THE STUDY OF BEAUTY, AND ART IN LARGE TOWNS. TWO PAPERS BY T. C. HORSFALL, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN RUSKIN, D.C.L., LL.D., HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY Liy INTRODUCTION. I HAVE been asked by Mr. Horsfall to write a few words of introduction to the following papers. The trust is a frank one, for our friendship has been long and intimate enough to assure their author that my feelings, and even practical convictions in many respects differ from his, and in some, relating especially to the subjects here treated of, are even opposed to his; so that my private letters (which, to speak truth, he never attends to a word of) are little more than a series of exhortations to him to sing-once for all-the beautiful Cavalier ditty of "Farewell, Manchester," and pour the dew of his artistic benevolence on less recusant ground. Nevertheless, as assuredly he knows much more of his own town than I do, and as his mind is evidently made up to do the best he can for it, the only thing left for me to do is to help him all I can in the hard task he has set himself-or, if I can't help, at least to bear witness to the goodness of the seed he has set himself to sow among thorns. For indeed, the principles on which he is working are altogether true and sound; and the definitions and defence of them, in this pamphlet, are among the most important pieces of Art teaching which I have ever met with in recent English literature,-in past Artliterature, there cannot of course be anything parallel to them, since the difficulties to be met and mischiefs to be dealt with are wholly of to-day. And in all the practical suggestions and recommendations given in the following pages I not only concur, but am myself much aided as I read them, in the giving form to my own plans for the museum at Sheffield; nor do I doubt that they will at once commend themselves to every intelligent and candid reader. But, to my own mind, the statements of principle on which these recommendations are based are far the more valuable part of the writings, for these are true and serviceable for all time, and in all places while in simplicity and lucidity they are far beyond any usually to be found in essays on Art, and the political significance of the laws thus defined is really I believe here for the first time rightly grasped and illustrated. Of these, however, the one whose root is deepest and range widest will be denied by many readers, and doubted by others, so that it may be well to say a word or two farther in its interpretation and defence—the saying, namely, at page 22, that "faith cannot dwell in hideous towns," and that "familiarity with beauty is a most powerful aid to belief." This is a curious saying, in front of the fact that the primary force of infidelity in the Renaissance times was its pursuit of carnal beauty, and that nowadays (at least so far as my own experience reaches,) more faith may be found in the back streets of most cities than in the fine ones. Nevertheless the saying is wholly true; first, because carnal beauty is not true beauty; secondly, because, rightly judged, the fine streets of most modern towns are more hideous than the back ones; lastly, and this is the point on which I must enlarge, because universally the first condition to the believing there is Order in Heaven, is the Sight of Order upon Earth; Order, that is to say, not the result of physical law, but of some spiritual power prevailing over it, as, to take instances from my own old and favourite subject,—the ordering of the clouds in a beautiful sunset, which corresponds to a painter's invention of them; or the ordering of the colours on a bird's wing, or of the radiations of |