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Page 30
And among those evils, I do, and must always, believe will fall that
one which last year I told you that I accounted the greatest of all
evils, the heaviest of all slaveries; that evil of the greater part
of the population being engaged for by far the most part of their
lives in work, which at the best cannot interest them, or develop
their best faculties, and at the worst (and that is the commonest,
too) is mere unmitigated slavish toil, only to be wrung out of them
by the sternest compulsion, a toil which they shirk all they can--
small blame to them. And this toil degrades them into less than
men: and they will some day come to know it, and cry out to be made
men again, and art only can do it, and redeem them from this
slavery; and I say once more that this is her highest and most
glorious end and aim; and it is in her struggle to attain to it that
she will most surely purify herself, and quicken her own aspirations
towards perfection.
But we--in the meantime we must not sit waiting for obvious signs of
these later and glorious days to show themselves on earth, and in
the heavens, but rather turn to the commonplace, and maybe often
dull work of fitting ourselves in detail to take part in them if we
should live to see one of them; or in doing our best to make the
path smooth for their coming, if we are to die before they are here.
What, therefore, can we do, to guard traditions of time past that we
may not one day have to begin anew from the beginning with none to
teach us? What are we to do, that we may take heed to, and spread
the decencies of life, so that at the least we may have a field
where it will be possible for art to grow when men begin to long for
it: what finally can we do, each of us, to cherish some germ of
art, so that it may meet with others, and spread and grow little by
little into the thing that we need?
Now I cannot pretend to think that the first of these duties is a
matter of indifference to you, after my experience of the
enthusiastic meeting that I had the honour of addressing here last
autumn on the subject of the (so called) restoration of St. Mark's
at Venice; you thought, and most justly thought, it seems to me,
that the subject was of such moment to art in general, that it was a
simple and obvious thing for men who were anxious on the matter to
address themselves to those who had the decision of it in their
hands; even though the former were called Englishmen, and the latter
Italians; for you felt that the name of lovers of art would cover
those differences: if you had any misgivings, you remembered that
there was but one such building in the world, and that it was worth
while risking a breach of etiquette, if any words of ours could do
anything towards saving it; well, the Italians were, some of them,
very naturally, though surely unreasonably, irritated, for a time,
and in some of their prints they bade us look at home; that was no
argument in favour of the wisdom of wantonly rebuilding St. Mark's
facade: but certainly those of us who have not yet looked at home
in this matter had better do so speedily, late and over late though
it be: for though we have no golden-pictured interiors like St.
Mark's Church at home, we still have many buildings which are both
works of ancient art and monuments of history: and just think what
is happening to them, and note, since we profess to recognise their
value, how helpless art is in the Century of Commerce!
In the first place, many and many a beautiful and ancient building
is being destroyed all over civilised Europe as well as in England,
because it is supposed to interfere with the convenience of the
citizens, while a little forethought might save it without trenching
on that convenience; {6} but even apart from that, I say that if we
are not prepared to put up with a little inconvenience in our
lifetimes for the sake of preserving a monument of art which will
elevate and educate, not only ourselves, but our sons, and our sons'
sons, it is vain and idle of us to talk about art--or education
either. Brutality must be bred of such brutality.
The same thing may be said about enlarging, or otherwise altering
for convenience' sake, old buildings still in use for something like
their original purposes: in almost all such cases it is really
nothing more than a question of a little money for a new site: and
then a new building can be built exactly fitted for the uses it is
needed for, with such art about it as our own days can furnish;
while the old monument is left to tell its tale of change and
progress, to hold out example and warning to us in the practice of
the arts: and thus the convenience of the public, the progress of
modern art, and the cause of education, are all furthered at once at
the cost of a little money.
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