way: the decoration of workmanship, what is it but the expression
of man's pleasure in successful labour? But what pleasure can there
be in BAD work, in unsuccessful labour; why should we decorate THAT?
and how can we bear to be always unsuccessful in our labour?

As greed of unfair gain, wanting to be paid for what we have not
earned, cumbers our path with this tangle of bad work, of sham work,
so the heaped-up money which this greed has brought us (for greed
will have its way, like all other strong passions), this money, I
say, gathered into heaps little and big, with all the false
distinction which so unhappily it yet commands amongst us, has
raised up against the arts a barrier of the love of luxury and show,
which is of all obvious hindrances the worst to overpass: the
highest and most cultivated classes are not free from the vulgarity
of it, the lower are not free from its pretence. I beg you to
remember both as a remedy against this, and as explaining exactly
what I mean, that nothing can be a work of art which is not useful;
that is to say, which does not minister to the body when well under
command of the mind, or which does not amuse, soothe, or elevate the
mind in a healthy state. What tons upon tons of unutterable rubbish
pretending to be works of art in some degree would this maxim clear
out of our London houses, if it were understood and acted upon! To
my mind it is only here and there (out of the kitchen) that you can
find in a well-to-do house things that are of any use at all: as a
rule all the decoration (so called) that has got there is there for
the sake of show, not because anybody likes it. I repeat, this
stupidity goes through all classes of society: the silk curtains in
my Lord's drawing-room are no more a matter of art to him than the
powder in his footman's hair; the kitchen in a country farmhouse is
most commonly a pleasant and homelike place, the parlour dreary and