As one passes down the long college corridors, the eyes fall upon palm
and statue, upon frieze and fresco, and the carbon copies of immortal
paintings. Everywhere there are the inspirations of sculpture and
architecture, of music, literature, and art. Beauty is in and about the
place in which one thinks and works. This is the undying charm of
Oxford--the gathering traditions of centuries, the gleaming spires, the
age-worn walls and buttresses, the clinging vine, the tremulous light
and shadow on the ancient halls, the sculpture of porch and clerestory,
and the light that falls through richly tinted windows.
This beauty should not be monopolized by any one class. About the places
where we work, we should have, as far as possible, something of the
beauty of the world. We should have wide, shaded streets and parks, even
in great cities; towers and pinnacles; sky-lines of vigor, grace, and
massive strength. Cannot department stores be artistically fashioned and
built? Cannot market-houses have arches and arabesques? May not even the
Bourse have something about it suggestive of great art? Cannot our
streets have curves and storied cross-ways? Cannot porters and draymen
have somewhat to arouse and satisfy aesthetic instincts? Cannot our
day-laborers be granted vision?
Why should we have the Gothic cathedral, with its exquisite traceries
and carvings, pillars and reredos and screen, for men to pray in, one or
two hours a week, and the hideous, grime-covered, foul-smelling,
overheated factories, in which men and women spend their working-lives?
This is what Christianity must do: it must implant joy and beauty, as
well as honesty and fidelity, in the way, place, and thought of work!
When religion, education, art, and brotherly affection have joined hands
in a charmed circle, we shall have new ideas of working-places, as well
as of praying-places, and of living-places! It is not enough that a
factory should be situated, as the best factories now are, in the open
country, with sunshine and fresh air. The blockhouse parallelograms and
squares should be replaced by something that has intrinsic beauty and
the haunting completeness of memory and association, so that the place
where a man works shall no more be to him a nightmare, but the
atmosphere and inspiration of his dreams!
And those we love shall work beside us! Here is another thought: Shall
all association in work be arbitrary? Is there not a more human way than
the chain-gang way? Could not friends work more together, so that one's
daily work should be, not a time of separation from all we love most,
but a time of intellectual sympathy and helpfulness, of companionship
and true-hearted loyalty? This, and many other good things, it is not
too much to hope for. Truly, as Morris writes, "_The Day is Coming_."
"_Then a man shall work and bethink him, and rejoice in
the deeds of his handy
Nor yet come home in the even too faint and weary to
stand._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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