There cannot be any need that I should trace for you the conditions of
art that are directly founded on serviceableness of dress, and of
armour; but it is my duty to affirm to you, in the most positive
manner, that after recovering, for the poor, wholesomeness of food,
your next step toward founding schools of art in England must be in
recovering, for the poor, decency and wholesomeness of dress;
thoroughly good in substance, fitted for their daily work, becoming to
their rank in life, and worn with order and dignity. And this order
and dignity must be taught them by the women of the upper and middle
classes, whose minds can be in nothing right, as long as they are so
wrong in this matter us to endure the squalor of the poor, while they
themselves dress gaily. And on the proper pride and comfort of both
poor and rich in dress, must be founded the true arts of dress;
carried on by masters of manufacture no less careful of the
perfectness and beauty of their tissues, and of all that in substance
and in design can be bestowed upon them, than ever the armourers of
Milan and Damascus were careful of their steel.
Then, in the third place, having recovered some wholesome habits of
life as to food and dress, we must recover them as to lodging. I said
just now that the best architecture was but a glorified roof.
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