REPORT OF MR. HINTON.
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ing and studying the best buildings in their neighborhood, the professors—men whose names alone carry commendation— pointing out and explaining every grand, broad, general effect, as well as the minutest detail that can be shown.
To the Viennese, architecture is a very important profession, as it has depended and still depends upon the able men in this department whether they shall have a beautiful city or the reverse. So far, it is in the first state, if the opinions of the many visitors drawn thither by the Exhibition can be taken as sufficient evidence.
Thus, then, though separate institutions, it will be seen that the Museum of Art as applied to Industry and the Polytechnic Institute have much in common, and fitly dovetail into each other. The Museum of Arts reaches out after other objects than its neighbor, while it does much to fill in the necessary details, of great value to the students of the Polytechnic Institute, and vice versa. '
Take, as an illustration, the manufacture of Terra-Cotta—a business that has grown prodigiously in Austria, Germany and England of late years. The determining of the right clays, to form a fit combination; the formation of kilns to harden these clays; the calculations as to the shrinkage of the clay while passing through the firing process, with other details, rightly belong to the Poly technical Institution ; but the artistic modelling of tasteful ware and statues in Terra- Cotta comes fairly within the province of the Museum and the School attached. That this aid has not been slight, but, on the contrary, extremely beneficial, is the testimonj^ of the manager of the largest clay-working establishment in Austria, and the second largest in the world, verified by personal observation.
It would be a vain task to attempt to describe the high perfection to which this art has been brought by the Viennese. Remembering this, it is a source of regret that our own country is so backward in this manufacture, when all the needed materials exist in abundance. Nature has here been bountiful in this as in nearly all her raw materials. It is an industry that could be promoted in this country with a fair prospect of remunerative returns ; first, to the manufacturer, and more remotely, in improving the public taste by supplying