A Paper
ON
CRAFT GILDS,
READ BY
The Rev. W. CUNNINGHAM, D.D.,
At the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Societyfor the
Protection of Ancient Buildings.
There is, as I understand it, a double object in the work of thisSociety; it interests itself in the preservation of ancient buildings,partly because they are monuments which when once destroyed can neverbe replaced, and which bear record of the ages in which they were madeand the men who reared them; and in this sense all that survives fromthe past, good and bad, coarse or refined, has an abiding value. Butto some folks there seems to be a certain pedantry in gathering orstudying things that are important merely because they arecuriosities, a certain fancifulness in the frame of mind whichconcentrates attention on the errors of printers, or the sports ofnature, or the rubbish of the past. And much which has been preservedfrom the past is little better than rubbish, as the poet felt when hewrote:
"Rome disappoints me much; I hardly as yet understand, but Rubbishy seems the word that most exactly would suit it. All the foolish destructions, and all the sillier savings, All the incongruous things of past incompatible ages Seem to be treasured up here to make fools of the present and future."
Still, the view Clough takes is very superficial; there is a realhuman interest about even the rubbish heaps of the past if we haveknowledge enough to detect it; the dulness is in us who fail torecognise the interest which attaches to trifles from the past or toread the evidence they set before us.
But there is another reason why the vestiges of bygone days claim ourinterest—not as mere curiosities, but as in themselves beautifulobjects, excellently designed and skilfully fashioned. There arenumberless arts in which the men of the past were adepts; their skillas builders is patent to all, but specialists are quite asenthusiastic over the work that was done by mediæval craftsmen inother departments. Their wood-carving, and working in metals, thepurity of their dyes, the beauty of their glass, these are thingswhich move the admiration of competent critics in the present day.Machinery may produce more rapidly, more cheaply, more regular work,of more equal quality, and perhaps of higher finish, but it is workthat has lost the delicacy and grace of objects that were shaped byhuman hands and bear the direct impress of human care, and taste, andfancy. We may be interested in the preservation of the relics of thepast, not merely as curiosities from bygone ages, but as examples ofbeautiful workmanship and skilled manipulation to which the craftsmenof the present day cannot attain.
Most Englishmen—all those whose opinions are formed by the newspapersthey read—are so proud of the vast progress that has been made in thepresent century, that they do not sufficiently attend to the curiousfact that there are many arts that decay and are lost. In this countryit appears that the art of glass-making was introduced more than once,and completely died out again; the same is probably true of clothdressing and of dyeing. It seems to me a very curious problem toexamine what were the causes which led to the disappearance of theseparticular