behold, is it not of the Lord of Hosts that the people shall
labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very
vanity?"
The Americans, who have been sending out ships with sham bolt-heads on
their timbers, and only half their bolts, may meditate on that "buildeth
a town with blood."]
113. Therefore, I believe most firmly, that as the laws of national
prosperity get familiar to us, we shall more and more cast our toil into
social and communicative systems; and that one of the first means of our
doing so, will be the re-establishing guilds of every important trade in
a vital, not formal, condition;--that there will be a great council or
government house for the members of every trade, built in whatever town
of the kingdom occupies itself principally in such trade, with minor
council-halls in other cities; and to each council-hall, officers
attached, whose first business may be to examine into the circumstances
of every operative, in that trade, who chooses to report himself to them
when out of work, and to set him to work, if he is indeed able and
willing, at a fixed rate of wages, determined at regular periods in the
council-meetings; and whose next duty may be to bring reports before the
council of all improvements made in the business, and means of its
extension: not allowing private patents of any kind, but making all
improvements available to every member of the guild, only allotting,
after successful trial of them, a certain reward to the inventors.
114. For these, and many other such purposes, such halls will be again,
I trust, fully established, and then, in the paintings and decorations
of them, especial effort ought to be made to express the worthiness and
honourableness of the trade for whose members they are founded. For I
believe one of the worst symptoms of modern society to be, its notion of
great inferiority, and ungentlemanliness, as necessarily belonging to
the character of a tradesman. I believe tradesmen may be, ought to
be--often are, more gentlemen than idle and useless people: and I
believe that art may do noble work by recording in the hall of each
trade, the services which men belonging to that trade have done for
their country, both preserving the portraits, and recording the
important incidents in the lives, of those who have made great advances
in commerce and civilization. I cannot follow out this subject--it
branches too far, and in too many directions; besides, I have no doubt
you will at once see and accept the truth of the main principle, and be
able to think it out for yourselves. I would fain also have said
something of what might be done, in the same manner, for almshouses and
hospitals, and for what, as I shall try to explain in notes to this
lecture, we may hope to see, some day, established with a different
meaning in their name than that they now bear--work-houses; but I have
detained you too long already, and cannot permit myself to trespass
further on your patience except only to recapitulate, in closing, the
simple principles respecting wealth which we have gathered during the
course of our inquiry; principles which are nothing more than the
literal and practical acceptance of the saying which is in all good
men's mouths--namely, that they are stewards or ministers of whatever
talents are entrusted to them.
115. Only, is it not a strange thing, that while we more or less accept
the meaning of that saying, so long as it is considered metaphorical, we
never accept its meaning in its own terms? You know the lesson is given
us under the form of a story about money. Money was given to the
servants to make use of: the unprofitable servant dug in the earth, and
hid his lord's money. Well, we, in our political and spiritual
application of this, say, that of course money doesn't mean money: it
means wit, it means intellect, it means influence in high quarters, it
means everything in the world except itself. And do not you see what a
pretty and pleasant come-off there is for most of us, in this spiritual
application? Of course, if we had wit, we would use it for the good of
our fellow-creatures. But we haven't wit. Of course, if we had influence
with the bishops, we would use it for the good of the Church; but we
haven't any influence with the bishops. Of course, if we had political
power, we would use it for the good of the nation; but we have no
political power; we have no talents entrusted to us of any sort or kind.
It is true we have a little money, but the parable can't possibly mean
anything so vulgar as money; our money's our own.