THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE AND THE DEAF AND DUMB.
r. Gladstone, on being presented with the freedom of the Worshipful Company of Turners, gave an address from which the following is an abstract:—
I went a few days ago to examine the collection of works prepared at Messrs. Doulton's Pottery to be sent to the Exhibition at Philadelphia. Those works were delightful for the eye to behold. They were also highly satisfactory on the distinct ground that the price of production appeared to be so moderate; but, most of all were they delightful to me, because they were true products of the soil. There was a high faculty of art as it seemed to me developed in the production of those works, and that faculty of art had grown up in Lambeth. It was the Lambeth School of Art from which Messrs. Doulton derived an abundant supply of workers to whom they could intrust the preparation of those admirable objects. Among the works I would mention one. It was a beautiful piece of work produced by a youth who from his birth was both deaf and dumb. Now, consider what it is to be deaf and dumb; what a cutting off of resources; what a stinting of the means of training and improvement; and then consider, notwithstanding this, how it was through an inborn resolution in the centre of his being it was in the power of this lad to make himself a producer of works that could command admiration on the score of beauty, again showing how the energies, if rightly directed, can be forthcoming when required.