Product Synopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1892. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXIV THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS OF DESIGN CHANGED INTO A "DEPARTMENT OF ART "--SOME INQUIRIES INTO THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON CHARACTER. Exact chronology is of little consequence in these notes of mine. The particular powers of memory I do not possess are those that command dates. Dates being out of my power, I may therefore go back or forward a little in my record. The year 1852--the year following the first great International Exhibition,--welcomed with surprise by all the world and by Tennyson our laureate as the Avatar of perpetual peace, began the change in the affairs of the Government scheme for spreading arteducation over the country, as I have already mentioned. Hitherto the country did not understand its own needs in the field of artistic taste, and in the improvement of our manufactures, which were materially and constructively so far ahead of other countries. Every functionary employed in the effort to spread knowledge and taste, through schools of design, worked against obstacles both from without and within, hopeless of overcoming them, only trying to hide them, and not to commit himself by affirming or acting on ideas not universally acknowledged. The Inspector who visited Newcastle just before the change appeared to me the worst I had then seen, and so completely to represent the false position under which we all suffered that I privately celebrated his visit in some satirical verses. At the time of writing this satire, I did not know the perplexities of the position of this able inspector, but a few months later, as one evening my old and dear friend, Ralph N. Wornum, who had become lecturer to the schools, was sitting with me, I read the verses to him, when he informed me that this very individual was possibly to have been made Director. ...