Read "Hopes & Fears for Art" by William Morris online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
HEREAFTER I hope in another lecture to have the pleasure of laying before / you an historical survey of the lesser, or as they are called the / Decorative Arts, and I must confess it would have been pleasanter to me / to have begun my talk with you by entering at once upon the subject of / the history of this great industry; but, as I have something to say in a / third lecture about various matters connected with the practice of / Decoration among ourselves in these days, I feel that I should be in a / false position before you, and one that might lead to confusion, or / overmuch explanation, if I did not let you know what I think on the / nature and scope of these arts, on their condition at the present time, / and their outlook in times to come. In doing this it is like enough that / I shall say things with which you will very much disagree; I must ask you / therefore from the outset to believe that whatever I may blame or / whatever I may praise, I neither, when I think of what history has been, / am inclined to lament the past, to despise the present, or despair of the / future; that I believe all the change and stir about us is a sign of the / world's life, and that it will lead-by ways, indeed, of which we have no / guess-to the bettering of all mankind.
_Delivered before the Trades' Guild of Learning_, _December_ 4, 1877.