FINE ART IN WHITECHAPEL. [To TEE EDITOR OF TUB "
SPEOTAT013.1 Siit,—An experiment in higher education is about to be made in Whitechapel, an account of which may interest your readers and enlist their help. For the Easter weeks the schoolrooms
of the parish are to be used for a flue art exhibition. Pictures by Sir F. Leighton, Mr. Watts, Burno-Jones, Walter Pane, and other well-known artists, embroidery and pottery from some of the best private collections, and cases from South Kensington Museum, have been put at our disposal. We bave been busy preparing the schoolroom to receive the treasures, and all, we hope, will be ready on April 14th. It is then proposed to keep the exhibition open daily until April 23rd, when the building must be restored to its use as a school. The labour and expense are great. The labour has been to the Committee a labour of love, as week after week they have given time and thought to the thousand details of packing, arranging, insuring, and collecting; the expense, we trust, may be shared by those who sympathise with our object. We believe that the knowledge of beauty is our neighbours' great need. Those who know their lives know it is not so much want of money as want of interest which makes their hardship. They have little familiarity with the work which others' thought is accomplishing, little knowledge of the deeds of sacrifice which have been the salt of the world, little chance of seeing the beauty which awes criticism into reverence, It is no wonder, therefore, that so many spend their rest in sleep, find pleasure only in excitement, and are content with untidiness at home and ugliness in the streets. We believe that our Exhibition may do something to give them other things to think of, and another standard by which to measure their surroundings. We shall put on each object a clear description, written so as to touch some existing interest of the spectators, and thus introduce them to a wider interest. We shall also secure the continual prescuce of those able to explain and talk about what is new and strange.
The labour is great, and more labourers will be welcome. We believe the thing is worth doing, both. for itself and also as an example of what may be done in • other schoolrooms. Such buildings might well--outside the thirty hours a week during which alone they are occupied. by children—be devoted to the purposes of higher education.
.I shall be happy if this letter is in any way instrumental in bringing thought to bear on my neighbours' needs. The thought may take shape in forms strange to me, or it may bring help in money and personal service to our scheme. I shall be content if a few more realise how unnecessarily poor are the lives of the mass of English people.—I am, Sir, &c., SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
St. Jude's Vicarage, Mara 30th.
P.S.---Subscriptions may be sent to K. Grahame, Esq., Honorary Treasurer, St. Jude's Vicarage, Commercial Street, London, E.
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