Now, I have been trying to show you how the hurry of modern Civilisation, accompanied by the tyrannous Organisation of labour which was a necessity to the full development of Competitive Commerce, has taken from the people at large, gentle and simple, the eyes to discern and the hands to fashion that popular art which was once the chief solace and joy of the world:  I have asked you to think of that as no light matter, but a grievous mishap:  I have prayed you to strive to remedy this evil:  first by guarding jealously what is left, and by trying earnestly to win back what is lost of the Fairness of the Earth; and next by rejecting luxury, that you may embrace art, if you can, or if indeed you in your short lives cannot learn what art means, that you may at least live a simple life fit for men.

And in all I have been saying, what I have been really urging on you is this—­Reverence for the life of Man upon the Earth:  let the past be past, every whit of it that is not still living in us:  let the dead bury their dead, but let us turn to the living, and with boundless courage and what hope we may, refuse to let the Earth be joyless in the days to come.

What lies before us of hope or fear for this?  Well, let us remember that those past days whose art was so worthy, did nevertheless forget much of what was due to the Life of Man upon the Earth; and so belike it was to revenge this neglect that art was delivered to our hands for maiming:  to us, who were blinded by our eager chase of those things which our forefathers had neglected, and by the chase of other things which seemed revealed to us on our hurried way, not seldom, it may be for our beguiling.

And of that to which we were blinded, not all was unworthy:  nay the most of it was deep-rooted in men’s souls, and was a necessary part of their Life upon the Earth, and claims our reverence still:  let us add this knowledge to our other knowledge:  and there will still be a future for the arts.  Let us remember this, and amid simplicity of life turn our eyes to real beauty that can be shared by all:  and then though the days worsen, and no rag of the elder art be left for our teaching, yet the new art may yet arise among us, and even if it have the hands of a child together with the heart of a troubled man, still it may bear on for us to better times the tokens of our reverence for the Life of Man upon the Earth.  For we indeed freed from the bondage of foolish habit and dulling luxury might at last have eyes wherewith to see:  and should have to babble to one another many things of our joy in the life around us:  the faces of people in the streets bearing the tokens of mirth and sorrow and hope, and all the tale of their lives:  the scraps of nature the busiest of us would come across; birds and beasts and the little worlds they live in; and even in the very town the sky above us and the drift of the clouds across it; the wind’s hand on the slim trees, and its voice amid their branches,