CERAMIC ARTS GENERAL SURVEY. 
11 
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 andraises tho Stand 
ard of public taste, increasing the appreciation of the public 
and the deinand for really meritorious works, thus reacting 
beneficially upon the iudustries. 
There is a great multiplicity of sources of designs for Orna 
ments 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 
not lose such- influences as may be exerted by the possession 
of sets of casts of architectural decoratious, of sculpture and 
bas-reliefs, all of which may be procured for little above the 
cost of the rflaterials and transportation. The general influ- 
ence 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 ex 
erted by the South Kensington Museum upon its millions of 
visitors? And we are not to lose sight of the influence, also, 
of the great exhibitious which bring together in friendly 
rivalry the master-efforts of the most skilfnl artisans of the 
time, and afford the conservators of museums their richest 
harvests of uovelties and gems of excellence irom 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 iudustries, especially when the producers have access 
to 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 couutless 
examples of their skill, happily preserved in many noble 
museums, but also by a systematized education of artists,