Conditions that can not be altered must be endured while they last, but the first step toward their improvement must be made in gaining a knowledge of the facts as they are. This will be the surest foundation upon which to build all individual effort in the future.
Who that has felt the embarrassing doubts and contradictory impulses, peculiar to modern study, can have failed to look disconsolately away from his own surroundings to those far-off times when craft knowledge was acquired under circumstances calculated to awaken the brightest instincts of the artist? The imaginary picture calls up the ancient carver at his bench, cheerfully blocking out images of leaves and animals in his busy workshop, surrounded with the sights and sounds of country life. His open door frames a picture of the village street, alive with scenes of neighborly interest. From the mill-wheel comes a monotonous music making pleasant cadence to his own woody notes, or the blacksmith's hammer rings his cheery counterpart in their companionable duet.
Short as is the distance between workshop and home, it provides a world of beauty and incident; suggesting to his inventive mind the subjects suitable for his work. Birds, beasts, and flowers are as familiar to him as the tools with which he works, or the scent and touch of the solid oak he handles daily. There, among the aromatic chips, he spends the long working hours of a summer day; varied by the occasional visits of a rather exacting Father from the neighboring monastery; or perhaps some idle and gossiping acquaintance who looks in to hold a long parley with his hand upon the latch. Or it may be that the mind turns to another carver, at work in one of the many large colonies of craftsmen which sprang up amid the forest of scaffolding surrounding the slow and mysterious growth of some noble cathedral. Here all is organized activity—the best men to be found in the country have been banded together and commissioned to do their best, for what seems, in modern eyes, a ridiculously small rate of pay. Some are well known and recommended; others, as traveling artists, are seeking change of experience and daily bread. Foreigners are here, from France, Italy, and the East. All have been placed under the direction of competent masters of their craft; men who have long since served their apprenticeship to its mysteries, and earned an honorable position in its gilds.
Here the carver works in an atmosphere of exhilarating emulation. Stone-carver and wood-carver vie with each other in producing work that will do credit to their respective brotherhoods. Painter and decorator are busy giving to the work of their hands what must have appeared to those concerned an aspect of heavenly beauty; the most precious materials not being considered too costly for use in its adornment.
What an interchange of artistic experience!—interchange between those of similar craft from different countries, and the stimulating or refining influence of one craft upon another—sculptors, goldsmiths, wood-carvers, and painters, all uniting in a sympathetic agreement to do their utmost for the high authorities who brought them together; with a common feeling of reverence, alike for the religious traditions which formed the motives of their work and the representatives of that religion in the persons of their employers.
What an endless variety of interruptions must have been common! all of a kind eminently calculated to stimulate the imagination. Municipal functions, religious festivals with their splendid gatherings and processions, the exciting events of political contest, often carried to the point of actual combat, to say nothing of the frequent Saint's day holidays, enjoyed by the craftsman in jovial social intercourse. All and every scene clothed in an outward dress of beauty, ranging from the picturesque roughness of the village inn to the magnificent pageantry of a nobleman's display, or the majestic surroundings of an archi-episcopal reception.
From dreams of the past with its many-sided life and background of serious beauty, we turn with feelings almost bordering on despair to the possibilities of the present. Not only has the modern craftsman to master the technicalities of his business, but he must become student as well. No universally accepted form of his art offers him a ready-made language; he is left fatally free to choose style, period, or nationality, from examples of every conceivable kind of carving, in museums, photographs, and buildings. As proud but distracted heir to all, he may cultivate any one of them, from Chinese to the latest style of exhibition art. For his studies he must travel half a dozen miles before he can reach fields, trees, and animals in anything like inspiring conditions. He must find in books and photographs the botanical lineaments of foliage and flowers, of which he mainly seeks to know the wild life and free growth. With but one short life allowed him in which to make his poor effort in a single direction, he must yet study the history of his craft, compare styles, and endeavor with all the help he can get to shape some course for himself. Can he be assured of selecting the right one, or out of the multitude of counselors and contradictory views, is there not a danger of taking a false step? No wonder, if in the cloudy obscurity of his doubts, he sometimes feels a tired desire to abandon the problem as too intricate to be resolved.