Japanese porcelain is a more difficult subject for study than the Chinese, owing to this circumstance: About the year 1211 or 1212, a Japanese artist crossed over to China, to study the processes by means of which the Chinese had reached such surprising excellence. His name, according to Dr. Hoffman, was Katosiro-ouye-mon. Through him the art received in Japan a new impulse, new knowledge, new methods. It may be of service to us to know that the wonderful perfection achieved by the Japanese in this art was due not only to the skill of her artists, but also, and more, to the fact that the government gave direct, persistent, and liberal pecuniary aid to the industry. Genius will, of course, work its miracles; but, if we in the United States are to reach excellence in art-work, it will be, must be, only fitful and short-lived, if it is to depend upon individual effort or chance patronage: only by means of the persistent and intelligent fostering of a state, whose life is perennial, can the greatest things be accomplished. There are fanatics who hold to free trade in poetry, invention, art, patent-right, copyright. No doubt they mean well, but the nation may beware of them. The art-museums now being established cannot fail to do good; but they will fall lamentably short of their aims if they are not directly and powerfully aided by the state. To illustrate this, let me refer to the fine collections known as the Kensington Museum and the British Museum, in England. Both are the creations of the state, and both have been generously treated. It would have taken a hundred or a thousand years of individual contributions to accomplish what the Kensington Museum has done in twenty. Already, it is a great and noble school--teaching by example--of _art applied to the uses of life_; and already it has placed some of the manufacturers of England in the first place of the world. I wish, then, to repeat that the work which Katosiro did would not have been done--could not have been done--by his own individual effort. He not only added vastly to the satisfaction and delight and riches of his own people, but he has given us cause to bless the Government of Japan for the satisfaction and delight we, too, are enabled to draw from his work. Pennsylvania is taking the lead here. With a keen perception and a profound wisdom, that State, I am told, has united with the city of Philadelphia to found and maintain a school of applied art, which cannot fail to be an incalculable good to the industries and the happiness of her people. Depending upon individual contributions, Boston and New York must struggle far behind, and finally dwindle away. We need, in every great industrial centre, a "Council on Instruction," which shall provide models of art-work, and teaching enough to make these models plain to industrial seekers.