Sir Stirling Maxwell gave a very interesting address last week
to the students of the Edinburgh School of Art. His general view appears to have been that while the love of art is getting very much more diffused than it used to be, there is much leas artistic originality, and much less artistic pride in the execu- tion of common work, than there used to be. He criticized the architecture of both Paris and London, declaring that neither city can boast of any new works of real originality, though Paris is stately in general effect. London is only " a chaos of ill-regulated boroughs." "Some fine private edifices in the City and West End, always copied from old models, and a few colossal railway stations impressive by their vastness, are almost all the modern works we have to show strangers. In my own time the only national work that in my opinion may be considered a groat success is a single wall,—the noble river wall that now faces the northern bank of the Thames from Westminster to the Temple." The speaker characterized even the execution of popular printing as inartistically slovenly compared with what it once was. "The works of the old Italian and French printers were many of them small and cheap, and intended for the widest circulation then attainable. Yet what artistic feeling lives and breathes in every line of their slightest embellishments, what fancy and poetry in their more elaborate designs and devices ! " We suspect the truth to be that the modern competition and hurry are fatal to the art of embel- lishment, though not to art which has no end beyond itself. No age was ever more willing to encourage great painters and sculptors when they can be found. But we will not wait while our houses and books are made beautiful as well as useful. In the old times, readers were themselves the select few who took as much pride in the appearance of their books as women do in the appearance of their clothes or huntsmen in the mettle of their horses, but this is so no longer. Beauty in the accessories of life is never fully valued except by the leisurely.
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