wife of the late Sir Harry Verney, and who, for a considerable time, made Claydon House her home for a portion of the year.

The sitting-room and bedroom occupied by her have therefore more than artistic interest. The latter, though small, is remarkable for its beautifully-designed overdoors, which somewhat resemble those of the north hall, while one is reminded of the personality of its great inhabitant by water-colour sketches of Crimean scenes in which she figured.

The sitting-room, though large, is not of the vast proportions of the public rooms on the ground floor, but it is interesting not only from a sentimental but also from an artistic point of view. The roof is more striking in design than that of any other room of its size, its chief feature being the introduction of three octagonal domes, which, curiously enough, show an unexpected leaning to the gothic in their details. In this room, as in the saloon, there is some relation between the inevitable marble mantelpiece and the rest of the design, though here the marble is not so open to objection. It is in fact so quiet and so harmonious that it more than merely suggests the hand of Robert Adam, even if it were not that its central ornament of

9 See illustration on page 261.

Claydon House, Bucks

three small temples is repeated on each of the over-doors.

The bedroom, known as the great red room, has a ceiling of somewhat the same design, but by no means of such beauty. It is, in fact, so wanting in the artistic character of that mentioned above that it is almost impossible to believe it to be by

the same man.

What makes it chiefly interesting is not its architecture, but its furniture, for it possesses a set of chairs by Manwaring-that much underrated, if not forgotten, contemporary of Chippendale. At some far-back period an attempt has been made to give these chairs a 'cosy' look by covering them with upholstery, which hangs almost to the ground, thus hiding the typical square, bracketed leg of Manwaring. This, as will be seen, was removed while the accompanying photograph was taken. 10 The design in the splats of these chairs is almost the same as in some of the illustrations in the Real Friend,' and are of a style which seems to have been used solely by Manwaring. I, at least, have never seen such a use of this kind of design in any chair in which the rest of the work did not also suggest him as the maker.

ΙΟ

10 See page 249.

ARTICLE VII-THE

HROUGHOUT all the stages of what we are pleased to call the growth and progress of western civilization there has underlain one dominant and absorbing principle, that of the minimizing of the value of the individual. The theory that what could be done by imperfect hands could be better done by perfected machinery has unquestionably worked out well. Nor, perhaps, has the worker suffered, suffered that is to say in pocket, though in the early days of the introduction of machinery, and notably in the cotton country, that was the fear and the outcry of the weaver. But though, doubtless, many more hands are employed to-day in every department of textile manufactures than were employed, say a hundred years ago, and though wages may be as good value to-day as then, yet it cannot but be allowed that the nation as a nation, the race as a race, has suffered a grave and irremediable loss. Where we had thinkers then we now have arithmeticians, where we had artists we now have machine mind

ers.

The artist nowadays (so far as textiles are concerned, I go no further) is the steam loom, and there is no poetry in steam. The man is but the instrument whose function it is to join up broken threads.

The European carpet weaver has even less personal interest in, and personal sympathy with, his allotted task than has the artisan whose business it is to colour-print linoleum. To him the weaving of a carpet is not an art-how should it be? It is merely the means of earning his daily wage. He has not to create-far from it. Did he seek to use his own initiative; did he endeavour to assert his own individuality; did he attempt, in short, to put aught of himself into the picture that is being unfolded on his loom, he would of necessity ruin the

whole work, and would promptly-and very rightly-lose his place. Such then is the degrading influence of machinery. It is the enemy of thought and of poetry, the murderer of artistic feeling and artistic desire, the all-conquering destroyer of individual expression and sentiment.

It is a subject on which much might be written, but here is not the place; suffice it to say that in the Orient this scourge has not as yet asserted its baleful ascendency. There the worker may still think for himself, may still bring the resources of his own mind to bear on the web growing up on the loom before him. It is true that even in the Orient the dawning tendency of the age is striving against the worker. The creation of large factories in different parts of various eastern lands, and the gaol influence that Sir George Birdwood so rightly and so strenuously deplores, are both potent factors balefully operating against the Indian weaver; and it is to be feared that the time is fast approaching when he too will become a mere part of a machine, a cog great wheel, like his brother of the west, and his now fanciful ideas be dolefully centred on an endless band and a dinner bell. Till that time comes, however, he is still his own man, living and rejoicing in the work that is his privilege. Given his loom, which is, as we know, so primitive an affair that he can manufacture it at the cost of a few pence; given his yarns or his silks-he demands no more of any man. Possibly he may have for his guidance a stencilled design from which to work. In the majority of cases, however, it is noteworthy that the oriental weaver carries his pattern in his memory. Generally speaking, he has wrought at the one design all his life, and that he has learned of his father; any deviations from it-changes in colouring, irregularities deliberately introduced, and other slight emendations and alterations