eat and unpopular causes,' and the
aim of whose art was 'joy in widest commonalty spread.' Mr. Crane began
his lecture by pointing out that Art had two fields, aspect and
adaptation, and that it was primarily with the latter that the designer
was concerned, his object being not literal fact but ideal beauty. With
the unstudied and accidental effects of Nature the designer had nothing
to do. He sought for principles and proceeded by geometric plan and
abstract line and colour. Pictorial art is isolated and unrelated, and
the frame is the last relic of the old connection between painting and
architecture. But the designer does not desire primarily to produce a
picture. He aims at making a pattern and proceeds by selection; he
rejects the 'hole in the wall' idea, and will have nothing to do with the
'false windows of a picture.'

Three things differentiate designs. First, the spirit of the artist,
that mode and manner by which Durer is separated from Flaxman, by which
we recognise the soul of a man expressing itself in the form proper to
it. Next comes the constructive idea, the filling of spaces with lovely
work. Last is the material which, be it leather or clay, ivory or wood,
often suggests and always controls the pattern. As for naturalism, we
must remember that we see not with our eyes alone but with our whole
faculties. Feeling and thought are part of sight. Mr. Crane then drew
on a blackboard the naturalistic oak-tree of the landscape painter and
the decorative oak-tree of the designer. He showed that each artist is
looking for different things, and that the designer always makes
appearance subordinate to decorative motive. He showed also the field
daisy as it is in Nature and the same flower treated for panel
decoration. The designer systematises and emphasises, chooses and
rejects, and decorative work bears the same relation to naturalistic
presentation that the imaginative language of the poetic drama bears to
the language of real life. The decorative capabilities of the square and
the circle were then shown on the board, and much was said about
symmetry, alternation and radiation, which last principle Mr. Crane
described as 'the Home Rule of design, the perfection of local
self-government,' and which, he pointed out, was essentially organic,
manifesting itself in the bird's wing as well as in the Tudor vaulting of
Gothic architecture. Mr. Crane then passed to the human figure, 'that
expressive u