h, in future ages, will be seen the moral &
imaginative framework of this people of England. That work of art
should be had in view in the struggles of the moment, should be had in
view and be promoted by every citizen who would do more than live out
his individual years in selfish & ignoble isolation; but it should
especially be had in view by the people as a whole, be their ideal,
their supreme work of art; and theirs whom the people's will has placed
at their head to mould and to guide their destinies, theirs, so that
when the world's history shall be rounded off and resumed in planetary
stillness, and in the consciousness of the gods, England, England's
history, shall shine out starlike, England, which shall have made, not
itself its goal, but an immortal purpose--ideal freedom and the world's
joy!

Such is one other great work of art, of machinery, still awaiting
accomplishment, still awaiting the devotion to which all great art is
due.

But art to-day has no eyes, no devotion, & so for art there is no great
object, and for the great object no art. Nor does the great artist, as
does the great opportunity, sojourn in our midst. Such art and artists
as there are, and are there any? are but engaged in the conscious
cultivation of art for art's sake, or of beauty for beauty's sake,
pending the great transformation which, meanwhile, is no affair of
theirs.

Of such art and of such cultivation, nothing need be expected: and such
art and such cultivation are certainly not in my judgement, nor are
they, so far as I know, in the judgement of the artists whose revolt
founded the Society, the aims of the movement now passing under its
name.

What those aims are, I will now, from my own point of view, endeavour
to restate: for of the subsequent exhibitions of the Society, nothing
more need be said. Subsequent exhibitions, whether in England, on the
Continent, or in the United States of America, were, and are, but
repetitions, with variations only of detail, of the first, and need no
description; though against exhibitions themselves I may be allowed
before I pass away from them to urge one objection, an objection, not
indeed condemnatory of them, but an objection which should, I think, be
borne in mind in promoting them, and be obviated as far as the
circumstances of each exhibition will permit. The objection which I
would urge is this.

An exhibition, as I have already insisted, is but a small part of the
Arts & Craft