Southern Seas, how can we look for the virtues and the aspirations which belong essentially to the level of comparative ease?  Until we have mastered the problem of finding steady work for all, with adequate wages and decent homes, we need not look for Art in these lowest ranks.  We have to do, therefore, not with the very poor at all, but with the respectable poor—­the families of skilled mechanics, employes in regular work, workmen in breweries, ship-yards, and factories independent handicraftsmen, clerks, cashiers, accountants, writers, small shopkeepers, and all that great host which is perpetually occupied in increasing the wealth of the country by labour which, at least, permits them to live in comfort.  All these people have leisure; most of them, except the shop assistants, have no work in the evening; they are all possessed of some education.  There is no reason at all why they should not, if they could be only got to desire it, become students in some of the branches of Art.

Let us, then, always with reference to this one city and this one class of its inhabitants, ascertain what has been done already to create a love of Art.  The most important thing as yet attempted is the Bethnal Green Museum.  It is, for our purposes, also the most instructive, because it has hitherto been, I consider, a complete and ignominious failure.  That is to say, it was established and is maintained as an educational museum, it was especially designed to create and develop a knowledge of Art and it has not done so.  It was opened in 1872 with, among other things, the magnificent collection of pictures lent by Sir Richard Wallace; during the twelve years of its existence it has exhibited other collections of considerable interest:  but the education, the free library, and the classrooms promised at the outset have never been forthcoming.  It is, in fact, a dumb and silent gallery.  One may compare it to a Board School newly built, provided with all the latest appliances for education—­with books, desks, seats, blackboards, and everything, including crowds of pupils, but left without a teaching staff, the pupils being expected to teach themselves.  Why not?  There are the books and there are the desks, So with this museum.  You cannot learn anything of Art without the study of artistic work.  Here is the artistic work.  Why do not the people study it?  They certainly come to the place; they come in large numbers; on free days when it is open until ten at night they average over two thousand a day all the year round.  And if you take the trouble to watch them, to follow them about, and to listen to their conversation, you will presently discover with how much intelligence they are studying the artistic work before them.