artisanship." Please explain the professional sense in which you use this term.

A. Certainly. I have referred to cardinal principles in artlife, as in all life. Let us look closer. Is not all creation art? Plato exclaims, "These things that we say are done by Nature are really done by Divine Art." They are material atoms deliberately arranged by order and system. And this is "Art." That is to say, some latent ideals, progressive principles, systematic methods, are giving beautiful materialization an expression to the Divine Will. Accident cannot explain such consistent order, design, and definitely attained delight as we experience at each bursting spring. A rose reduced to powder is no longer a "rose." The "rose" has disappeared. What was it? whence came? whither gone?

Evidently some informing spirit had willed those material particles into such space relations as conveyed meaning and delight to our spirits; therefore, it was communication, or "language"-Divine self-expression. There were also order, harmony, unity, balance, proportion, variety-in-unity, appropriateness, and ideality "expressed." So long as God's art was undisturbed, in the powder, all observers adored and wondered at it. Drive that ideal and those latent principles out of the atoms, and you have murdered the rose! You have driven back its spirit to God who gave it. Only dust and ugliness remain in your hand. This is what ruthless tyrants are doing to divine ideals of beauty in human society and labor—depriving them of beautiful principles and reducing them to wretched material atoms! A community that so acts drives its best workers and producers elsewhere. The religious persecutions in France exiled the best and most skilled citizens from France, and brought industrial light and competition to alert rivals. The persistence of force is known, and so with great ideas or ideals. I doubt the destruction of any divine ideal-even of a rose or a song-bird. What persistency and fecundity of ideal in every flower! I believe we will find them all again in the bosom of the Creator when we appear before Him; for, with infinite space and foresight evident, annihilation is illogical.

The very artist of earth who has seen and caught correctly the soul of that rose, into his own soul, can resurrect its spirit visually upon the canvas and give back life to the dust. Why should not the Infinite Artist do the same?

Our first duty is to awaken the young and the workers to ideals of Nature and to ideal principles and methods of beauty in Nature; the elements of grace and charm in motion, measure, growth, form, color, light, texture, arrangement. These are all divine. Sometimes the Creator seeks the beauty of use (as in a cabbage); but sometimes the use of beauty (as in a lily). Who dare say Him nay, or antagonize them to each other? Blessed the soul of aspiration that combines them! This is the divine desire of the "artist-artisan." God Himself-the first member-was founder of our Brotherhood; for do we not see beauty and use together in the "apple-trees" of Paradise? We must nurture (not nip) in the child's soul the mighty faculties that accompany this gracious gift of natural beauty: observation, appreciation, perception, good judgment, taste, selection, arrangement, adaptation-most of all ideality, imagination, originality, keen sensitiveness, decorativeness, and invention. This makes them derive more direct happiness and joy from natural sources; it makes them more alive to suggestions of beauty in work, more contented and valuable as producers. Life now takes on a richer and more glorious meaning to the worker, for he now sees more clearly the methods and meaning of creation and becomes a co-worker with the great Creator. What can bring a truer inspiration to right service? The employer who deprives the soul of this inspiration murders it, to make it a hopeless and dreary drudge or machine, and he should be restrained by law as much as a monster or a maniac. The "artist-artisan," or beautiful worker, is the ideal producer (and not a parasite), and so he is the "ideal" man.

Q. You think, then, that William Morris and John Ruskin were among the truest prophets of progress that the nineteenth century produced?

A. I do, certainly. And I go further-that similar men, in all ages, were the truest prophets of all ages. All Nature, of

course, is a divine workshop and artist-artisan school. Jesus was a practical constructive "carpenter" most of his life-save the last three years, when he publicly but modestly lectured for the oppressed poor and endured heroic martyrdom for a few far-reaching divine principles. Ruskin and Morris labored in much the same spirit and endured very similar obloquy, criticism, and ostracism-with an essential Christianity greater by far than most official politics or priestcraft. But so also had many noble artist-artisans done through all time in a holy quest for beauty or its eternal principles, tangibly embodied. They became the life-marrow of labor, in all those ages, and created really enduring wealth; they preserved history, perpetuated the best ideals, and both inspired and educated posterity by practical performances. Egypt, Greece, Italy, and Japan have been full of them. What were mighty Phidias, Praxiteles, Raphael, Da Vinci, Angelo, Cellini, the wonderful Ghiberti, whose beautiful bronze gates were called "fit for Paradise"? Who the Della Robbias, Stradivariuses, Varrochios, etc.? Who were the army of beautiful illuminators, carvers, cathedral builders, that by constancy and devotion heriocally preserved learning and upreared the glorious Gothic cathedrals -poems in stone of the divine adoration they felt for the Holy Spirit? Many were martyrs outright, like Palissy and Jean Francois Millet. Yes, verily, often "destitute, afflicted, tormented, in dens and caves of earth," they ("of whom the world was not worthy") through faith in Beauty "wrought righteousness, stopped the mouths of [industrial] lions, out of weakness were made strong," and "endured as seeing that which (to oppressors of labor) is ever invisible"! Europe, and even Asia, is learning to honor those great prophets and martyrs of industry-divine teachers and producers of a "heavenly city" yet "to come," where all men shall be brothers in the maintenance of a juster society, and where the humblest-hearted producer may yet be "first" in the estimate of the Eternal Judge. They are planting schools of artist-artisanship everywhere in their industrial centers.

Q. Will you give us your ideas of what might be ac

complished by an intelligently directed artist-artisan movement?

A. With the great material means of America there is no reason why this intellectual and moral light in industry should be withheld; for it is national suicide not to provide it liberally. The young people of both sexes, in all strata of society, are really in need of sound taste and executive skill in a thousand forms of inventive and industrial life. Many branches are starving for it. Much is left too late in life to learn, or too superficial and affected, often illumined by principle or unfortified by practise. Bad systems of teaching make dry, sterile, and mimetic what should be vital, inspiring, and creative.

The "artist-artisan" idea should be an organic part of our school system, but vitally and for development, not merely for a little immediate money nor for manual mimicries. Through many years of direct operation among many nationalities, I have found our American stock just as alert, sensitive, susceptible of beauty, taste, and executive skill as any; and rather more observant of Nature, sensitive to suggestion, refined in general culture, and certainly much more eager and willing to advance. What they have needed most was really first-class instruction, example, and opportunity, and to be delivered from quack syndicates. Lack of practise and of artistic expression makes our youth ignorant of high standards and awkward and timid as to personal possibilities. This would easily pass into genuine courage and creativeness if noble artistartisan schools, nobly led, could be scattered generously among the people. Everything would depend on sound principles and right leadership; for, as Napoleon puts it: "There's no use for us to set guardians-unless we guard the guards!"

TOPICS OF THE TIMES.

By B. O. FLOWER.

THE ETERNAL VANGUARD OF PROGRESS.

"Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own." "I feel almost disheartened at the outlook," said an earnest reformer a short time ago; "for the people everywhere seem listless and indifferent, when, indeed, they have not succumbed to the lust for commercial gain or selfish advancement. And saddest of all is the absence of any considerable number of leaders who are consecrating life to the service of altruism and to the education and elevation of the whole people. Ruskin and Morris in England," he continued, “Hugo in France, Liebknecht in Germany, and Henry George and Edward Bellamy in America have left us, while the voices of many who have charmed and inspired us in the past are silent now." This gentleman echoed an age-long plaint of the children of God in moments when the Presence seems withdrawn, when wrong appears to be victorious, and when the coarse, scornful, and derisive cry of triumphant animalism and greed drowns the warnings and entreaties of that pure idealism which alone makes nations or individuals truly great or lastingly beneficent to the race.

Far back in the history of Israel, when King Ahab refused to walk in the old paths of national rectitude, and, yielding to the voice of Jezebel, persisted in following after strange gods while seeking utterly to destroy the prophets of truth and justice, we find even so essentially great a soul as the mighty prophet Elijah yielding to the subtle, deadly voice of despair and crying to the all-seeing One that he only was left among those who had not forsaken the covenant of righteousness. When, lo! from the hidden chambers of the Infinite spake the voice of Truth, declaring that in Israel were seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal. This voice was not meant for Elijah or his age alone. It was the august declara