A time arrives in the development of the world's work when, in addition to the perfect workmanship and beauty of the world's wares, the embellishment of the world's work itself should become the object of ambition of those who carry the world's work on, an embellishment which may take one of two forms, but should take both: the embellishment by material means and the embellishment by ideas. In embellishment by material means the senses are satisfied and the imagination touched, and we have noble roads and houses, noble cities and harbours, noble wharves and warehouses, noble modes and means of communication, and noble modes and means of creativeness, and, crowning and giving significance to all, crowning and expressive ceremonial: in embellishment by ideas we have the illimitation which is the characteristic of the imagination, and enables us to see and to create wholes and relations which surpass the sweep of the senses, and are visible to the eye of reason only; it is thus that we have the vision, and see all man's work in its entirety and as part of the universal process of creation. Thinking, then, dispassionately of the world, not for my country's sake or another's, but for man's, I am haunted by the vision of this its industrial life, as the matter of man's art to-day. And there come to me the murmur of the beat of far-off waves on an unknown shore, the rustle and the struggle of winds through unknown forests and over wide spaces of inhabitable land: I see the masts of shipping far asunder, solitary, on the wide seas, or clustered into peopled harbours: I see the busy hives of industry, glittering like fanes of light by the river's side or bridging them--all part and parcel of the ocean, the land, and the air, obedient like them to the cadency of thought, as day and night, the seasons and the years, beat out their sequences and bear life onward into the future, or leave it, silent, in the irrecoverable past. Such a world, such a wealth of animate forces, such a vision, the creation in part of the unknown force, God, in part of man, who is ourselves, _such_ is the vision upon which, pending the arrival of the shadow which is Death, we should fix the eyes of Art, permeating all, embracing all, producing all, even as would do, were he us, the supreme force, God. As of the world of man's work, so of all the visions within the vision--build with the instincts of fitness and beauty, build & await the Shadow: to-day again, for a time, comes the light, again and yet again. In the infinitude of sequences the soul rests, and whilst it rests, resting, it disappears, even as in life, into sleep, into Death. Build and await the Shadow. Such as I dream it is the Vision of Life, such the Vision of man's world within it, such the Vision of Art, such, or something like it, the Vision of the Arts and Crafts Movement, its inception, its history, and its aims.