Nothing will help the reform better than the efforts of art-loving amateurs. Amateur blacksmiths, goldsmiths, carpenters, weavers, inlayers, will do more to force merit into professional quarters than any amount of letters in the 'Times' and preachments in books: just as the victories of girl students at Girton and Newen-ham have had some effect in shaming idlers in the male universities. Amateurs seem as often as not to win prizes in mixed exhibitions of china painting, and in one or two other branches of industry we are sensible of a movement as of life pecking at the shell.1 Of course the reason is that the amateur, given equal talent, has more time to give to the labour, and works for love of it: but if we pay the trade at all, we pay for time and skill both, and hurried or slovenly work ought to be cheap, while patient, long-suffering labour demands a higher fee.

When iron factors find that amateur work can provide for an existing demand, at a standard they cannot reach, will they not labour to provide for it? When silversmiths find their coarse, showy vulgarities remain on their hands, will they not speedily discover what the public really want? If skill is required, skill will be forthcoming; if beauty is wanted, beauty will arise. The demand educates the workman, and the general level of understanding among the body of purchasers is what really defines the standard of art in a country.

The designer and the workman can no longer be one, as once they were, when a founder meant bell-caster, cutler, maker of keys, guns, and statues, and anything else that could be cast and hammered: when a goldsmith was expected to be able to mould a vase like Luca della Robbia, carve a helmet, and do a hundred other things that demanded the art knowledge he possessed. We cannot have all-round men in this position now, for the minute subdivisions in trade are the necessary result of a large and impatient demand. But we can give intelligent workmen some interest in the complete work of which they execute a portion: and there is no reason why educated artists should not provide designs, as did Le Pautre, for all kinds of decorative work, with (be it understood) due knowledge of the limits of each branch of art designed for, so that workmen have not to complain of the technical ignorance of the artist, as sometimes happens.

1 We may quote the beautiful goldsmith's work of the late Mr. George Cayley, for one of whose salvers Mr. Millais offered a picture of his son; and the wrought-iron ornaments, panels, candelabra, etc. turned out by the Messrs. Phelps, sons of the present Master of Sidney College, Cambridge, who work with enthusiasm in their forge. Some of their iron was recently exhibited at the Albert Hall Fine Arts Department.

The designer for wrought iron must have some notion of what is possible in iron-hammering, as the architect of a fine palace must understand the science of building; a table or chair cannot be made from a design which is independent of the first principles joints.