DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.41193#0021
callus, nothing grander than that* If thesame sort
of people were to design and build them now,
(since within the last fifty years or so they have
lost all the old traditionsof building,though they
clung to them longer than most people), they
could not build anythingbetterthan the ordinary
little plain Nonconformist chapels that one sees
scattered about new neighbourhoods* That is
what they correspond with, not an architect/de^
signed new Gothic church* The more you study
archaeology the more certain youwillbecome that
I am right in this, and that what we have left us of
earlier art was made by the unhelped people* Nei/«
ther will you fail to see that it was made intelli^
gently and with pleasure.
That last word brings me to a point so important
that at the risk of getting wearisome I must add
it to my old sentence and repeat the whole. Time
was when everybody that made anything made a
work of art besides a useful piece of goods, and it
gave them pleasure to make it* That is an assertion
from which nothing can drive me; whatever I
doubt, I have no doubt of that* And, sirs, if there
is anythinginthe business of my life worth doing,
if I have any worthy aspiration, it is the hope that
I may help to bring about the day when we shall
be able to say, So it was once, so it is now*
Do not misunderstand me; I am not a mere praiser
of past times* I know that in those days of which
I speak life was often rough & evil enough, beset
t3
Lecture II*
Art and the
Beauty of
the Earth.
of people were to design and build them now,
(since within the last fifty years or so they have
lost all the old traditionsof building,though they
clung to them longer than most people), they
could not build anythingbetterthan the ordinary
little plain Nonconformist chapels that one sees
scattered about new neighbourhoods* That is
what they correspond with, not an architect/de^
signed new Gothic church* The more you study
archaeology the more certain youwillbecome that
I am right in this, and that what we have left us of
earlier art was made by the unhelped people* Nei/«
ther will you fail to see that it was made intelli^
gently and with pleasure.
That last word brings me to a point so important
that at the risk of getting wearisome I must add
it to my old sentence and repeat the whole. Time
was when everybody that made anything made a
work of art besides a useful piece of goods, and it
gave them pleasure to make it* That is an assertion
from which nothing can drive me; whatever I
doubt, I have no doubt of that* And, sirs, if there
is anythinginthe business of my life worth doing,
if I have any worthy aspiration, it is the hope that
I may help to bring about the day when we shall
be able to say, So it was once, so it is now*
Do not misunderstand me; I am not a mere praiser
of past times* I know that in those days of which
I speak life was often rough & evil enough, beset
t3
Lecture II*
Art and the
Beauty of
the Earth.