statue of Outram in Pall Mall; who have gazed upon the effigy of the great Duke of Wellington by Alfred Stevens in St Paul's; or have noted the growing power as well as popularity of Hamo Thornycroft, still a young man, cannot doubt that, apart from the successful labours of a naturalized but most patriotic foreigner and his school, Sir Edgar Boehm, the English chisel is in a fair way of emulating the progress of the English brush. Commercial prosperity in art, as in other things, moves in cycles. The years between 1870 and 1885 were very prosperous to English painters. The lean years followed then, and are still being experienced while these lines are written. As to the high prices given at Christie's and set forth elsewhere in this volume, they have been generally for the works of old and departed masters. With very few exceptions, the decade between 1886 and 1896 has witnessed none of those prices for contemporary artists which marked the preceding period. This, too, notwithstanding the standard of artistic work to-day is infinitely higher than it was; and that the paintings which were hung on the line and were the talk of the town thirty years ago, would have a very slight chance of being accepted at all to-day.[86] CHAPTER XXVI POPULAR CULTURE IN THE CRUCIBLE Translation into fact of ideals not less than transformations seen in the People's Palace, Whitechapel, and in the free libraries, originated by the Ewart Act, affecting as they do all contemporary life. The working of these in town and country. Proved connection between popular education and morality; what books free libraries like best. Analogous work for upper classes done by Mudie's, and by the London Library. Their progress traced. Help rendered by these to public servants and literary producers. Carlyle, Thackeray, etc. Eclectic and educating influences of these shown in detail. The new public and the new magazines. General review of influences at work. Great services of minor poets and prophets of the period. Not only transformations, but translations of ideals into fact, mark our age. A popular novelist gave a fancy sketch of a palace in which art, pleasure, and instruction should meet together to gladden the lives of the London poor. Almost as soon as could have been done by the genius of Aladdin's Lamp, the People's Palace shoots up in the Mile End Road.