day the hammer chinked on the anvil, and the chisel played about the
oak beam, and never without some beauty and invention being born of
it, and consequently some human happiness.

That last word brings me to the very kernel and heart of what I have
come here to say to you, and I pray you to think of it most
seriously--not as to my words, but as to a thought which is stirring
in the world, and will one day grow into something.

That thing which I understand by real art is the expression by man
of his pleasure in labour. I do not believe he can be happy in his
labour without expressing that happiness; and especially is this so
when he is at work at anything in which he specially excels. A most
kind gift is this of nature, since all men, nay, it seems all things
too, must labour; so that not only does the dog take pleasure in
hunting, and the horse in running, and the bird in flying, but so
natural does the idea seem to us, that we imagine to ourselves that
the earth and the very elements rejoice in doing their appointed
work; and the poets have told us of the spring meadows smiling, of
the exultation of the fire, of the countless laughter of the sea.

Nor until these latter days has man ever rejected this universal
gift, but always, when he has not been too much perplexed, too much
bound by disease or beaten down by trouble, has striven to make his
work at least happy. Pain he has too often found in his pleasure,
and weariness in his rest, to trust to these. What matter if his
happiness lie with what must be always with him--his work?

And, once more, shall we, who have gained so much, forego this gain,
the earliest, most natural gain of mankind? If we have to a great