under the GRAND MONARQUE, under Louis the Fourteenth; the gaudy
gilt furniture writhing under a sense of its own horror and
ugliness, with a nymph smirking at every angle and a dragon
mouthing on every claw. Unreal and monstrous art this, and fit
only for such periwigged pomposities as the nobility of France at
that time, but not at all fit for you or me. We do not want the
rich to possess more beautiful things but the poor to create more
beautiful things; for ever man is poor who cannot create. Nor
shall the art which you and I need be merely a purple robe woven by
a slave and thrown over the whitened body of some leprous king to
adorn or to conceal the sin of his luxury, but rather shall it be
the noble and beautiful expression of a people's noble and
beautiful life. Art shall be again the most glorious of all the
chords through which the spirit of a great nation finds its noblest
utterance.

All around you, I said, lie the conditions for a great artistic
movement for every great art. Let us think of one of them; a
sculptor, for instance.

If a modern sculptor were to come and say, 'Very well, but where
can one find subjects for sculpture out of men who wear frock-coats
and chimney-pot hats?' I would tell him to go to the docks of a
great city and watch the men loading or unloading the stately
ships, working at wheel or windlass, hauling at rope or gangway. I
have never watched a man do anything useful who has not been
graceful at some moment of his labour: it is only the loafer and
the idle saunterer who is as useless and uninteresting to the
artist as he is to himself. I would ask the sculptor to go with me
to any of your schools or universities, to the running ground and