Mr. Edwin H. Blashfield gave the first one of his lectures on Decorative Art in the Jefferson Laboratory last night before a large audience. President Eliot spoke of the founding of this course of lectures and introduced Mr. Blashfield. The subject of the lecture was "The Study of the Renaissance," particular attention being paid to Italy.

The chief reason why the productions of the Renaissance are so beautiful and so far superior to what came before or what has come since is that the one great desire of the people of Italy at that time was to obtain beauty in everything. Art was not to the Italians of the fifteenth century what it is to us,- something desirable, but not indispensable. It was to them more necessary than many of the comforts of life; it even stood above the necessities. They desired that everything around them should be beautiful.

It has generally happened that when a nation has had an overruling desire for one thing it has found that for which it desired. Every age,- the period of Crusades, of the Reformation, and of the Renaissance, has had one dominant enthusiasm, sometimes hard to understand, but if national, always having a lasting effect. The Renaissance is the only period where pictorial art was the chief form of national expression and so it is but natural that this time should have brought out the best works of art.

Then the Italians were lovers of beauty. Here they stand in strong contrast to other races of artists, the French for example, who have been said to be "beauty blind,"- that is, they prefer making a picture great by their method of expression, to painting only a reproduction of a scene beautiful in itself.

All Italy was wrapped up in art in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Everybody, workmen as well as noblemen, took an interest in the beauty of the cities and in the beauty of every little thing. It was part of their daily life.

In one thing the Italy of the Renaissance stood far in advance of us, in that with them art was principally seen in the decoration of public buildings, while with us nearly all our art is in private houses.

At the end of the lecture Mr. Blashfield showed a number of stereopticon views of typical pieces of Renaissance sculpture. The second lecture will be given tonight in the Jefferson Laboratory on "The City of the Renaissance."