Now, the Great Exhibition, looked at in its true light, is, we say once more, a huge academy for teaching men the laws of the material universe, by demonstrating the various triumphs of the useful arts over external nature. One great good the Exhibition assuredly must do, and that is to decrease the large amount of slop or inferior productions that are flooding the country, and which, in the rage for cheapness, are palmed off as equal to the handiwork of the most dexterous operatives. Were the public judges of workmanship—had they been made acquainted with the best work of the best workmen, and so possessed some standard of excellence by which to test the various kinds of labour, it would be impossible for the productions of the unskilful artisan to be brought into competition with those of the most skilful. Owing to the utter ignorance of the public, however, upon all such matters, the tricky employer is now enabled to undersell the honourable master by engaging inferior workmen, while the honourable master, in order to keep pace with the tricky employer, is obliged to reduce the wages of the more dexterous “hands.” Hence, we see the tendency of affairs at present is, for the worse to drag the better handicraftsmen down to their degradation, instead of the better raising the worse up to their pre-eminence. The sole remedy for this state of things is greater knowledge on the part of the public. Accustom the people continually to the sight of the best works, and they will no longer submit to have bad workmanship foisted upon them as equal to good. To those unversed in the “labour question,” this may appear but a small benefit, but to those who know what it is to inculcate a pride of art—to make the labourer find delight in his labour—to change him from a muscular machine into an intellectual artist, it will seem perhaps as great a boon as can be offered to working men. At present, workmen are beginning to feel that skill—the “art of industrial occupations”—is useless, seeing that want of skill is now beating them out of the market. One of the most eminent of the master shoemakers in London assured us that the skilled workmen in his business were fast disappearing before the children-workers in Northampton; and, indeed, we heard the same story from almost every trade in the metropolis. The bad are destroying the good, instead of the good improving the bad. The antidote for this special evil is a periodical exhibition of the works of industry and art. Make the public critics of industrial art, and they will be sure to call into existence a new race of industrial artists—but as it is, both the public and the workmen are the prey of greedy, tricky tradesman.