apprenticeship at a starvation wage. And so, when we create frivolous demands for things that we shall not want the day after to-morrow, we are not (as we too often think) doing anything that is really good for trade, but only something much more horrible, which you will understand without my naming it.
You see, then, how very closely the artist's inclination toward permanence of taste may be connected with morality. And if that instinct for permanence (with an accompanying adaptation of material and design to making things last their full time without waste) is not present in the craftsmanship of our day, then we have not got the true basis, either in spirit or material, for Art to build upon.
Now I am going to put before you some quite homely instances, because I think they will stick best in your memories, in order to show you that the real struggle of the artist to-day is not so much to secure appreciation of beauty in line and texture, as honesty of construction, and real adaptation of form to utility and of production to lastingness. I have been noticing, with quite simple objects of domestic use, that the trade-purpose toward them seems almost the opposite. The trade purpose is to present us with an article which, apparently sound in construction, will break down at some crucial point before the rest of it is worn out. A watering can, a carving fork, a kettle, a dustbin, a coal scuttle, the fixings of a door-*handle, are generally made, I find, on an
