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EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
“ These institutions stand, as well by the object they have in view as by the results they obtain, between real life and abstract theories ; they are the mediators between the past and the future of the development of Fine Arts applied to Industry. Tli^ eminent position taken by modern industrial art for the last few 3 T ears, furnishes the best proof of the justness of the remark made above.
“ It may certainly satisfy and rejoice professional men to see the careful manipulation of different raw materials, and the use made of machines ingeniously constructed; but if a more elevated taste was not combined with the technical process in the execution or ornamentation of these products, one could hardly say that industry is improving.
“ One of the most remarkable improvements made by industry dates back from the time when the idea first occurred to collect carefully together the rich treasures of former centuries, which had remained so long unused, to make model collections of them, to take up again and to organize the progress made by our industrious ancestors in some branches of industrial art, and in those objects produced by manual skill.
“ The technical skill with which any object is manufactured is not sufficient to produce an object answering the exigencies of a connoisseur. An intelligent appreciation of the task to be fulfilled, the right feeling of the most suitable form; in short, taste in the invention and execution of each article, has become an indispensable quality for industrial production, and it alone raises the object manufactured to the rank of a work of industrial art, i. e., an object not only useful but also satisfying the requirements of good taste.
“ Most of the industrial schools and institutions for promoting the study of Fine Arts applied to Industry, which under the direction of experienced connoisseurs fight every day with greater success against the old methods of proceeding and unthinking routine, owe their foundation to the acknowledgment of these truths.
“ Still the creation of Museums of Fine Art applied to Industry, of those treasures of the history of art, are still more the consequence of the right feeling of the ennobling influence of art upon industry. It is from this point of view that the merits of the Museums of Fine Art applied to Industry of Paris, London, Edinburgh, Moscow, Berlin, Stuttgart, Munich, Weimar, Gotha, Limoges, Lyons, etc., just as richly endowed as they are generally useful to all, must be appreciated.
“ After these come those museums, which, although not directly promoting Fine Art and Industrial Art, have‘indirectly the same object, by pursuing a scientific or statistical object. These institutions are also the result of modern efforts toward civilization ; as, for