and-butter had long since been eaten up, and they were hungry
again, and there was a long afternoon before them. What to these
hungry children would have been a whole Field of the Cloth of Gold? We
must, therefore, make very large deductions indeed when we consider
the popularity of Bethnal Green. Doubtless it is pleasant to read the
stories of the pictures; but the light, the warmth, the society of the
place are also pleasant. And as for Art education, why, as none is
given, so none is desired.

I have dwelt upon Bethnal Green Museum at some length, not because I
wished to attack the place, but because it seems to me an example of
what ought not to be done, and because it illustrates most admirably
two propositions which I have to offer. These are--(1) That the lower
classes have no instinctive desire for Art; (2) that they will not
teach themselves.

We may also learn from considering what this museum is what an
educational and popular museum ought to be; and to this I will
immediately return. Meantime, let us go on to consider a few minor
agencies at work in the East of London, directly or indirectly working
in favour of Art. And, first, I should like to call attention to the
annual exhibition of pictures which the indefatigable Vicar of St.
Jude's, Whitechapel--the Rev. Samuel Barnett--gets together every
Easter for his people. The point is not so much that he holds this
exhibition as that he engages the services of volunteer lecturers, who
go round the show with the visitors and explain the pictures, so that
they may learn what it is they should admire and something of what
they should look for in a drawing or painting. In other words, Mr.
Barnett's visitors are instructed in the first elements of Art
criticism. There are, next, certain institutes, educational and
social, such as the Bow and Bromley and the Beaumont, which might be
used to advantage for Art purposes. Then there are the Church
organizations, with their services, their clubs, their social,
gatherings, and their schools; there are the chapels, each with its
own set of similar institutions; there are the working men's clubs,
which might also lend themselves and their rooms for the development
of Art; there are such societies as the Kyrle Society, which give free
concerts of good music, and are therefore already working for us;
lastly, there are the schools of Art--there are five in East London,
working under the South Kensington Department. All these