first beginnings of thought among nations whom we cannot even name;
the terrible empires of the ancient East; the free vigour and glory
of Greece; the heavy weight, the firm grasp of Rome; the fall of her
temporal Empire which spread so wide about the world all that good
and evil which men can never forget, and never cease to feel; the
clashing of East and West, South and North, about her rich and
fruitful daughter Byzantium; the rise, the dissensions, and the
waning of Islam; the wanderings of Scandinavia; the Crusades; the
foundation of the States of modern Europe; the struggles of free
thought with ancient dying system--with all these events and their
meaning is the history of popular art interwoven; with all this, I
say, the careful student of decoration as an historical industry
must be familiar. When I think of this, and the usefulness of all
this knowledge, at a time when history has become so earnest a study
amongst us as to have given us, as it were, a new sense: at a time
when we so long to know the reality of all that has happened, and
are to be put off no longer with the dull records of the battles and
intrigues of kings and scoundrels,--I say when I think of all this,
I hardly know how to say that this interweaving of the Decorative
Arts with the history of the past is of less importance than their
dealings with the life of the present: for should not these
memories also be a part of our daily life?

And now let me recapitulate a little before I go further, before we
begin to look into the condition of the arts at the present day.
These arts, I have said, are part of a great system invented for the
expression of a man's delight in beauty: all peoples and times have
used them; they have been the joy of free nations, and the solace of
oppressed nations; religion has used and elevated them, has abused
and degraded them; they are connected with all history, and are