The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

was muddy, inaccurate in all its forms, and clumsily cut, if at all. And the old

Venetian was justly proud of it. For there is this difference between the English

and Venetian workman, that the former thinks only of accurately matching

his patterns, and getting his curves perfectly true and his edges perfectly sharp,

and becomes a mere machine for rounding curves and sharpening edges, while

the old Venetian cared not a whit whether his edges were sharp or not, but

he invented a new design for every glass that he made, and never molded a

handle or a lip without a new fancy in it. And therefore, though some Venetian glass is ugly and clumsy enough, when made by clumsy and uninventive workmen, other Venetian glass is so lovely in its forms that no price is too great for it; and we never see the same form in it twice. Now you cannot have the finish and the varied form too. If the workman is thinking about his edges, he cannot be thinking of his design; if of his design, he cannot think of his edges. Choose whether you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, and choose at the same moment whether you will make the worker a man or a grindstone. Nay, but the reader interrupts me�"If the workman can design beautifully,

I would not have him kept at the furnace. Let him be taken away and made a

gentleman, and have a studio, and design his glass there, and I will have it

blown and cut for him by common workmen, and so I will have my design and my finish too."

All ideas of this kind are founded upon two mistaken suppositions: the first, that one man's thoughts can be, or ought to be, executed by another man's hands; the second, that manual labor is a degradation, when it is governed by

intellect.

On a large scale, and in work determinable by line and rule, it is indeed

both possible and necessary that the thoughts of one man should be carried

out by the labor of others; in this sense I have already defined the best archi

tecture to be the expression of the mind of manhood by the hands of child

hood. But on a smaller scale, and in a design which cannot be mathematically

defined, one man's thoughts can never be expressed by another: and the dif

ference between the spirit of touch of the man who is inventing, and of the

man who is obeying directions, is often all the difference between a great and

a common work of art. How wide the separation is between original and sec

ondhand execution, I shall endeavor to show elsewhere; it is not so much to

our purpose here as to mark the other and more fatal error of despising manual

labor when governed by intellect; for it is no less fatal an error to despise it

when thus regulated by intellect, than to value it for its own sake. We are

always in these days endeavoring to separate the two; we want one man to be

always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentle

man, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be

thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen,

in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other

despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers,

and miserable workers. Now it is only by labor that thought can be made

healthy, and only by thought that labor can be made happy, and the two cannot

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THE STONES OF VENICE / 1333

be separated with impunity. It would be well if all of us were good handi

craftsmen in some kind, and the dishonor of manual labor done away with

altogether; so that though there should still be a trenchant distinction of race

between nobles and commoners, there should not, among the latter, be a

trenchant distinction of employment, as between idle and working men, or

between men of liberal and illiberal professions. All professions should be

liberal, and there should be less pride felt in peculiarity of employment, and

more in excellence of achievement. And yet more, in each several8 profession,

no master should be too proud to do its hardest work. The painter should grind

his own colours; the architect work in the mason's yard with his men; the

master manufacturer be himself a more skillful operative than any man in his

mills; and the distinction between one man and another be only in experience

and skill, and the authority and wealth which these must naturally and justly obtain.