But how, one may ask, can this be avoided? Adjoining plots of land may belong to different owners, contiguous buildings are built for different purposes, by those with much or little to spend, designed by different architects--how can one expect them to conform to one artistic scheme? Perhaps that is too much to expect. Can we even ask that they should not be violently opposed to one another, not mutually destructive? Yes. But this can be secured in only one way. Local authorities must be given, or must take upon themselves, the duty of controlling building operations in all public places. They would not, and could not, be arbitrary: they would need to consider many difficulties, and they could not rightly impose any restrictions which would make the construction of suitable premises impossible within the reasonable means of those for whom they were being built. All they could undertake would be to co-ordinate proposed work, to advise, and to prohibit flagrant affronts to public good taste. Let a local committee composed of the best architects and the hardest-headed business-men in the town, with a disinterested man of taste--a parson, a farmer, a writer--as chairman, be formed. Much good could be done in this way. In domestic architecture we cannot expect much attention to be given to artistic matters in these days when it is difficult to obtain a sufficiency of houses of any kind. Nevertheless, there is one suggestion with great practical possibilities. It is that of the novelist Mr. J. J. Connington, who proposes that instead of standardization of design small parts capable of being erected in a large number of ways should be standardized. The readers who are interested are referred to _Nordenholt’s Million_ for further particulars of this most interesting idea. X The most significant tendency of art and the greatest danger, which operates in all fields, is, therefore, that commercialism, mass-production, standardization, and the heeding of large volumes of demand will lead to an increase in the quantity of art-production but a decrease in the average of its quality, unless the evils of the system are counteracted by certain developments, the chief of which are education, co-operation, and the birth of a new attitude with regard to art-ideals. Our attitude towards the arts must lead us to relate them more closely to our other interests and, as a corollary, the different kinds and different values of artistic enjoyment must be synthesized. We desire neither to set art upon a pedestal of superiority nor to despise it as a recreative frivolity. We need to realize on the one hand that all human activities possess of a necessity positive or negative artistic significance which we cannot avoid; even though we consciously ignore art, we are subconsciously and indirectly influenced. Further, we cannot disregard the close economic relationship between the artistic and the merely utilitarian.