Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/134

120 shaped to all the varying tastes and fashions of the world of luxury and wealth. Not that luxury or wealth has in itself the mental power to originate these tasteful designs, but the mind to appreciate and means to enjoy them when produced by that high art which would have starved in the sackcloth of mediocrity in all ages, had it not been for the favoured few who could reward the divinest conceptions and the finest touches of the painter or sculptor. How it would have astonished good Queen Bess and her court and courtiers if they could have seen what wares Wedgwood and the Elkingtons would bring within the reach and daily use of the common people! We could fancy she would have involuntarily put one hand to her throne and the other to her crown to steady them, if she could have seen the mechanics of the kingdom drinking their beer out of Wedgwood's pottery instead of their cow-horn mugs. But when she came to see small tradesmen drinking tea or coffee instead of beer and pouring it into china cups from Elkington's silver-faced tea-pots, she must have believed the world coming to an end. This popularizing of art and taste is perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of the present age. In some directions and respects it has outrun the diffusion of other branches of popular education. There are thousands of beer-drinkers who handle