Last year, in November, Mr Gladstone gave an address at Greenwich upon the study of science and art. I may be permitted to record here how in that address he eloquently pressed upon his hearers that:-- “Beauty could and should be combined with economy and utility in all our industrial products; beauty was indeed a great element of utility; the trade of France was founded upon the beauty of that which it produces, and the economical application of means to ends; and that is due to the long culture and traditional application of the national mind to beauty in their products. The human nature in which we are cast was not endowed with all its marvellous faculties for nothing, and it is the due development of those faculties that constitutes the true and full idea of the duty of man in this world. It has been too much the habit in this country to regard beauty of production as something quite apart from usefulness of production, and at the same time to look upon the beauty which may result from human labour as a luxury reserved for the rich alone. But beauty has a commercial value, and its multiplication should form part of human education. We are all still at school, both young and old. We should then endeavour to work all things into beautiful forms, as did the ancient Greeks, so that artistic skill and love of the beautiful became an inheritance with them, formed part of their nature, accompanied their daily life, and entered into every kind of production. This is a time when all who are concerned in the welfare of the country feel it to be desirable that efforts should be made to give instruction, so as to improve the knowledge of the British artistic workman, and enable him to hold his position in the markets of the world. I confess,” said Mr Gladstone, “I should like to see a great deal of this work done by the London Companies. That they should strive to make themselves illustrious in the country by fulfilling the purpose for which they were founded, namely, developing the crafts, trades, and mysteries of this great country (as the Society of Arts has laboured to do for so many long years) to promote beauty and economy in the production of works of industry. But I believe,” Mr Gladstone continued, “that it is really in the individual that the secret of the whole matter lies. It is not as a body that you fill the benches of this room; you are here as individuals, and it is your thoughts and convictions, your own resolute efforts to improve, and energetically to direct your labours to the attainment of the highest end that constitutes the real resource to which we have to look. No auxiliaries can supplant, they can only aid individual exertion. Each individual worker may have a notion of doing his