can only imitate and never surpass. It must, I think, be conceded that our forefathers had better conceptions of the fitting and the beautiful in some ways of work than we have. We have only to compare the Cathedrals which they built for the worship of God, with our uninspired ugly modern Churches and chapels. We know that they appreciated the beauties of the landscape, and that they loved the grand old English trees, which our short-*sighted County Councils are destroying every year. Nothing can be more pitiful to see than the ruthless and stupid cutting down of noble trees all over the country, under the rule that their branches shall not hang over the road. Thus, every grateful place of shade is ruined, as well as much natural beauty. Our ancestors, more individually free, showed finer taste. The roofs of their houses were picturesquely thatched or tiled, and gabled,—their eyes were never affronted by the dull appearance of cheap slate and corrugated iron. They left us a heritage of many lovely and lasting things; but it is greatly to be feared that we shall not do likewise to those that come after us. We are destroying far more than we are creating.
And when we come to the higher phases of intellectual work, we find that though we have plenty of "schools of art" we have no great British artists such as Gainsborough, Reynolds or Romney. And though every one is supposed to know how to read and write, we have no great literature such as that of Shakespeare, Scott, Thackeray or Dickens. These belonged to the days of non-compulsory Education. Poetry, too, the divinest of the arts,
