Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXVII NOW --AND AFTER Above all, a nation cannot last as a money-making mob: --it cannot with impunity, --it cannot with existence, --go on despising literature, despising science, despising art, despising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on Pence. Do you think these are harsh or wild words? Have patience with me but a little longer. I will prove them to you, clause by clause. "Sesame and Lilies." WHAT Ruskin wrote in 1871, in relation to that epoch, may be applied with equal if not acuter force to this. Indeed, some of his remarks (if extended quotation came within our province) are quite prophetic in their extreme modernity. "That is our real idea of 'Free Trade, '" he says; "'all the trade to myself You now find that by 'competition' other people can manage to sell something as well as you--and now we call for Protection again. Wretches!" It would be foolish to estimate the present standing and future prospects of the potting industry from the published statements of modern Protectionists; as, if we did, we must admit it to be in a very bad way, merely as an industry. Neither Protectionist nor Free Trader claim that English ceramics are artistic. And the spokesmen and writers of one of these sections claim that some of our rivals' productions, notably the Germans, are artistic. The claim has no solid foundation in fact. The exact artistic level of ordinary English (and especially Staffordshire) crockery may be easily determined by the "man in the street," if he will take the trouble to compare the average crockery shop with the average draper's, silversmith's, paper-hanger's, bookseller's, or even ironmonger's. As a mere trade the artistic level of the potting "trade" in England cannot be placed high, even...