§ 36

Machinery can never be made to feel, the hand can do nothing worth having without “feeling.” A bit of craftsmanship, like a building, a statue, a picture, a song, or a tale, gives itself away at once. If the impulse was artificial or insincere, it is at once obvious that the man who made it was not an artist; he might be anything else, but not that. The exact quantity of pleasure taken in the creation of a work of art is visible at once, in that sense the maker of it exposes his soul. The revival of craftsmanship is evident everywhere in the new city. The best designers are the best workmen. We never hear it said, “Oh, yes, he can design, but cannot make.” The craftsman makes well what he has well designed. Being simple, he asks himself, “What is the object for? What is it intended to do when it is made?” Having made up his mind to solve that question, the first in good design, he proceeds to make it answer that purpose, and something good and interesting is the result. The artist has used his intelligence from first to last, so what he makes is something that has life in it, because it is a reflection of the life of its creator. As craftsmanship grows in estimation, machinery is delegated to do what it can do well, not ill. Furthermore, the extension of the demand for craftsmanship provides occupation which may be entirely thus occupied, or only in leisure hours, and leisure hours so occupied are educational, and not only that, they are productive, inasmuch as their authors sell their productions and so add to their earnings in a manner that is useful to them and beneficial to the community.

As with the churches, so with all public buildings, which are (by the way) not made to “pattern” in accordance with this or that “style”—Gothic, Classic, Renaissance, or what not. The art they exhibit rises out of the “plan.” They are not “faced” with a skin of stone or stucco to look what they are not. The outside does not conceal but expresses the “plan.” Construction is not hidden, but revealed. Ornament is not “stuck on,” it is a growth out of construction. To an eye artificially accustomed to “shams” the new buildings look austere. They seem to reflect a serious people who want to tell the truth. Should it be necessary to erect them in steel or iron, the metal is treated against the action of weather, but is not concealed. If it forms the skeleton, the skeleton is visible, and so all through the construction. Stone looks like stone, wood like wood, and metal like metal. This principle carried out does not make for monotony, but for the reverse. These serious and impressive public buildings are, as it were, the picture galleries of the city. Not executed in a hurry, the subjects of the wall paintings are well thought out by a select committee of learned men and artists. They are proceeding. As yet some are incomplete, but enough are finished to demonstrate the care taken in their subject matter, which is not only local, but embodies episodes of English history. While being pleasant to the eye, they tell pleasant and noble tales of the lives of our ancestors who made England great. Again here, as we noticed in the churches, there is much original simplicity, which does not ape archæology, or rather does not make that valuable science the first necessity. Looking at them one feels they could only have been done to-day. The impress of what is best in the modern mind is there, not artificial, but sincere and vital. Presently we shall leave the city to see what agriculture is doing.