CERAMIC ARTS—GENERAL SURVEY.
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already established here, but, though in its infancy, gives promise of a great future. Its growth can be greatly and advantageously modified by a little well-directed effort. Art education is not only required by potters, but by all artisans, and by the people generally. It not only produces skilled specialists, but becomes diffused and raises the standard of public taste, increasing the appreciation of the public and the demand for really meritorious works, thus reacting beneficially upon the industries.
There is a great multiplicity of sources of designs for ornaments at the present day ; and the facilities now. afforded for copying and reproducing the most precious artistic works of the past should cause them to be seen everywhere. Every town should have its art-gallery and its classes for drawing and modelling. The children in our public schools should Rot lose such influences as may be exerted by the possession of sets of casts of architectural decorations, of sculpture and bas-reliefs, all of which may be procured for little above the cost of the materials and transportation. The general influence of art museums abroad is not to be lightly estimated. They are exerting a gentle and imperceptible, but a most powerful, influence upon the culture of the communities in which they are located. Who can estimate the influence exerted by the South Kensington Museum upon its millions of visitors? And we are not to lose sight of the influence, also, °f the great exhibitions which bring together in friendly rivalry the master-efforts of the most skilful artisans of the rime, and afford the conservators of museums their richest harvests of novelties and gems of excellence from all lands. These are the most powerful of all agencies in the education of the people, and they afford the most salutary stimulus to the artistic industries, especially when the producers have access typical examples of the best efforts in their arts by the generations that have passed away. ^
The effect of museums and systematic art education in France is spoken of by the reporters on porcelain in 1871, as follows: " The tradition of past generations of art-workers still lives in France and is kept alive, not only by countless examples of their skill, happily preserved in many noble Museums, but also by a systematized education of artists,