You must not say that this piece of manners lies out of my subject:  it is essentially a part of it and most important:  for I am bidding you learn to be artists, if art is not to come to an end amongst us:  and what is an artist but a workman who is determined that, whatever else happens, his work shall be excellent? or, to put it in another way:  the decoration of workmanship, what is it but the expression of man’s pleasure in successful labour?  But what pleasure can there be in bad work, in unsuccessful labour; why should we decorate that? and how can we bear to be always unsuccessful in our labour?

As greed of unfair gain, wanting to be paid for what we have not earned, cumbers our path with this tangle of bad work, of sham work, so the heaped-up money which this greed has brought us (for greed will have its way, like all other strong passions), this money, I say, gathered into heaps little and big, with all the false distinction which so unhappily it yet commands amongst us, has raised up against the arts a barrier of the love of luxury and show, which is of all obvious hindrances the worst to overpass:  the highest and most cultivated classes are not free from the vulgarity of it, the lower are not free from its pretence.  I beg you to remember both as a remedy against this, and as explaining exactly what I mean, that nothing can be a work of art which is not useful; that is to say, which does not minister to the body when well under command of the mind, or which does not amuse, soothe, or elevate the mind in a healthy state.  What tons upon tons of unutterable rubbish pretending to be works of art in some degree would this maxim clear out of our London houses, if it were understood and acted upon!  To my mind it is only here and there (out of the kitchen) that you can find in a well-to-do house things that are of any use at all:  as a rule all the decoration (so called) that has got there is there for the sake of show, not because anybody likes it.  I repeat, this stupidity goes through all classes of society:  the silk curtains in my Lord’s drawing-room are no more a matter of art to him than the powder in his footman’s hair; the kitchen in a country farmhouse is most commonly a pleasant and homelike place, the parlour dreary and useless.

Simplicity of life, begetting simplicity of taste, that is, a love for sweet and lofty things, is of all matters most necessary for the birth of the new and better art we crave for; simplicity everywhere, in the palace as well as in the cottage.

Still more is this necessary, cleanliness and decency everywhere, in the cottage as well as in the palace:  the lack of that is a serious piece of manners for us to correct:  that lack and all the inequalities of life, and the heaped-up thoughtlessness and disorder of so many centuries that cause it:  and as yet it is only a very few men who have begun to think about a remedy for it in its widest range:  even