the advance of western conquest and commerce--fast, and every day
faster. While we are met here in Birmingham to further the spread
of education in art, Englishmen in India are, in their short-
sightedness, actively destroying the very sources of that education-
-jewellery, metal-work, pottery, calico-printing, brocade-weaving,
carpet-making--all the famous and historical arts of the great
peninsula have been for long treated as matters of no importance, to
be thrust aside for the advantage of any paltry scrap of so-called
commerce; and matters are now speedily coming to an end there. I
daresay some of you saw the presents which the native Princes gave
to the Prince of Wales on the occasion of his progress through
India. I did myself, I will not say with great disappointment, for
I guessed what they would be like, but with great grief, since there
was scarce here and there a piece of goods among these costly gifts,
things given as great treasures, which faintly upheld the ancient
fame of the cradle of the industrial arts. Nay, in some cases, it
would have been laughable, if it had not been so sad, to see the
piteous simplicity with which the conquered race had copied the
blank vulgarity of their lords. And this deterioration we are now,
as I have said, actively engaged in forwarding. I have read a
little book, {3} a handbook to the Indian Court of last year's Paris
Exhibition, which takes the occasion of noting the state of
manufactures in India one by one. 'Art manufactures,' you would
call them; but, indeed, all manufactures are, or were, 'art
manufactures' in India. Dr. Birdwood, the author of this book, is
of great experience in Indian life, a man of science, and a lover of
the arts. His story, by no means a new one to me, or others
interested in the East and its labour, is a sad one indeed. The
conquered races in their hopelessness are everywhere giving up the
genuine practice of their own arts, which we know ourselves, as we