A LECTURE ON THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE ARTISAN AND ARTIST.

BY CARDINAL WISEMAN.

[In the spring of 1852 an association was formed by the Catholics of Manchester and Salford, in England, to raise funds for the education of the poor. The committee, in aid of this purpose, invited Cardinal Wiseman to deliver an address upon some literary subject of general popular interest. The invitation was accepted, and the following admirable address, for a copy of which we are indebted to a friend, was delivered in the Corn Exchange, Manchester. We have thought that a more general diffusion of it would be acceptable to those who are interested in the establishment of schools of art in this country, and accordingly have given it a place in this report.-J. H.]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I ought certainly to commence my address to you by thanking you for the extremely kind manner in which you have been pleased to receive me; but I feel that I must not waste your time in mere expressions of a personal character, feeling rather that I shall have to tax your time and your attention to a considerable extent. I will, therefore, enter at once upon the proposed subject of my address, which has already been communicated to you by my old and excellent friend, the Bishop of Salford. And I am sure I need not say, for he already has well expressed it to you, that it is a topic which at the moment has engaged its full share of public attention, as drawing to itself the interest of all the educated classes, and it is in fact a topic connected with important questions, the solution of which may have to exert an important influence not only on our social but likewise on our moral

progress.

The topic on which I have to address you, then, is the CONNECTION

OR RELATION BETWEEN THE ARTS OF PRODUCTION AND THE ARTS OF DESIGN.

By the arts of production, I mean naturally those arts by which what is a raw material assumes a form, a shape, a new existence, adapted for some necessity or some use in the many wants of life. Such is pottery; such is carving in its various branches, whether applied to wood or to stone; such is the working of metals, whether of gold or silver or brass or iron; such is the production of textile matters, of objects of whatever sort and for whatever purpose; such is construction in its different branches, commencing with the smallest piece of furniture, and ascending to a great and majestic edifice. By the arts of design, I understand those which represent nature to us in any form, or which bring before us beauty, whether in form or in color.

Now, these arts ought, as every one agrees, to be in close harmony one with the other; but that harmony which I wish to establish between them must be an honorable union, an equal compact, a noble league.

There is not to be one the servant, and the other the master; each must be aware of the advantages which it can receive as well as those which it can confer. Thus the arts, for instance, of design, will have to give elegance of form, grace of outline, beauty of ornament, to that which is produced by the other class of arts; and they in their turn have to transmit and multiply and perpetuate the creations of the arts of design. Now, it is agreed on all hands that as yet this complete harmony does not exist; that we have far from arrived at that mutual application of the one class to the other which gives us a satisfactory result. It is unnecessary, I believe, to bring evidence of this. As we proceed, I trust that opportunities will present themselves of bringing before you authorities for that assertion. But I may say, at the very outset, that the report which is published by the department of practical art is almost based upon the acknowledgment that as yet we have not attained that application of the arts of design to the arts of production which we desire, and which is most desirable to the arts of production to obtain. It acknowledges the existence of a necessity for much more instruction than has yet been given. It allows that for several years-thirteen years, at least-of the existence of schools of design they have not been found fully to attain their purpose, and a new organization and a new system has now begun to be adopted. No one can appreciate, I trust, more than I am inclined to do myself, the advantages which must result from the multiplication of these schools of design as applied to manufactures, and other great improvements which they have already begun to confer, and will continue, no doubt, still more to bestow upon the industrial classes. I believe it most important to propagate to the utmost the love of science, the love of art. I believe it most useful to accustom every child to its first rudiments, its elementary states. I think, if we can make drawing a part of universal education, a great deal will be gained. But this, certainly, cannot be enough. I am willing to grant that we shall have a great improvement upon what we have produced in the form of art. I believe that we shall see better designers; men with better imaginations; men who understand the harmony and combination of colors better, and who can give to the artisans patterns which will greatly improve every department of our industry. But, I ask, is that sufficient? Will this bring art up to what we desire? This is the great question. This is the subject of which I am going to treat. It appears to me that there is a very simple mode of looking at it; and it is the one, consequently, which I shall adopt. It is a question partly of experience. It is a lesson much of which history can teach us; and I desire to bring before you such facts as seem to me to bear upon the question, and to enable us to come to a practical and satisfactory conclusion. I will endeavor to state the question under a very simple, but, perhaps it may appear, not a very practical form.

There is now a great desire to form, not only in the capital, but also in all great cities where industry prevails, museums, which should

contain all the most perfect specimens of art antiquity in every age has left us of beauty in design and elegance in form. We wish that our artisans should have frequently before them what may be considered not merely actual models to copy, but likewise such objects as may gradually impress their minds with feelings of taste. Now, I should like to have the construction, the forming, of such a museum. And, in describing it, I will confine myself entirely to one small department-that of classical art, classical antiquity-because I know, that, for a museum intended to be practical to the eyes of artisans, there is a far wider range of collection to be taken than that to which I will confine myself. Well, now I imagine to myself a hall at least as large as this, and of a more elegant and perfect architecture. I will suppose it to be formed itself upon classical models; and around it shall be ranged, not merely plaster casts, but real marble statues and busts collected from antiquity. I would range them round the throne so that each could be enjoyed at leisure by the student. There should be room for the draughtsman to take a copy from any side. In the center I would spread out a beautiful mosaic, such as we find in the museums, for instance, of Rome, a pavement in rich colors, representing some beautiful scene, which should be most carefully railed off, that it might not be worn or soiled by the profane tread of modern men. There should be cabinets in which there should be-but inclosed carefully with glass, so that there would be no danger of accidents-the finest specimens of the old Etruscan vases, of every size, of every shape, plain and colored, enriched with those beautiful drawings upon them which give them such rich characters, and at the same time such price; and on one side I would have collected for you some specimens of the choicest products of the excavations of Herculaneum. There should be bronze vessels of the most elegant form and the most exquisite carving, and there should be all sorts even of household utensils, such as are found there, of most beautiful shape and exquisite finish. On the walls I would have some of those paintings which have yet remained almost unharmed after being buried for so many hundred of years, and which retain their freshness, and would glow upon your walls, and clothe them with beauty, and at the same time with instruction. And then I would have a most choice cabinet, containing medals in gold and silver and bronze, of as great an extent as possible, but chiefly selected for the beauty of their workmanship; and engraved gems likewise, every one of which should, if possible, be a treasure. Now, if such a museum could be collected, you would say, I am sure, that so far as classical antiquity goes-classical art-you have everything that you could desire, and you have as noble, as splendid, as beautiful a collection of artistic objects as it is within the reach of modern wealth and influence to collect. In fact, you would say, if you could not make artists now by the study of these objects, it was a hopeless matter, because here was everything that antiquity has given us of the most beautiful.

Now, I am afraid that, while you have been following me in this

formation of an ideal museum, you have thought it required a great stretch of imagination to suppose it possible that such a collection could be made in any city of England. I will ask you, then, now to spread your wings a little more, and fly with me into even a more imaginary idea than this. Let us suppose that by some chance all these objects which we have collected were at some given period, in the first century of Christianity, collected together in an ancient Roman house; and let us suppose that the owner of the house suddenly appeared among us, and had a right to claim back all these beautiful works of art which we so highly prize, which we have taken so much trouble, and laid out so much money, to collect. Now, what does he do with them when he has got them back? What will he do with these statues which we have been copying and drawing and admiring so much? Pliny finds great fault, is very indignant with the people of his age, because he says they have begun to form galleries, pinacothecas; that such a thing was unknown before; that no real Roman should value a statue merely as a work of art, but that it was only as the statue of his ancestors that he ought to value them. And thus that Roman looks at them as nothing else. He takes them back; he puts the best of them, not in the center of a room where it may be admired; but to him it is a piece of household furniture, and he puts it with all its fellows into the niches from which they have been taken, and where they are, perhaps, in a very bad light. It is exceedingly probable that if the statues were not of his ancestors, he would, instead of allowing them to remain in the beautiful hall prepared for them, send them into his garden, into his villa, to stand out in the open air, and receive all the rain of heaven upon them. The mosaic which we have valued so much, and which is so wonderful a piece of work, he will put most probably into the parlor of his house to be trodden under foot by every slave that comes in and goes out. And now he looks about him at that wonderful collection of beautiful Etruscan vases which we have got together, and he recognizes them at once: "Take that to the kitchen; that is to hold oil:" "Take that to the scullery; that is for water:" "Take these plates and drinking-cups to the pantry; I shall want them for dinner." And those smaller, those beautiful vessels, which yet retain as they do the very scent of the rich odors which were kept in them, "Take them to the dressing-rooms; those are what we want on our toilet, This is a washing-basin which I have been accustomed to use. What have they been making of all these things, to put them under glass, and treat them as wonderful works of art." And, of those beautiful bronze vessels, some belong again to the kitchen, others belong to our furnished apartments; but every one of them is a mere household piece of furniture. And then he looks into the beautiful cabinet; and he sends those exquisite gems into his rooms, to be worn by his family, as ordinary rings. And your gold medals and silver medals and bronze medals he quietly puts into his purse; for, to him, they are common money. Now, then, here we have made a collection of magnificent productions

of art; and, in reality, these were all the fruits of the arts of production.

Now, what are we to say to this? We are to say that there was a period in Rome, and there were similar periods in other countries at different times, when there was no distinction between the arts of production and the art of design; but those very things, which to us now are objects of admiration as artistic work, were then merely things made and fashioned as we see them for the ordinary uses to which we adapt other things of perhaps similar substances, but of a very different form. For, in fact, if you had these vessels, you would not know what to do with them. We could not cook a dinner in them. We certainly could not adapt them to our common wants. But to the Romans they were the very objects which were used for those purposes; and although now, in reading the old writers, and trying to make out the dreadfully hard names by which all these different pieces of pottery are called, yet, learned and classical as all that may be, when we come to translate these highsounding Greeks names into English, we get very modest results-pipkins and basins and ewers and flagons, and such homely names as these. Now, where is the art there? Is it that these were designed, do you think, by some man of great reputation; and then that they were all carefully copied, exactly imitated, from his design? Oh, certainly nothing of the sort. The art that is in these beautiful things is a part of themselves; is bestowed upon them in their fabrication. You may take the Etruscan vase, and you may scratch away from it, if you please, every line which had been traced by the pencil of the embellisher upon it; and, after that, the seal of beautiful design, grace, and the elegance of true art are so stamped upon it, that, if you wish to remove them, you must smash the vase. It is inherent in it; it was created with it.

Then what I fancy is desired is, that we should bring art back to that same state in which the arts of design are so interwoven with the arts of production that the one cannot be separated from the other, but everything which is made is by a certain necessity made beautiful. And this can only be when we are able to fill the minds of our artisans with true principles, until really these have pervaded their souls, and until the true feeling of art is at their fingers'-ends. You will see, I think, from the example which I have given you, what is the principle at which I am aiming; which I wish to establish. It is this: That at any period in which there has been a really close union between the arts of production and the arts of design, this has resulted from the union in one person of the artist and the artisan.

Such now is the principle that I am going to develop; and in doing so I will distinguish between arts of production belonging to two distinct classes. There are those in which necessarily there is manipulation-the use of the hand, or of such implements as the hand directly employs; and there are those in which mechanical ingenuity is employed in the art of production. It is clear that these two must be treated distinctly; and I will begin with the first, which affords the greatest