house, the counting-house and the drill-sergeant, that she is too
busy, and will for the present do nothing. Yet there are matters
which I should have thought easy for her; say for example teaching
Manchester how to consume its own smoke, or Leeds how to get rid of
its superfluous black dye without turning it into the river, which
would be as much worth her attention as the production of the
heaviest of heavy black silks, or the biggest of useless guns.
Anyhow, however it be done, unless people care about carrying on
their business without making the world hideous, how can they care
about Art? I know it will cost much both of time and money to
better these things even a little; but I do not see how these can be
better spent than in making life cheerful and honourable for others
and for ourselves; and the gain of good life to the country at large
that would result from men seriously setting about the bettering of
the decency of our big towns would be priceless, even if nothing
specially good befell the arts in consequence: I do not know that
it would; but I should begin to think matters hopeful if men turned
their attention to such things, and I repeat that, unless they do
so, we can scarcely even begin with any hope our endeavours for the
bettering of the arts.

Unless something or other is done to give all men some pleasure for
the eyes and rest for the mind in the aspect of their own and their
neighbours' houses, until the contrast is less disgraceful between
the fields where beasts live and the streets where men live, I
suppose that the practice of the arts must be mainly kept in the
hands of a few highly cultivated men, who can go often to beautiful
places, whose education enables them, in the contemplation of the
past glories of the world, to shut out from their view the everyday
squalors that the most of men move in. Sirs, I believe that art has