Page:Self-help with illustrations of conduct and perseverance (IA selfhelpwithillu00smiliala).pdf/247

 teapot or water-jug. Articles in daily use amongst the people, which are before their eyes at every meal, may be made the vehicles of education to all, and minister to their highest culture. The most ambitious artist may thus confer a greater practical benefit on his countrymen than by executing an elaborate work which he may sell for thousands of pounds to be placed in some wealthy man's gallery, where it is hidden away from public sight. Before Wedgwood's time the designs which figured upon our china and stoneware were hideous both in drawing and execution, and he determined to improve both. Flaxman did his best to carry out the manufacturer's views. He supplied him from time to time with models and designs of various pieces of earthenware, the subjects of which were principally from ancient verse and history. Many of them are still in existence, and some are equal in beauty and simplicity to his after designs for marble. The celebrated Etruscan vases, specimens of which were to be found in public museums and in the cabinets of the curious, furnished him with the best examples of form, and these he embellished with his own elegant device. Stuart's 'Athens', then recently published, furnished him with specimens of the purest-shaped Greek utensils; of these he adopted the best, and worked them into shapes of elegance and beauty. Flaxman then saw that he was labouring in a great work—no less than the promotion of popular education; and he was proud, in after life, to allude to his early labours in this walk, by which he was enabled at the same time to cultivate his love of the beautiful, to diffuse a taste for art among the people, and to replenish