nowhere;--or, let us rather say, to beginning again.

As to the kind of drawing that should be taught to men engaged in
ornamental work, there is only ONE BEST way of teaching drawing, and
that is teaching the scholar to draw the human figure: both because
the lines of a man's body are much more subtle than anything else,
and because you can more surely be found out and set right if you go
wrong. I do think that such teaching as this, given to all people
who care for it, would help the revival of the arts very much: the
habit of discriminating between right and wrong, the sense of
pleasure in drawing a good line, would really, I think, be education
in the due sense of the word for all such people as had the germs of
invention in them; yet as aforesaid, in this age of the world it
would be mere affectation to pretend to shut one's eyes to the art
of past ages: that also we must study. If other circumstances,
social and economical, do not stand in our way, that is to say, if
the world is not too busy to allow us to have Decorative Arts at
all, these two are the DIRECT means by which we shall get them; that
is, general cultivation of the powers of the mind, general
cultivation of the powers of the eye and hand.

Perhaps that seems to you very commonplace advice and a very
roundabout road; nevertheless 'tis a certain one, if by any road you
desire to come to the new art, which is my subject to-night: if you
do not, and if those germs of invention, which, as I said just now,
are no doubt still common enough among men, are left neglected and
undeveloped, the laws of Nature will assert themselves in this as in
other matters, and the faculty of design itself will gradually fade
from the race of man. Sirs, shall we approach nearer to perfection
by casting away so large a part of that intelligence which makes us