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now consists of two large separate branches : (a) the royal horse artillery and the field batteries, and (b) the siege artillery, heavy field batteries, garrison artillery proper, and mountain artillery. There are 28 service batteries of horse artillery, armed with 12-pr. B.L. guns; 100 service field batteries armed with 15-pr. B.L. guns ; and 12 service field batteries armed with 5-in. B.L. rifled howitzers—in all cases 6 pieces per battery. The formation of the latter was necessitated by the comparative flatness of the 12 - pr. and 15 - pr. trajectories, and the want of a shell, with a large angle of descent, to act upon troops under cover of earthworks, &c. The officers for each rank of the horse artillery are selected from the field batteries, to which they return on promotion to the next higher rank, a system which gives rise to a constant interchange of officers. The garrison artillery consists of 104 service companies, of 199 officers and men each, on war strength, of which 7 companies are attached to siege train batteries, and 4 to heavy field batteries for Indian service. A siege train battery for India consists of four 5-in. B.L. guns and two 6-in. B.L. howitzers. For service in South Africa, four 7-in. B.L. guns have been substituted for 6-in. B.L. guns. An Indian heavy field battery is armed with four 30-pr. B.L. guns and two 5'4-in. B.L. howitzers. A mountain battery is armed with six 2'5-in. screw R.M.L. guns, the projectile of which weighs 7 lb. A 10-pr. gun is under consideration. In addition to the foregoing there are in India 10 mountain batteries armed with 2'5-in. R.M.L. guns, 11 manned by natives, and 4 field batteries of the Haidarabad contingent armed with two6-pr. S.B. guns and two 12-pr. S.B. howitzers. Finally, there are 13 companies of local artillery ; at Kohat, 1 company ; at Hong-Kong, 4 ; at Singapore, 1 ; in Ceylon, 2 ; in Mauritius, 2 ; at Sierra Leone, 1; at Jamaica, 1 ; and at St Lucia, 1. (h. W. L. H.) Arts and Crafts.—The arts of decorative design and handicraft are comprehended under this title—all those arts and crafts, it may be said, which, in association with the mother-craft of building (or architecture) go to the making of the house beautiful. Arts and crafts are also associated with the movement generally understood as the English revival of decorative art, which has characterized the years since about 1875. The title itself only came into general use when the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society was founded, and held its first exhibition at the Mew Gallery, London, in the autumn of 1888, since which time arts and crafts exhibitions have been common all over Great Britain. The idea of forming a society for the purpose of showing contemporary work in design and handicraft really arose out of a movement of revolt or protest against the exclusive view of art encouraged by the Royal Academy exhibitions, in which oil paintings in gilt frames claimed almost exclusive attention—sculpture, architecture, and the arts of decorative design, being relegated to quite subordinate positions. In 1886, out of a feeling of discontent among artists as to the inadequacy of the Royal Academy exhibitions, considered as representing the art of Great Britain, a demand arose for a national exhibition to include all the arts of design. One of the points of this demand was for the annual election of the hanging committee by the whole body of artists. After many meetings the group representing the arts and crafts (who belonged to a larger body of artists and craftsmen called the Art-workers’ Guild, founded in 1884),1 perceiving that the painters, especially the leading group of a school not hitherto well represented in the Academy exhibitions, only cherished the hope of forcing certain reforms on the Academy, and were by no means prepared to lose their chances of admission to its privileges, still less to run any risk in the establishment of a really comprehensive national exhibition of art, decided to organize an exhibition themselves in which artists and craftsmen might show their productions, so that contemporary work in decorative art should be displayed to the public on the same footing, and with the same advantages as had hitherto been monopolized by pictorial art. For many
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years previously there had been great activity in the study and revival in the practice of many of the neglected decorative handicrafts. Amateur societies and classes were in existence, like the Home Arts and Industries Association, which had established village classes in wood - carving, metal work, spinning and weaving, needlework, pottery, and basket-work, and the public interest was steadily growing in handicraft. The machine production of an industrial century had laid its iron hands upon what had formerly been the exclusive province of the handicraftsman, who only lingered on in a few obscure trades and in forgotten corners of England for the most part. The ideal of mechanical perfection dominated British workmen, and the factory system, first by extreme division of labour, and then by the further specialization of the workman under machine production, left no room for individual artistic feeling among craftsmen trained and working under such conditions. The demand of the world-market ruled the character and quality of production, and to the few who would seek some humanity, simplicity of construction, oxartistic feeling in their domestic decorations and furniture the only choice was that of the tradesman or salesman, or a plunge into costly and doubtful experiments in original design. From the ’forties onward there had been much research and study of mediaeval art in England; there had been many able designers, architects, and antiquaries, such as the Pugins and Henry Shaw, and later William Burges, Butterfield, and G. E. Street and others. The school of prae-Raphaelite painters, by their careful and thorough methods, and their sympatlxy with mediaeval design, were among the first to turn attention to beauty of design, colour, and significance in the accessories of daily life, and artists like D. G. Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, and W. Holman Hunt themselves designed and painted furniture. The most successful and most practical effort indeed towards the revival of sounder ideas of construction and workmanship may be said to have arisen out of the work of this group of artists, and may be traced to the workshop of William Morris and his associates in Queen Square, London. William Morris, whose name covers so large a field of artistic as well as literary and social work, came well equipped to his task of raising the arts of design and handicraft, of changing the taste of his countrynxen from the corrupt and vulgar ostentation of the Second Empire, and its cheap imitations, which prevailed in the ’fifties and ’sixties, and of winning them back, for a time at least, to the massive simplicity of plain oak furniture, or the delicate beauty of inlays of choice woods, or the charm of painted work, the richness and frank colour of formal floral and heraldic pattern in silk textiles and wall-hangings and carpets, the gaiety and freshness of printed cotton, or the romantic splendour of arras tapestry. Both William Morris and his artistic comrade and life-long friend, Edward Burne-Jones, were no doubt much influenced at the outset by the imaginative insight, the passionate artistic feeling, and the love of mediaeval romance and colour of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who remains so remarkable a figure in the great artistic and poetic revival of the latter half of the 19th century. To William Morris himself, in his artistic career, it was no small advantage to gaiir the ear of the English public first by his poetry. His versecraft helped his handicraft, but both lived side by side. The secret of Morris’s great influence in the revival was no doubt to be attributed to his way of personally mastering the working details and handling of each craft he took up in turn, as well as to his power of inspiring his helpers and followers. He was painter, designer, scribe, illuminator, 1 Whose members, comprehending as they do the principal living wood-engraver, dyer, weaver, and finally printer and paperdesigners, architects, painters, and craftsmen of all kinds, have played maker, and having mastered these crafts he could effectively no inconsiderable part in the aforesaid English revival. direct and criticize the work of others. His own work
