Now, these are the exceptions. The rest is what really amounts to
the dwellings of all our people, which are built without any hope of
beauty or care for it--without any thought that there can be any
pleasure in the look of an ordinary dwelling-house, and also (in
consequence of this neglect of manliness) with scarce any heed to
real convenience. It will, I hope, one day be hard to believe that
such houses were built for a people not lacking in honesty, in
independence of life, in elevation of thought, and consideration for
others; not a whit of all that do they express, but rather
hypocrisy, flunkeyism, and careless selfishness. The fact is, they
are no longer part of our lives. We have given it up as a bad job.
We are heedless if our houses express nothing of us but the very
worst side of our character both national and personal.

This unmanly heedlessness, so injurious to civilisation, so unjust
to those that are to follow us, is the very thing we want to shake
people out of. We want to make them think about their homes, to
take the trouble to turn them into dwellings fit for people free in
mind and body--much might come of that I think.

Now, to my mind, the first step towards this end is, to follow the
fashion of our nation, so often, so VERY often, called practical,
and leaving for a little an ideal scarce conceivable, to try to get
people to bethink them of what we can best do with those makeshifts
which we cannot get rid of all at once.

I know that those lesser arts, by which alone this can be done, are
looked upon by many wise and witty people as not worth the notice of
a sensible man; but, since I am addressing a society of artists, I
believe I am speaking to people who have got beyond even that stage