In the present day there is much talk everywhere about art, and signs are not wanting that its vast mission as a humanising and civilising element in our national life is slowly being recognised. Even so-called domestic arts come in for a large share of attention, and the patterns of our wallpapers, and the harmonious colouring of carpets and tapestries, are a matter of thought and care in nearly every household where there is a trifle to spend on luxuries and any pretentions to taste. Yet curiously enough our jewellery, which is the art that lies nearest to us, and follows us wherever we go, and in which there is so much scope for the application of beautiful design and delicate workmanship, is left almost entirely out in the cold; and scarcely any attempt is made to apply to it the same laws, or judge it by the same standards, that we are attempting to set up in other things. All that we ask of our jewellery is that it shall be costly and fashionable; not costly because of the time and loving labour of the artist and workman who designed and produced it, but because of the material alone out of which it is made. It is this Philistine reverence for material that has done more than anything else to debase what was once an art to a mere meaningless and ostentatious display. I know of no more depressing sight to anyone who cares for art than to walk down an important street of shops in one of our big cities, looking in the jewellers' windows on the rubbish, from an artistic point of view, that is there spread out to tempt the public taste. If we could find ourselves by some touch of magic, suddenly under the rule of a stern artistic Socialism, where nothing was permitted to be bought or sold that was not either useful or beautiful, and were a destroying spirit sent one night through the length and breadth of the land, what a blight next morning would have fallen on the jewellers' windows, what few things would be left! But the shop windows are the gauge of the public taste, and it is not the tradesman who sells this costly rubbish, nor the manufacturer who has it made, who are to blame, but ourselves - the public - especially the women not only of to-day, but for the last hundred years or more, who have created the demand for this puerile stuff, and neglected what might be one of the most efficient means of developing the art-instincts of a nation.