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 far as the needs and habits of the present time are unchanged, as models of form, not to be incorporated with our vernacular, but which we should recognise as successful form, and discover the plastic secrets of its shape.

With this possession we may borrow what forms we will—shapes of the Ind and far Cathay—the whole wide world is open to us—of past imaginations and of the dreams of our own.

But without this master-key the copying is slavish, and the bondage of the task is both cruel and destructive.

Cruel, because mindless work can be reproduced more rapidly than thoughtful work can be invented, and the rate of production affects the price of other articles of similar kind, so that the one dictates what the other shall receive; and destructive, because it treats the craftsman as a mere machine, whose 277