have indeed loudly proclaimed, are founded on the truest and most
natural principles. The often-praised perfection of these arts is
the blossom of many ages of labour and change, but the conquered
races are casting it aside as a thing of no value, so that they may
conform themselves to the inferior art, or rather the lack of art,
of their conquerors. In some parts of the country the genuine arts
are quite destroyed; in many others nearly so; in all they have more
or less begun to sicken. So much so is this the case, that now for
some time the Government has been furthering this deterioration. As
for example, no doubt with the best intentions, and certainly in
full sympathy with the general English public, both at home and in
India, the Government is now manufacturing cheap Indian carpets in
the Indian gaols. I do not say that it is a bad thing to turn out
real work, or works of art, in gaols; on the contrary, I think it
good if it be properly managed. But in this case, the Government,
being, as I said, in full sympathy with the English public, has
determined that it will make its wares cheap, whether it make them
nasty or not. Cheap and nasty they are, I assure you; but, though
they are the worst of their kind, they would not be made thus, if
everything did not tend the same way. And it is the same everywhere
and with all Indian manufactures, till it has come to this--that
these poor people have all but lost the one distinction, the one
glory that conquest had left them. Their famous wares, so praised
by those who thirty years ago began to attempt the restoration of
popular art amongst ourselves, are no longer to be bought at
reasonable prices in the common market, but must be sought for and
treasured as precious relics for the museums we have founded for our
art education. In short, their art is dead, and the commerce of
modern civilisation has slain it.