price.
But it is not a thing which even the designer should struggle after. It
comes, if it is there. There is a revengeful consolation for the pain we
suffer from design about us writhing to be up-to-date, in the thought
that its contortions tell what pain it cost to do. The birth of beauty
is a less agonising travail; and the thing to seek is beauty, not
novelty. Whoever planned the lines of the border in Illustration 91, or
treated the leafage in Illustration 92, was not trying to be original,
but determined to do his best. Artists and workers of individuality and
character are themselves, without being so much as aware that
originality has gone out of them.

[Illustration: 91. RENAISSANCE ORNAMENT.]

To assume, then, that every needlewoman is, or can ever be, competent to
design what she embroiders, is to make very small account of design. How
is it possible to take design seriously and yet think it is to be
mastered without years of patient study, which few workwomen can or will
devote to it? Any cultivated woman may for herself invent (if it is to
be called invention) something better worth working than is to be bought
ready to work. And that may do for many purposes, so long as it does not
claim to be more than it is; but in the case of really important work,
to be executed at considerable cost not only of material, but of patient
labour, surely it is worth giving serious thought to its design. The
scant consideration commonly given to it shows how little the worker is
in earnest. Or has she thought? And is she persuaded that her artless
spray of flowers, or the ironed-off pattern she has bought, is all that
art could be? It would be rude to tell her she was wasting silk! How
should she know?

The only way of knowing is to study, to look at good work, old work by
preference; it is worth no one's while to praise that unduly. And if in
all that is now so readily accessible she finds nothing to admire,
nothing which appeals to her, nothing which inspires her, then her case
is hopeless. If, on the other hand, she finds only so much as one style
of work sympathetic to her, studies that, lets its spirit sink into her,
tries to do something worthy of it, then she is on the right road.
Measure yourself with the best, not with the common run of work; and if
that should put you out of conceit with your own work, no great harm is
done; sooner or later you have got to come to a modest opinion of
yourself, if ever you are