noble imaginative work would be the surest seed and preparation. I
do not mean merely as regards that direct literary expression of
art by which, from the little red-and-black cruse of oil or wine, a
Greek boy could learn of the lionlike splendour of Achilles, of the
strength of Hector and the beauty of Paris and the wonder of Helen,
long before he stood and listened in crowded market-place or in
theatre of marble; or by which an Italian child of the fifteenth
century could know of the chastity of Lucrece and the death of
Camilla from carven doorway and from painted chest. For the good
we get from art is not what we learn from it; it is what we become
through it. Its real influence will be in giving the mind that
enthusiasm which is the secret of Hellenism, accustoming it to
demand from art all that art can do in rearranging the facts of
common life for us - whether it be by giving the most spiritual
interpretation of one's own moments of highest passion or the most
sensuous expression of those thoughts that are the farthest removed
from sense; in accustoming it to love the things of the imagination
for their own sake, and to desire beauty and grace in all things.
For he who does not love art in all things does not love it at all,
and he who does not need art in all things does not need it at all.

I will not dwell here on what I am sure has delighted you all in
our great Gothic cathedrals. I mean how the artist of that time,
handicraftsman himself in stone or glass, found the best motives
for his art, always ready for his hand and always beautiful, in the
daily work of the artificers he saw around him - as in those lovely
windows of Chartres - where the dyer dips in the vat and the potter
sits at the wheel, and the weaver stands at the loom: real
manufacturers these, workers with the hand, and entirely delightful
to look at, not like the smug and vapid shopman of our time, who