The Condition Of Artinthis Country.

THE CONDITION OF ARTINTHIS COUNTRY .

THE recent visit ol our Royal Grand Master to Nottingham , aud the great success Avhich has attended his visit , leads us to consider the present position of art in this country , which , ive confess , we deem to be most hopeful . For when ive / ecollecb Avhat it really was , say twenty-five years ago , and what it now is , we must be struck , ive think , alike AA'ith . the reality and the intensity of the change . AVhat we mean is thisAVe have woke up at last to the coniuction that artlike everything elsemoral

. , , , scientific , technical , and instructional , requires education , and ive have most ivisely for pome time been supporting and encouraging Schools of Art , Museums , and centres of scientific , technical , ancl artistic information . The Times , alluding to the subject , thus very admirably develops the same thesis , and expounds the same idea , in a manner ii'hich will be agreeable to all our readers to peruse ancl remember : —

" Neither the most indifferent nor the most superficial observer can deny that the condition of public taste in this country has undergone a great change in the course of tho last generation . Whether the change has been ivholly in the direction of improvement may fairly be open to question . It is inevitable in such an awakening of taste as Ave have witnessed that experiments should be tried and should fail , that faults should be committed , that fashions unsnstainod by discernment or instruction should come and go , and that even a sound and healthy taste should occasionally be pushed to extravagance . Those who remember the Great Exhibition ot 1851 still feel a sense of humiliation at the contrast Avhich English art and English design presented

to those of other countries . We saw that we had fallen behindhand , and , though we could still point to our supremacy in machinery , in hardware , in good and solid workmanship in all departments Avhere taste Avas not in question , Ave had to acknowledge that as far as art and design -were concerned ive ivere outstripped by all competitors . This was the humiliating fact , acknowledged on all hands , but regarded in many quarters with absolute indifference , ivtn ' ch prompted tho Prince Consort in his Avell-nigh solitary endeavours to regenerate the national regard for art . We had almost lost the sense of our deficiencies , and had begun to think that taste was an insignificant thing , and beauty an object unworthy of serious and rational pursuit . We have to thank the

Department of Science and Art , and the taste which it first laboriously created and then successfully appealed to , for the change AA'hich has happened , and Ave OAVC the revival mainly to the bold initiative and persistent energy of the Prince Consort . There is now scarcely an article of manufacture produced in this country to which artistic design can be applied ivhicli has not been subject to a regenerating influence . In 1851 , what may be called domestic : art of all kinds was at its very lowest point , and most people AVOI-O pretty well content that it should be so . Now , on the contrary , ive are nothing if not artistic , and we are almost as fastidious as we were formerly indifferent . The movement has its extravagant and ridiculous sideno doubtas movement

, , every prompted by genuine enthusiasm and followed by mere gregarious fashion is sure to have . But , ivhereas five-and-twenty years ago it was next to impossible to gratify a refined taste in regard to articles of domestic ancl common use , noiv it is hardly too much to say that , whether in pottery , in furniture , in draperies , in carpets , in paporhangings , even in coal-scuttles and in pots and pans , it' is positively bewildering to have to make a choice amid the variety ol really beautiful things offered to us on every hand .

"It may be difficult as yet to say Ai'hetlier the revived appreciation of beauty for its own sake has taken any very deep or permanent root in the national taste . Much ot it is doubtless due to mere fashion or to love of singularity and variety . But it is a significant fact that , Avuereas formerly no one cared for design and beauty at all , IIOAV all educated people care for them more or less . ^ The result may be seen by anyone Avho Avill take the trouble to Avail * along the streets and look into the shop windows . Jfe will see much to amuse , something- to instruct , and not a littie to repel him ; but he cannot fail to discern a great contrast to Avhat he would have seen only a . few years ago . If , however , any improvement has yet been effected in the taste of the great masses of tiie

population , the palpable signs of it are certainly still to seek . Popular taste is like popular education ; it spreads i * ery slowly , and it takes more than one generation to exhibit its tangible results . We know that newspapers and books of all kinds , some good , some Avorthless , many indifferent , are noiv read by thousands who formerly would never have looked at a printed page . Lwppetie went en maw / cant , and if people begin by reading indiscriminately , some of them at least will end by reading well and acquiring a taste for good literature . Taste in art is acquired in the same ivay ; we may educate it ancl elevate it if it once exists , but until it exists in some form or other there is nothing to Avhich Ave can appeal . HOAV , then , is it to be created ? We curtain ])* cannot expect it to grow spontaneously out of the squalid life of too many of our huge towns . The sm-cUd dwelling , the filthy and smoke-begrimed alley , the pinched aud narrow existence , all furnish