OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 "As becomes its title, Mr. Leland's book will be found extremely 
 interesting to teachers, for it is almost entirely founded on practice. Its 
 educational schemes owe very much to Froebel, it is true, but while Mr. 
 Leland supports it by much wholesome evidence of good fruit, as well as 
 persuasive reasoning, he is keen to detect the faults of the Kindergarten 
 system. There is great force in his remark on the monotony of certain 
 mental exercises or 'games' in Kindergarten schools, which have too 
 much of drill or discipline in them to be really recreative and pleasing. 
 Mr. Leland's fundamental aim is to develop the power of learning. 
 Before learning children should acquire the art of learning. And if the 
 ready reader should assume that is rather the teacher's province, and 
 nothing but the art of teaching, a few pages of the book will soon con- 
 vince him that Mr. Leland's ideal teacher is not to be picked up in the 
 street, or in any Board school." Saturday Review. 
 
 "Mr. C. G. Leland has much that is excellent to say on elementary 
 education, and he says it well, with force and earnestness, in the volume 
 now before us. Almost every man who has thought about education, 
 and the aims it is imperatively called on to realise to-day, must agree 
 with most, if not all, of what Mr. Leland insists on," Westminster 
 Review. 
 
 " We owe a good many bad things to commercial competition, and some 
 good things : and among those, perhaps, may be classed the demand of 
 late years for practical education. Our English education has been one- 
 sided far too long. But the times are changing, and Mr. Leland's book 
 is a valuable contribution to the discussion of an important question. 
 Mr. Leland may say credo experto, for his plans have been tested and 
 found successful." Knowledge. 
 
 " All the world knows Hans Breitmann and his ballads. Many know 
 of Mr. Leland in connection with Romany lore ; but we, in England, are 
 only just beginning to learn that Mr. Leland must also be reckoned among 
 educational reformers." Journal of Education. 
 
 44 This is a book from which all who are interested in the improvement 
 of educational methods may derive valuable ideas. The author writes 
 with the authority of broad and successful experience. The theories of 
 education which he advocates and develops have been tested thoroughly, 
 and so remarkable have been the results that all the world is on the way 
 to adopt them. Mr. Leland's essays are, moreover, written with a lucidity, 
 directness, and wealth of apposite illustration, sufficient to enlist the 
 attention, and rouse the interest of the most hide-bound conversation. 
 At first sight, those who are not familiar with the practical results reached 
 in the author's Philadelphia classes by the methods here inculcated, and 
 since applied with ever-increasing success to industrial teaching all over 
 the United States, and in many European countries, may be somewhat 
 surprised at the apparent simplicity of the doctrine, and may be distrust- 
 ful of experiments which seem to depend primarily upon the revival of 
 antique and obsolete practices," Neio York Tribune. 
 
"THE ENGLISH SLOYD." 
 
 MANUAL INSTRUCTION-WOODWORK. 
 
 BY S. BARTER, 
 
 Organiser and Instructor of Manual Training in Woodwork to the 
 
 London School Board, and Organising Instructor to the Joint 
 
 Committee on Manual Training in Woodwork of the 
 
 School Board for London, the City and Guilds 
 
 of London Technical Institute, and the 
 
 Worshipful Company of Drapers. 
 
 WITH A PREFACE BY GEORGE RICKS, B.Sc. (LOND.) 
 
 Illustrated by 303 Drawings and Photo-Engravings. 
 Fcap. 4to, cloth, 7s. 6d. 
 
 CONTENTS : Introduction Drawing Timber Tools Bench-work 
 Work-room and its Fittings List of Tools required, &c. 
 
 The above Work covers the Requirements of the Examinations of the City 
 and Guilds of London Institute and the Science and Art Department 
 in the subject. 
 
 Sir PHILIP MAGNUS says: "Mr. Barter, in his book on ' Woodwork,' 
 has succeeded in showing, what is most important, the educational value 
 of manual training in school instruction, and has thus rendered a great 
 service to those seeking a trustworthy guide in the practical study of the 
 subject." 
 
 J. H. REYNOLDS, Esq., Director and Secretary Municipal Technical 
 Schools, Manchester, says: "One of the best, if not the best, book 
 that has hitherto been published on this subject, whether English or 
 American." 
 
 Professor W. RIPPER, of Sheffield Technical School, says: "Mr. Barter, 
 by his ability, experience, and success as an instructor of manual training 
 classes, is the right man to write a book on woodwork, and the book he 
 has produced is a most valuable addition to our literature on manual 
 training in fact, so far as I am aware, it is the most complete and 
 satisfactory work, as a course of instruction for schools, yet published in 
 this country." 
 
 Manchester Guardian: "As an educational treatise on the subject, one 
 of the ablest and most comprehensive ever written." 
 
 Nature: "This very excellent and practical work." 
 
 Schoolmaster : " We have no words but those of commendation for the 
 volume before us." 
 
 Teachers' Aids: "By far the most complete manual yet issued dealing 
 with this interesting subject." 
 
 Board Teacher: "A highly interesting, instructive, and exhaustive 
 work." 
 
 Educational Review: "The best English book on the subject." 
 
 Journal of Education: "The 'English Sloyd' is a distinctly rational 
 system, that will bear trial in any school under ordinary circumstances. 
 
 . . Will probably be very widely adopted." 
 
 LONDON: WHITTAKER AND CO., PATERNOSTER SQUARE, E.G. 
 
PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
WORKS by CHARLES G, LELAND, M,A, 
 
 WOOD CARVING. 
 
 With Numerous Illustrations. Third Edition, Revised. 
 Fcap. 410. 55. 
 
 "An excellent manual." Morning Post. 
 "An admirable little book." Builder. 
 
 LEATHER WORK. 
 
 Stamped, Moulded, and Cut, Cuir-Bouilli, Sewn, &c. 
 
 A Practical Manual for Learners. 
 
 With Numerous Illustrations. 55. 
 
 "A delightful addition to the series of Practical Manuals." Times. 
 
 METAL WORK. 
 
 Including Repousse, Bent or Strip Work, Cut Sheet Metal Work, 
 Nail Knob, Wire, Easy Silver Ornaments, and Chasing Work. 
 
 An Elementary Manual for Learners. 55. 
 " We warmly commend it to all our readers." Schoolmaster. 
 
 DRAWING AND DESIGNING. 
 
 In a Series of 29 Lessons. With 42 Illustrations. 
 Fcap. 4to, sewed, is. ; cloth, is. fid. 
 
 "It has a good equipment of plates, and the text is full of valuable 
 practical directions for beginners." Scotsman. 
 
PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 TREATING OF 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEMORY, 
 
 THE INCREASING QUICKNESS OF PERCEPTION, AND 
 
 TRAINING THE CONSTRUCTIVE FACULTY. 
 
 CHARLES G. LELAND, 
 
 LATE DIRECTOR OF THE PUBLIC INDUSTRIAL ART SCHOOL 
 OF PHILADELPHIA, 
 
 And Author of " The Minor Arts" " Twelve Manuals of Art Work,' 
 " The Album of Repousse Work" "Industrial Art in Education, 
 
 or Circular No. 4, 1882," "Hints on Self -Education," 
 
 A nd of a Series of A rticles on Decorative A rts published in 
 
 the London Art Journal. 
 
 S oPT Jourtij Cftttum. 
 
 (UNIVERSITY 
 
 LONDON: WHITTAKER AND CO. 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, E.G. 
 
 1895 
 \_All rights reserved. ] 
 
I- 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INDUSTRIAL ART IN EDUCATION i 
 
 DESIGN AS A PREPARATION FOR INDUSTRIAL ART- WORK 22 
 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS 87 
 
 PART II. 
 ON DEVELOPING MEMORY . . .120 
 
 PART III. 
 ON CREATING QUICKNESS OF PERCEPTION . . , .151 
 
 PART IV. 
 EYE-MEMORY 185 
 
 PART V. 
 
 ON TAKING AN INTEREST . . . . . .214 
 CONCLUSION .234 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 I. KARL WERNER ON THE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF ART 
 
 EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS 243 
 
 II. REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION IN 
 THE UNITED STATES ON THE LELAND SCHOOL IN 
 PHILADELPHIA 262 
 
 III. THE BRITISH HOME ARTS AND INDUSTRIES ASSOCIA- 
 
 TION 266 
 
 IV. A LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS ON TECHNICAL 
 
 EDUCATION 272 
 
X1P 
 
 njNIVERsiTT) 
 X^C* 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 EDUCATION as it exists consists of storing the memory, 
 developing the intellect, and training the constructive 
 faculty. I propose to go a step beyond this, and show 
 if possible how memory may be created, quickness of 
 perception be awakened, and the constructive power 
 formed, so that the mind, when it begins to acquire 
 knowledge, may do so with confidence and strength. 
 I think that before learning children should acquire 
 the art of learning, or, to use the words of ARTHUR 
 MACARTHUR, we should intellectualise them before at- 
 tempting to improve their intellects. 
 
 My suggestions are based on what the history of 
 mankind shows to be four truths. Firstly, that every 
 human being possesses a memory which may be easily 
 increased to what would seem to most persons a 
 miraculous degree. This is proved by the fact that in 
 every country in Europe before the invention of print- 
 ing, as in the East at the present day, thousands or 
 millions of men have had such memories, which were 
 formed by a very easy system of development, which 
 may be introduced to every school. Secondly, that 
 quickness of perception may also be brought forth to 
 an astonishing degree in every mind, as is also proved 
 by research and observation, and that by so doing any 
 
viii PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 undue preponderance of mere memory can be effectually 
 avoided. Thirdly, that there is a faculty of visual 
 perception, or eye-memory, by means of which we may 
 bring before us vividly anything which we have ever 
 seen, as FRANCIS GALTON has shown by exhaustive 
 experiment. This third factor is a subtle blending or 
 combination of memory and quickness of perception. 
 It was first well experimented on and proved by EGBERT 
 HOUDIN and the artist COUTURE. I venture to say that 
 my own inquiries have added something to what is 
 known of it. Fourthly, we have the constructive 
 faculty, by which children of from eight years of age, 
 and even younger, to fourteen, can be .taught original 
 design, and that not of an inferior quality, and to work 
 it out by what I call the minor arts in modelling, wood 
 carving, embroidery, inlaying, &c. 
 
 Memory, quickness of perception, and " visualising " 
 meet and blend in art or manual industry. By means 
 of the latter alone, as it is now taught in certain 
 schools, children are easily and pleasantly trained to 
 take up any kind of work. That is to say, one does not 
 make artisans of them, but they are prepared in the best 
 possible way to become artisans. A very great artist, 
 when complimented on his skill, said, " I began to draw 
 at fourteen years of age, and every day of my life I realise 
 the fact that I should draw twice as well if I had begun 
 at seven." Here was a great truth. From seven to 
 fourteen years of age a certain suppleness, knack, or 
 dexterous familiarity with the pencil or any implement 
 may be acquired which diminishes with succeeding 
 years. This is precisely the case with memory and 
 quick perception. 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 It is strange and true that this latter faculty may 
 be awakened in extremely dull children by merely 
 mechanical methods or tricks, and these may be so 
 improved as to lead to an awakening of intelligence. 
 This also is proved by observation. All of these 
 assertions have in fact been perfectly and abundantly 
 proved. What I now assert is, that the time has come 
 to combine them all, and practically utilise them in 
 the school. If this be resolutely and earnestly done 
 it will entirely change our whole present system of 
 teaching. It would be the height of vanity and pre- 
 sumption to believe that I have shown how this can 
 be perfectly effected. What I hope for is that the 
 attention and labour of others may be drawn to the 
 subject. It is evident enough that the time has come 
 it is no longer in " the dim and remote future " when 
 science must either develop the mental faculties or 
 else the schoolmaster must stop cramming to go on 
 with the old systems is no longer possible. 
 
 Though it should logically be the last, I have made 
 the division on Industrial Art Education the first 
 in the series. I did so because it is at present being 
 earnestly studied, and is of great popular interest. It 
 is probable that nineteen out of twenty will consider 
 that it has " something in it," while they will regard the 
 remainder as " unpractical." There is also this considera- 
 tion. When I began nearly thirty years ago to seriously 
 study education, and evolved the whole system laid 
 down in this work, and resolved that if I ever should 
 be in a position to do so I would devote my life to 
 practically working it out, the only part of it which 
 caused me doubt and fear was this whether mere 
 
x PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 children could be taught hand-work while attending 
 school. To resolve this I learned the minor arts, and 
 taught them till I found that they all resolved them- 
 selves into one art design. The pupil who can 
 design and model can confidently work in all the 
 arts. I published a book, entitled the Minor Arts, 
 on this subject, which was read by Mrs. JEBB of 
 Ellesmere. While I was engaged for four years in 
 introducing industrial art work as a branch of edu- 
 cation in the public schools of Philadelphia, Mrs. 
 JEBB established in Great Britain the Home Arts and 
 Industries Association, which has now, in addition to 
 its central point in London, more than two hundred 
 schools or classes in successful operation. From it the 
 teaching of the minor arts of every kind has extended 
 to the People's Palace for the Poor, to the East End 
 Working Men's Clubs, and to many other institutions. 
 In America, the attention of the Central Government 
 was attracted to the system, and General EATON, the 
 Commissioner of Education at the Central Bureau of 
 Education in Washington, requested me to write a 
 pamphlet setting forth how industrial education could 
 be taught in schools. Erom the literally thousands of 
 letters which I have received, I have learned that it 
 resulted in the establishment of as many classes. That 
 the system was well received is shown by the fact that 
 it was warmly commended in contributions in The Nine- 
 teenth Century, Good Words, The Times, The Standard, 
 The Saturday Review, The New York Tribune, Tlie New 
 York Herald, The New York School Journal, The Century 
 (illustrated), The Saint Nicholas (illustrated), The New 
 York Home Journal, and in scores of other journals. The 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 first article ever published on my school in Philadelphia 
 was in the New York Herald, in a leading editorial of 
 a column. For this purpose the editor had sent a 
 reporter expressly to examine the classes. The New 
 York Tribune also constantly manifested great interest 
 in the undertaking, and more than once gave a long 
 account of it. Notwithstanding the great encourage- 
 ment extended to me, there was a great deal of oppo- 
 sition and miscomprehension of the work by many 
 who regarded the idea as Utopian. There are now, 
 however, thousands of pupils in the public schools 
 of New York who are studying the minor arts and 
 industries. Two very important points have been 
 established in this connection. Firstly, that art- work, 
 instead of adding to overpressure in school study, 
 relieves it, because it is regarded by all children as 
 play or relaxation. Secondly, that it was ascertained 
 by careful inquiry that the pupils who attended my 
 classes were in advance of others in their usual studies. 
 I myself ascertained that such work quickened their 
 general intelligence. 
 
 I have also delivered more than a hundred lectures on 
 this subject before the most varied assemblies in England 
 and America, always followed by free discussion, and 
 answered the same objections, till new ones ceased to 
 be put. But now the system is a success. I believe 
 nay, I am sure that there are now in both countries 
 many more people who will believe in the possibility 
 of creating memory and quickness of perception than 
 there were ten years ago to put faith in industrial art- 
 work in schools. The world moves. The hardest part 
 of the reform has been tested and tried, and it has 
 
xli PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 succeeded. There will be the same objections to what 
 remains, and they will be worked down. 
 
 I have added to the chapters here described another 
 on the art of awakening interest in subjects. It was 
 inspired or aided by Mr. MAUDSLEY'S remarkable com- 
 ments on the possibility of attracting or creating 
 attention. There is also a translation of a long review 
 of the Washington pamphlet published by KARL 
 WERNER in the Vienna Morgeriblatt. This was re- 
 garded when it appeared as a remarkably able paper, 
 and it excited much comment. 1 Since it appeared the 
 Austro-Hungarian Government have introduced in- 
 dustrial art- work to their public schools, and I was 
 deeply gratified a few months since at finding in Buda 
 Pesth, in the Normal School of three hundred pupils, 
 classes in operation which reminded me of my own 
 in Philadelphia. The work executed was under the 
 direction of able artists, and the results were magnifi- 
 cent. I have also added an account of the British 
 Home Arts and Industries Association, in the hope 
 that it will induce my readers to visit it and see for 
 themselves what it is doing. 
 
 I will add, in conclusion, that I will cheerfully answer 
 any questions relative to the subjects treated of in this 
 book, especially from those who are desirous of estab- 
 lishing classes, of introducing art-work into families or 
 public institutions, or of undertaking it themselves. 
 
 1 It was considered as of so much importance that by special request 
 of Commissioner General EATON I executed a translation of it for the 
 use of those consulting the papers of the Bureau of Education, who did 
 not understand German. It contains a comprehensive account and 
 critique of all that has been done in manual or industrial education in 
 Germany. 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 There is no part of North America so wild that I have 
 not in this way been instrumental in successfully 
 establishing classes there. I have within two days 
 received applications from ladies in Alaska and South 
 Africa asking me for advice as regarded teaching native 
 classes, and I have given and received instruction from 
 Eed Indians who were the quickest pupils to learn 
 whom I ever had. 
 
 It is only within a few weeks that I learned for the 
 first time anything of the very excellent Swedish Slojd 
 system. I wish it every success, but may be pardoned 
 for remarking that while it teaches admirably a great 
 variety of arts, no person who reads the following pages 
 will say that it has anything like the same principle on 
 which I have taught, or which I follow. Nor does it 
 teach anything which is not to be found in the English 
 system. 
 
 I have been on many occasions warmly encouraged 
 or otherwise aided by many gentlemen distinguished in 
 literature, philanthropy, science, journalism, indeed in 
 every work of culture both in England and in America. 
 I can never sufficiently express my gratitude to them. 
 It is said that we lose friends and feelings as we grow 
 older. It has been my happy fortune to experience 
 the contrary. 
 
PRACTICAL EDUCATION, 
 part , 
 
 INDUSTRIAL ART IN EDUCATION. 
 
 Treating of the study of Industrial Art as first tested as a 
 branch of Public School Education in Philadelphia, and 
 since extended to the Schools of New York. According 
 to the system recognised by the Bureau of Education, 
 Department of the Interior of the Government of the 
 United States of America, and set forth in the Official 
 Circular, No. 4, 1882. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL ART IN EDUCATION. 
 " All men are artists if they did but know it." 
 
 THE great question in education at present is : Can 
 children while at school be trained to practical in- 
 dustry ? Can their minds be more fully developed ? 
 Can they, while learning to read, write, and cipher, be 
 taught a trade, or fitted for some calling, so that on 
 leaving school they may be prepared to work, and if 
 possible gain a living ? This question has risen so 
 recently into importance in Europe and America, that 
 while it already boasts a literature, and is the cause of 
 
 A 
 
2 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 much official and private discussion, it is as yet far 
 from being solved. 
 
 It was very natural for the " practical " man, when 
 this question rose, to attempt to settle it in a practical 
 manner. It seemed to be a very simple thing to teach 
 a boy to read or. write for three hours, and then keep 
 him for the same time at shoemaking, carpenters' 
 work, or printing. It was tried, but with very little 
 success. It is remarkable that so much money and 
 labour should have been spent, and is still being 
 spent, to prove that mere children cannot perform 
 men's work, or even be trained directly to most trades. 
 The farmer knows that a colt cannot be put in 
 harness or worked, though even during colthood the 
 animal may be prepared in Arab fashion by gentle 
 care or culture for training. But it does not seem to 
 have been known to most men that a human colt is 
 subject to precisely the same conditions. The result 
 of the faith in teaching trades to children was the 
 establishment of technical schools. And the result 
 of the teaching has been that so far as the training 
 in these has been purely practical > technological, or 
 aiming at a mechanical calling, it has only fully 
 succeeded with vigorous boys at least fourteen years 
 of age. And it is no great discovery that a boy can 
 begin at that age as an apprentice to any hand-work. 
 It has also been found that the industrial or technical 
 school proper costs a fortune to establish, and is only 
 available for the youth in cities or large towns. And 
 the problem to be solved is : " By what system can 
 all children, girls as well as boys, both in town and 
 country, in school, or possibly at home, be trained from, 
 infancy to industry ? " 
 
ATTRACTING ATTENTION. 3 
 
 According to the method of FROEBEL, the founder of 
 ,the Kindergarten, the youngest child can be taught 
 the beginning of hand-work of many kinds. It can 
 learn to observe, its quickness of perception can be~f 
 stimulated, it can be taught to draw and model in 
 clay, and in short " begin to prepare " for serious work. 
 No one would think of training it then to make a living, 
 but its mind may be diverted into a channel tending 
 in that direction. And it is in this attracting the 
 attention of a child to the rudiments of industrial j 
 callings, and in making them easy and attractive, that 
 the whole solution of the problem consists. 
 
 Has the reader ever thought seriously what it is to 
 have thought about a thing until it has become familiar 
 in many details, and a subject of interest? He 
 knows, we will suppose, that carpets are made of 
 woollen thread on a loom, but let him go through a 
 carpet factory and examine the process of weaving in 
 detail, and about the same time read a cyclopaedia 
 article or a book on carpets. He will be, so to speak, 
 in a different frame of mind on the subject, for he 
 will be informed perhaps he will feel himself quite 
 capable of going into the manufacture as operative 
 or manufacturer. This thinking on a subject as a 
 preparation is as applicable to a child as to a man. 
 There is not a single department of industry known to 
 culture for which a child may not be, to a certain 
 degree, prepared at any age, by having its attention 
 properly called to it. 
 
 It has been, I think, fully demonstrated in the 
 system of industrial art which I have practically 
 carried out in application to the public schools of 
 Philadelphia and elsewhere, that all the minor arts, 
 
4 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 such as modelling in clay, carving in wood, sheet 
 leather-work, simple cabinetmaking, stencilling, mosaic, 
 inlaying, and repousse or sheet metal- work, are only 
 applied design, worked out with other implements than 
 pencils, and that the degree of skill in outline decora- 
 tive design requisite for this may be acquired by all 
 children from nine or ten years of age, or even 
 younger. The real importance of this principle has 
 been fully recognised by CARL WERNER, an eminent 
 German writer on education, 1 and an inspector of 
 schools in Austria. " In no European school," he says, 
 " has the importance of design as a basis for practical 
 education been so recognised as it has been in the 
 American system." Now be it specially observed 
 for it is the clue and key to the entire method of 
 culture which I propose that the attraction of 
 attention in tender minds to industry in any form 
 corresponds to design in all the arts nay, it is desigih 
 For design, far above all arts, consists of will brought 
 to bear on or influencing attention. 
 
 It seems a very simple thing to say that design- 
 drawing is the root of all art, and everybody will freely 
 admit it. And yet it is so far from ever having been 
 understood, that a great writer boldly declares that all 
 Europe has hitherto utterly ignored the real importance 
 of this principle. Perfectly understood, it reduces all 
 the arts to one; and abstract as it may seem, mere 
 children enter into it and act on it. " You only want 
 to know how to design your patterns to do all these 
 things," said a boy of fifteen in my school to another. 
 By " these things " he meant modelled faience, wood- 
 carving, and a dozen other arts. And he also meant 
 
 1 See Appendix. 
 
AWAKENING INTEREST. 5 
 
 that by design there is a great deal more implied than 
 a pattern to copy. 
 
 We will suppose then that it is desired to train a 
 child to industrial pursuits. These are broadly and 
 generally to be classed as agricultural, artistic, econo- 
 mical, and commercial. Under " artistic " I include 
 all manufacturing or technical work whatever ; under 
 " economical " all housekeeping and administration of 
 affairs; and under housekeeping again all that per- 
 tains to the domestic support and comfort of life. 
 In a broad sense there is no human occupation for 
 which some prevision may not be made in education. 
 But I am writing now especially of hand-work, and I 
 would declare that there is no division of it which 
 may not be made to a certain extent familiar to the 
 young, and the key to it is simply to call attention 
 to and awaken interest in an industry. It is to 
 make the pupil think about it. This sounds extremely 
 commonplace, but it is as far from being generally 
 understood or appreciated as any idea can well be. 
 
 There are many boys destined to become farmers 
 who are made to think of the details of agriculture, 
 such as ploughing and sowing, but very few who 
 think of it as a study, or as a whole. Very young 
 children easily get an idea of arithmetic as a science, 
 of which addition, subtraction, and division are only 
 the details or branches, and those who are trained to 
 thus regard it as a whole excel in mastering the parts. 
 The same is the case with grammar. I have, though 
 rarely, met with teachers who excelled in giving this 
 general idea of a study, such as arithmetic or grammar, 
 to boys and girls, and the result was a progress far 
 beyond that of those who worked at details only. 
 
6 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Now I venture the assertion that if the boy who is 
 to be a farmer were induced to study a manual written 
 in the simplest attractive style, teaching of farming 
 as a whole, he would study the practical details with 
 greater interest. Experimental gardens or farms would 
 in many places aid in such education, but where this 
 is not possible the farm itself would serve as well, and 
 as many would think, even better. The initial point 
 lies in making the boy feel that farming is an art 
 allied to science, that it is interesting, that it does not 
 consist in tending cattle or ploughing, or in any details, 
 but in all of these, and the difference between the 
 farmer as a leader and the mere labourer consists of 
 really understanding this. The false ideas of the 
 dignity of being above work, or the indignity of 
 labour, are due in a great measure to the fact that 
 industry has never been properly taught as an art or 
 as a science. To the man taught only to dig, without 
 a hope of rising by his general knowledge above this 
 detail, farming appears naturally enough low and 
 coarse. Train him to regard it as a career with many 
 stages which he comprehends, and which, because he 
 comprehends them, he may surmount them, and his 
 calling equals in " dignity " any other. This is there- 
 fore that which corresponds to design in the industrial 
 arts, that boys in country schools shall be trained to 
 think of farming as a study, and this primarily by 
 means of manuals of agriculture. For design, as its 
 very name implies, is /ore-thought. 
 
 Everybody may be said to know that the difference 
 between a housekeeper and a housemaid lies in this 
 that the former understands housekeeping as a whole. 
 Her administrative capacity is the result of her grasp 
 
THE BASIS OF PREPARATION. 7 
 
 of the relations of all the details of the manage. Now 
 is there a mother of a family who doubts that little 
 girls would be made incipient housekeepers by having 
 their attention and interest directed to or centred in 
 domestic economy ? l Here again a manual of house- 
 keeping, or an elementary work devoted to making the 
 young understand it as a whole, would be the point 
 of departure on which verbal instructions should be 
 based. The boy or girl who has had this beginning 
 of thought can be trained to plan for himself a farm, 
 or for herself a home. He can be taught, if a certain 
 number of acres of a certain productiveness be given, 
 to determine what labour, what receipts, and what 
 expenses may be anticipated in connection with the 
 land. And the little maid may in like manner 
 calculate what may be done with a certain income. 
 There are many ultra-practical people who will find 
 many ready arguments to prove that all such farming 
 and housekeeping would be simply " theoretical," a 
 word which is, strangely enough, a synonym among 
 the ignorant for idle and unprofitable. And I will 
 even agree with them as to direct results if they will 
 but grant that the attention of the child can be thereby 
 drawn to the subject, and its interest awakened. 
 For this is really all that design in drawing effects it 
 leads the pupil to the minor arts, and from these to 
 the higher, by making him think about them. I have 
 often been told that my system of teaching art was 
 all " a theory," but the practical results have spoken 
 
 1 Girls have indeed a great advantage as to their future mission as 
 mothers, nurses, and housekeepers, in their playing with dolls. There 
 is no reason why a part at least of a boy's recreations should not to the 
 same degree be a preparation for future work. 
 
8 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 for themselves, and any theory which results in profit 
 thereby becomes practical. 
 
 There is no industry which is without its rudir 
 mentary design. At present nineteen boys out of 
 twenty go into " business," or to shops or callings of 
 any kind, without the least previous training. It is 
 not always possible while at school for the intended 
 grocer to sell tea and sugar, or for the apothecary to 
 learn anything of medicines. But he can be taught 
 something more than arithmetic as a preparation. He 
 can be made to take an interest in any industry. His 
 attention may be called to it. Let those who object 
 to this first try the experiment. If the method has suc- 
 ceeded in industrial art, I do not see why it should fail 
 in agriculture and commerce, or in housekeeping. 
 I There is much needless confusion at present as to 
 Industrial Education. We hear of cooking schools 
 -here, art schools there, farm and mechanical and 
 wood-carving schools everywhere. What is needed 
 is a co-ordination of these forces, a recognised prin- 
 ciple and point of departure. This will be found in 
 mastering certain principles which this book is in- 
 tended to set forth. The first of these is that from 
 the very unfolding of constructive ability in the 
 Kindergarten method, which is too generally known 
 to require explanation, up to the industrial school 
 with its advanced technological training, there are 
 successive steps, and that these are, firstly, design, or 
 the attraction of the attention of a pupil to a calling 
 as a study and as a whole ; and secondly, his or her 
 preparation, not so much to at once make a living on 
 leaving school, as to be a preferred junior workman 
 or qualified beginner or learner in a factory, or in any 
 
THE BEGINNING. 9 
 
 " business." The public expects a boy to be able to 
 make a living or be fitted to begin some practical 
 calling when he leaves school, let us say at fourteen 
 years of age. And it can very often be done. I 
 have had a class in my school in Philadelphia of 
 thirty boys and girls engaged in carving wood, and 
 every one of these could by application to carving 
 alone, and by selling directly to consumers, make 
 eight or nine dollars, or nearly two pounds a week. 
 But generally speaking, all that I expect of my pupils 
 is that the foremen of factories would give them the 
 preference to other applicants for place. This always 
 means more money for wages. And this is as much 
 as should be expected for about one hundred hours 
 of tuition, at an expense of from five to ten dollars, 
 or from one to two pounds, according to the branches 
 taught. 
 
 To arrive at this co-ordination certain rules must 
 be followed. We begin in my schools by teaching 
 design. After this every pupil takes up one or more 
 applications of it, as they are guided by circumstances. 
 One thing is certain, that after working, seeing others 
 work, and becoming familiar, or at least acquainted 
 with half a dozen arts, their taste is cultivated, and 
 all realise that they can, if they choose, turn their 
 hands to and master many things in fact they have 
 acquired that confidence in their own abilities which 
 makes them sure to succeed in any kind of work. 
 When a boy, or even a grown person, unfamiliar with 
 the processes, sees large under-glazed coloured faience 
 vases covered with garlands or monsters, carved and 
 inlaid panels in cabinets, brass plaques, mosaics, and 
 intricate arabesques, he or she is often almost awed at 
 
io PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 the genius supposed to be needed to produce this. In 
 a few months or weeks the youth moves in this little 
 art- world with the utmost indifference, and criticises 
 the works closely. He is quite sure that if he now 
 tried he could make or even design any of these 
 fine things. It is a great deal in practical education 
 and in beginning life to have attained to such confi- 
 dence. I do not exaggerate when I say that for 
 every kind of work this gives the beginner a great 
 advantage over all rivals. Now the basis of all famili- 
 arity with all industry, be it agriculture or art, is to 
 first set the pupils to thinking about it as a study, and 
 then to show it to them in practical operation. They 
 must first learn a theory, or general principles, for 
 example design, and then its application. Those who 
 think that because we work from design that our work 
 is necessarily of an " aesthetic " sun-flower kind greatly 
 err. For when a boy can use his hands and brains 
 to guide them, or in fact becomes a practical workman 
 in any form, he can work if he will in many ways I 
 may say in all. In every school in the country, every 
 teacher should make industry a theme for instruction. 
 From industry and its importance he may proceed to 
 its sub-divisions to agriculture or art, business or 
 household economy. When this beginning shall have 
 been made, the practical teaching of all branches of 
 manual labour will follow in due place, time, and 
 course. How one of the most important can be realised 
 (I refer to industrial art), I will now explain. 
 
 Many years ago I began to think seriously on the 
 question of training the young to hand-work while yet 
 at school. The possibility of teaching "trades" to 
 children was dismissed almost as soon as I considered 
 
ORIENTAL CHILDREN. it 
 
 it. PESTALOZZI had attempted it; it had been tried 
 in every country in Europe, and very earnestly sup- 
 ported in America, and it had nowhere really suc- 
 ceeded. The cause was not hard to find. Had it 
 been a success, the employment of little children in 
 factories would also have been a success. It is true 
 that this infamous branch of human sacrifice, pro- 
 hibited by law in England, is still common in Massa- 
 chusetts, and, I am told, in other American States, but it 
 is none the less inhuman on that account. That some- 
 thing could be done, in a small way, in this direction, 
 no one can doubt. But it was always a forced growth. 
 It was during a visit to the school of Miss WHATELY 
 in Cairo, and in Egypt, that it suddenly occurred to 
 me that very young children could, however, profitably 
 and pleasantly master the decorative arts. I there 
 saw little Copht and Arab girls and boys, apparently 
 only six or eight years of age, executing such works 
 in embroidery as I had hitherto associated only with the 
 efforts of accomplished adults. The next day in the 
 bazaars I found even more striking illustrations of the 
 discovery. I saw very small children, with a single 
 frame between them, working both sides alike of 
 beautiful, highly elaborate designs in silk, without a 
 pattern before them. I saw in the jeweller's bazaar 
 mere boys, with tools as rude as those of an English 
 tinker, making jewellery of the kind so highly praised 
 by CASTELLANI; that kind which, while it lacks the 
 machinery finish of Western work, excels it in origi- 
 nality and character. Then I found day by day, on 
 inquiry, my interest having been aroused, that most 
 of the lighter ornamental work of the East, or such as 
 does not require great personal strength, is executed 
 
12 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 by women and children. I had seen before, as I have 
 since this visit to the East, what the young can do 
 in wood-carving in Switzerland, South Germany, and 
 the Tyrol. I found that in Italy wood-carving and 
 repousse and shell-carving, of a far more elaborate 
 kind, is executed by boys, and that in Spain these 
 youthful workers make pottery of a highly artistic 
 nature. 1 I also found, and this was the most im- 
 portant discovery of all, that in all these countries 
 these children did not by any means merely follow 
 the designs furnished by artists. In most cases they, 
 like the grown-up workmen around them, had no 
 patterns at all, but worked like birds or bees by 
 sympathy with the rest, modifying or varying it 
 according to the aim of the work. When elementary 
 drawing formed a part of the work, they picked it up, 
 just as many men in factories picked it up, and were 
 soon able to produce designs. The result of this was 
 certain conclusions which I have given elsewhere in 
 the pamphlet entitled " Industrial Art in Schools," 
 which the Bureau of Education in Washington issued 
 as Circular No. 4, 1882, and which the reader may 
 obtain gratis and post paid by application to the 
 Commissioner of Education. 2 These conclusions were 
 
 1 The reader can find a very interesting account of an industrial 
 art school in Smyrna, in "Pen and Pencil in Asia Minor," by W. 
 
 COCHRAN. 1887. 
 
 2 I have in this chapter borrowed very freely from the pamphlet 
 here referred to. The latter contains practical details as to establish- 
 ing industrial art classes, while in this work the general theory is more 
 developed. As repetition of certain ideas would have been in this case 
 unavoidable, I have, to save much labour and time, simply extracted the 
 passages in question. I am indebted to the kindness of General JOHN 
 EATON for permission to do this, as for many other courtesies on all 
 occasions. 
 
CHILDREN'S CAPACITY 
 
 to the effect that constructiveness, or the faculty of 
 making things -which are useful or ornamental, is in 
 man innate or instinctive. Even in the beginning 
 of the struggle for life, or in the rudest pre-historic 
 times, people made ornaments, though they were 
 only beads, of shells or dried clay. While the 
 mammoth yet existed, man etched with taste and 
 skill his likeness on his own bones. As the flower 
 precedes the fruit, decorative art is developed in a 
 race before it attains proficiency in practical work. 
 Long before men had good axes, knives, or any kind 
 of decent tools, they made jewellery and embroidery 
 superior in design or character to anything produced 
 in modern times. During the infancy of almost every 
 race, the ornamental is developed before the useful, 
 and the same principle is reflected in the individual. 
 The child who cannot make a shoe, or file metals, 
 or master a trade, can easily learn to design decorative 
 outline patterns, mould pottery, set mosaics, carve 
 panels, work sheet leather for a hundred purposes, 
 and emboss sheet brass. He or she can cut and apply 
 stencils, model papier mache or carton pierre (a mix- 
 ture of composition and paper-pulp), inlay in wood, 
 with ivory, and in short master a hundred minor arts. 
 For the child corresponds to primitive man. All 
 children like to make something, mud pies and spon- 
 taneous chalkings on walls being generally the first 
 manifestations of this impulse. A box of paints, an 
 apparatus for printing, or tools, are generally very 
 welcome gifts. Now if the child is almost univer- 
 sally capable of executing valuable works of simple 
 or easy decorative art before it can produce much that 
 is useful, and has moreover manifestly an instinct for 
 
14 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 it, should not this fact be considered in education? 
 One thing is absolutely certain : that with the progress 
 of education as a science, we must and will eliminate 
 from it the repulsive and severe. Young women 
 may be forced to work in coal-mines, and mere infants 
 in factories, but it is wrong. It is not really right 
 that children should ever be employed at uncongenial 
 pursuits. Even reading, writing, and ciphering may 
 be made attractive, and every school pleasant, and 
 under these conditions the young will acquire learning 
 more rapidly. 
 
 Having formed the theory, I proceeded to put it in 
 practice. I had to labour at great disadvantage. I 
 knew Very little, indeed of drawing: .at school I had 
 never distinguished myself in it, and beyond a few 
 weeks' independent practice at panel carving in wood 
 I was entirely ignorant of every minor art. But I 
 immediately perceived that all these arts were in 
 reality only one, and that this one was simple outline 
 decorative design applied to different materials. Carv- 
 ing a panel is drawing it in wood with chisels and 
 gouges ; repousse work is strikingly like it, as is leather- 
 work. In all three, as in drawing, the pattern is 
 brought into relief by outlining, and the ground 
 "matted," or indented with tools. As PANINI the 
 Indian had reduced all grammar to a simple single 
 system of inflection, as GOETHE reduced the plant to 
 the leaf, and his successors the leaf to the cell, I saw that 
 there was a single principle in art- work which would 
 render all its branches comparatively easy to the one 
 who grasped it. If I had at this time read much of 
 what I have since perused, I might have found that 
 OWEN JONES and his school had in many respects 
 
REPOUSSE WORK. 15 
 
 preceded me, and should probably have let the experi- 
 ment drop. As it was I proceeded to work without 
 teachers, without reading, and without example. When 
 I published the manuals of brass work, of wood carv- 
 ing, of leather work, and of stencilling, I had never 
 seen a man in my life at work at any of these. I 
 simply obtained the materials, and went to work 
 teaching myself. After I had written the manual of 
 repousse work, I asked my friend, Mr. KARL KRALL, 
 of the firm of BARKENTIN & KRALL, of Eegent Street, 
 London, metal workers to the Ecclesiological Society, 
 .to revise and correct it. He laughed on returning it, 
 and said : " It is all quite correct and practical ; but I 
 see that you have evolved the whole out of your 
 moral ; consciousness, as HEINE'S artist evolved the 
 image of the camel. If you had ever seen a man at 
 work on metal, you would have used the tracers and 
 matts in a different order. It comes to the same 
 thing, but it is not the usual way." It was through 
 ignorance that I hit on the idea of simply hammering 
 the work out on a piece of soft pine board, instead 
 of "foxing" it on cement and annealing it. This 
 very primitive invention, followed hitherto, I presume, 
 chiefly by the natives of Nubia, who make their silver 
 jewellery with a nail and a stone for a hammer, had, 
 however, one remarkable effect. It was possible by 
 means of it, and by cold hammering, to make a plaque 
 in low relief, rude, but not devoid of beauty, for very 
 little money. The ordinary apparatus would cost 
 from 5 to 20, but by this means tools, board, and 
 brass would cost, perhaps, only six shillings. This is, 
 I may add, partly due to the fact that the modern 
 
i6 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 brass appears to be softer than most of the old, and it 
 certainly has a more gold-like colour. 1 
 
 Having experimented in several arts, and satisfied 
 myself of the truth of my system, I began to teach, 
 en amateur, a few young girls, who, almost without 
 exception, learned so much in a lesson or two as to 
 be able to go on by themselves and turn out creditable 
 work. 2 I had a fixed idea before me, and I pursued 
 it. I observed closely in myself as in my pupils 
 what the average child could probably do. I became 
 convinced that by an extraordinary law almost every 
 decorative art is easy. It is about the same thing to 
 an ordinary girl of ten or twelve whether she works 
 at mud-pies in the road or at modelling a vase in a 
 studio. One soon becomes as easy as the other. This 
 led to many conclusions. One was that this principle 
 had been extensively carried out during the early ages 
 in Greece, Eome, and the East, as it was in all Europe 
 during the Middle Ages. In such eras decorative art- 
 work had not only been abundant and cheap, but, 
 
 1 The result of the publication of this manual, and the teaching of 
 repousse* in the Industrial Art School and Ladies' Art Club of Phila- 
 delphia, was startling. Tens of thousands of workers, chiefly ladies, 
 took up the art all over America. It was introduced as a branch of 
 study into many schools, and soon assumed the proportions of a great 
 art industry. One of my pupils, a schoolboy of seventeen, saved forty- 
 three pounds during his summer vacation of two months by making 
 l6-inch plaques. It was said by experts or professional metal chasers 
 that simple coZd-hammering had never been brought to such perfection 
 as it was in my school in Philadelphia. 
 
 2 A Miss L. M. of Weybridge, having had only a single lesson in 
 wood-carving, but who with great quickness grasped all the principles 
 of the art, took, during the year after, two prizes for bas-reliefs at two 
 exhibitions. I must state in fairness that I never knew her superior 
 in cleverness so far as learning anything (e.g., languages and literature) 
 was concerned. 
 
WHAT IS REAL "ART"? 17 
 
 what was more, it had been original and human, and 
 not ground out by machinery. Machinery a genera- 
 tion ago promised to increase art by multiplying cheap 
 copies, and the result has been that it has almost 
 extinguished everything original in it. But the vast 
 increase of culture has of late brought cheap dupli- 
 cates into disfavour. People are beginning to learn 
 the great truth that no real work of art can be made 
 by machinery. That is most artistic which most 
 shows the hand and soul of a maker. When this 
 principle shall be firmly established as a canon, as 
 it certainly will be, there will also be a demand 
 for much labour which is now without employment. 
 Work fully equal to the mosaic pavements of Eoman 
 villas, and all the exquisite ornament of the Middle 
 Ages, could all be designed and made by women, 
 children, and a vast army of men who by some 
 fatality cannot succeed at more prosaic employments. 
 That machinery can aid art is true, for every tool 
 is to a certain extent a machine, but that a copy 
 made and multiplied entirely by machinery is artistic 
 is false. The vulgar and ignorant call everything 
 which is beautiful and artificial " artistic ; " the edu- 
 cated know that the term is only applicable to a work 
 which shows the direct art of a maker and the action 
 of a mind. With the increase of culture there will 
 come not only an increased demand for decoration, 
 but also for that which is hand-made, and then a very 
 large proportion of those who are now idle will find 
 easy work to do. 
 
 As I have written in my pamphlet on Industrial 
 Art in Schools, the question as to what children could 
 make has risen just at the time when there is spread- 
 
 B 
 
1 8 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 ing all over the world a demand for decorative and 
 hand-made art. " The developments of capital, wealth, 
 and science during the present century have naturally 
 led to luxury and culture. With them learning and 
 criticism are teaching wealth what to do. Culture has 
 awakened humanity or benevolence. It is a fact that 
 children can, while at school, profitably practise decora- 
 tive arts." By profit I do not mean merely making 
 money, as the very great majority of the public at first 
 misunderstood my promises, but the qualification of 
 the pupil for future employment. This study, far 
 from interfering with the regular branches, aids and 
 stimulates them. While the minor arts, guided by 
 even a slight knowledge of decorative design, are so 
 easy as to be regarded by all children as a recreation, 
 they are at the same time of practical value in training 
 the eye and hand, and awakening quickness of percep- 
 tion. They aid all studies and all work. I would 
 here call the attention of the reader to the chapter 
 devoted to this, as a separate branch of education. 
 There have come under my observation many instances 
 in which I have found that beyond all doubt children 
 who have been regarded as dull in everything have 
 shown great aptness and ingenuity in designing, 
 modelling, or carving. When such skill is once 
 awakened, there comes with it greater cleverness in 
 those studies or pursuits in which the pupil was pre- 
 viously slow, because he has begun to think about him- 
 self and believe that he can do something. It is a 
 great truth, too little studied, that sluggish minds can 
 be made active even by merely mechanical exercises. 
 And the practice of the minor arts by children effects 
 this to a remarkable degree. Yet while everybody is 
 
FIRST STEP OF EDUCATION. 19 
 
 quick to observe mental ability or activity when it 
 is transmitted from progenitors, very few notice the 
 innumerable instances in which it is incidentally 
 developed by education or circumstances. It is a 
 matter of fact and observation that children who prac- 
 tise decorative arts, or any manual arts, are thereby 
 improved mentally and morally. The consciousness 
 of being able to make something of value inspires 
 pride and confidence in their ability to master other 
 studies. For these reasons I believe that industrial 
 art should rank in education next to reading, writing, 
 arithmetic, and geography, or rather with them, since 
 it conduces to mental development, and that it should 
 precede music and the other studies which are urged 
 as " essential." 
 
 It is a law with but little exception, that all the 
 minor arts, or such branches of industry as are allied 
 to taste or ornament, are very easy, and can generally 
 be so far mastered at a first lesson, when properly 
 taught, as to produce a perfectly encouraging result. 
 For this reason art should form the beginning of all 
 industrial education, because it is the only work easy 
 enough for mere children. It should be the first step. 
 And as it rapidly trains the pupils to understand that 
 several arts are really but a single art, or to regard 
 them as a whole, it is a good preparation to induce 
 them to consider the subdivisions of farm or household 
 labour, or of a commercial business, as parts of an 
 unity. There are many who will say that this is " too 
 theoretical " for children, but I am sure that it would 
 not be too much so for such children under fourteen 
 years of age as I have had from the public schools of 
 Philadelphia. But industrial work, to be taught even 
 
20 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 to the very young, should not be limited to the orna- 
 mental. Design-drawing should precede everything; 
 but when this is understood, carpenters' work, or joinery 
 in its rudiments, or any branch of easy industry, suited 
 to circumstances, may be taken up as soon as the pupil 
 is fitted for or desires it. It has been from the 
 beginning a source of annoyance or of serious im- 
 pediment to me, that certain editors and other critics 
 have represented that I aimed only at teaching 
 " esthetic trifling," " sunflower nonsense," and " play- 
 ing at art," when it was impossible for me, owing to 
 circumstances beyond my control, to go beyond the 
 first steps connected with design. Therefore I here 
 state plainly, that the system as I understand it, embraces 
 every conceivable branch of practical industry suited to 
 a child's brain and hands; that it begins with design 
 and with teaching pupils that arts are only applied 
 or developed design, and that in like manner all other 
 industries not artistic are each a " many~in-one" or 
 an unfolding of a single principle. Industrial art in 
 schools and it should be in all schools as well as 
 families covers the ground or fills the time inter- 
 vening between the Kindergarten and the industrial 
 school, but it blends with and includes the latter. 
 And it may be observed that the system is capable 
 of being introduced into any school or family or circle 
 whatever, great or small, where there is a preceptor 
 who has some little knowledge of drawing, with intel- 
 ligence enough to apply it, according to the easy rules 
 laid down in certain elementary handbooks of art. To 
 aid such teachers I prepared a series of cheap Art- 
 Work Manuals, embracing the following subjects : 
 Ceramic Painting, Tapestry Painting, Outline Embroi- 
 
ART- WORK MANUALS. 21 
 
 dery, Filled in Embroidery, Decorative Oil Painting, 
 Drawing and Decorative Design (outline), Wood 
 Carving, Kepousse Work or Embossing Sheet Brass, 
 Leather Work, Papier Mache, Modelling in Clay and 
 Underglaze Faience Decoration, and Stencilling. Each 
 manual is accompanied by a large pattern sheet of 
 designs in outline, ready for tracing or copying, specially 
 appropriate to its special subject. These design sheets 
 have been prepared so that they are generally applicable 
 to all the arts taught by the manuals. Being full size 
 they can be readily adapted. Finally, the Messrs. 
 Whittaker have in the press and will soon publish a very 
 carefully prepared series of manuals on a much greater 
 variety of subjects of art and industry, including 
 those needed for commercial, agricultural, and domestic 
 education. These works will be strictly adapted to 
 the practical training of even the youngest children. 
 The greatest pains have been taken to simplify the 
 method of instruction, so that any teacher of ordinary 
 intelligence may, by studying one lesson in advance, 
 conduct a class. The first, on drawing and design, is 
 already issued. 
 
DESIGN 
 
 AS A PREPARATION FOR INDUSTRIAL ART-WORK. 
 
 DESIGN is here the invention of original patterns. It 
 may be taught simultaneously with drawing, which is 
 the practical realisation of the design. The one is 
 quite as easy as the other. It is popularly believed 
 that to produce any kind of an ornamental design, 
 however simple, a peculiar gift, talent, or genius is 
 required. But there is no person who is capable of 
 learning to write who cannot learn to design and 
 draw, so as to produce useful or elegant work. Of 
 course in the higher stages of such work, genius or 
 culture and taste with learning manifest themselves. 
 But to learn to design well enough to invent or execute 
 modelling, carving, or repousse metal work, &c., requires 
 only ordinary capacity. 
 
 If we were to give any child, let us say twenty or 
 thirty dried and pressed ivy leaves, and tell it to 
 arrange them so as to form a wreath, on a flat surface, 
 it would find this a very easy task (fig. i). If a sheet 
 of transparent paper or a pane of ground glass were now 
 to be laid on the leaves, and their outlines required to 
 be drawn or traced on it, this would also be easy. 
 If the child were to do this twenty times it would 
 gradually become accustomed to using the pencil. 
 
CAPACITY OF CHILDREN FOR ART. 23 
 
 Then it would have taken the first step both in design 
 and drawing. Beflect a little and it may occur to us 
 that the best decoration consists of simple ornaments 
 arranged at intervals, and that in doing this the mere 
 savage often surpasses the civilised artist. Now the 
 average savage is not, as regards innate artistic capacity 
 or intellect, superior to an English schoolboy. And it 
 
 is remarkable that so few persons have ever made 
 serious and numerous experiments to ascertain how 
 much ability as regards designing patterns all children 
 really possess. If a single leaf should now be given, 
 and the pupil required to draw a circle with a pair of 
 compasses, and repeat the leaf on the circle so as to 
 make another wreath, it would take a second step. 
 
24 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 And if one or two or three ornaments or finials should 
 be cut out of thin sheet brass or playing-cards, and 
 given as motives, it would not be found to be a difficult 
 matter to arrange these either in wreaths, or in a 
 straight line, or border, or in a square frame. The 
 pupil could, by using a sharp pencil, draw lightly 
 around the edges of these stencils, and thus in a very 
 mechanical manner produce patterns. When the 
 attention has been combined with interest, and the 
 will to work awakened, it will be found that it is a 
 very easy matter to thus construct simple designs. 
 This may be the first stage, which amounts to merely 
 becoming familiar with the handling of the pencil. 
 
 The pupil should now be taught to draw a clear 
 light line with accuracy and confidence. 1 " It should 
 be a line like a hair or a spider's web, on rather 
 smooth paper, with a sharp, long, and hard pencil. 
 There should be no re-drawing on the line, no stumping, 
 rubbing, or sketching in breaks. Be it remembered 
 that it is really easier to learn to draw well than to 
 write well, and there is no child that would not do 
 both admirably if it were obliged from the first hour 
 to use free hand ; that is to say, to control the pen or 
 pencil from the shoulder, allowing the arm to rest on 
 the table just enough to prevent fatigue. The whole 
 difficulty of drawing lies not, as is popularly and 
 very ignorantly supposed, in composing and inventing 
 figures, but in drawing simple lines. Now, let the 
 teacher in every school, however humble, bear in 
 mind this great truth, that if a child acquire true free 
 hand in writing, it can not only draw well, but do 
 almost anything well which requires perfect control 
 
 1 Industrial Art in Schools, p. 21. 
 
ADVANTAGES OF FREE-HAND. 25 
 
 of the hand. This wonderful faculty enables the 
 possessor to almost at once feel, as it were, the chief 
 difficulty of wood-carving the light, artistic touch 
 and to overcome it. So is it with all other arts. 
 With this power they can all be literally mastered. 
 The younger the pupil who acquires it, the sooner in 
 life will he make it his own, and the greater will be 
 his manual skill in all things when older grown. 
 There are very few teachers who fully realise this, 
 few parents who ever think of it ; yet it is the main- 
 spring of all manual art. For the sake of this it 
 would be worth while to make industrial art a part of 
 the education of all children the younger the better. 
 Therefore all who propose to teach or learn art in 
 any form should seriously consider free-hand as the 
 true key to all its practice. It is a great stimulant 
 to quickness of perception." 
 
 One object in drawing a light line is this. The 
 most experienced artist in making sketches for patterns 
 must necessarily use the indiarubber freely. There- 
 fore he must make lines which can be easily effaced. 
 Having learned to draw curves with confidence and 
 accuracy, and made progress with stencils and tracings 
 in the simple manufacture of patterns and this may 
 be carried so far as to produce really elegant and even 
 original designs the pupil may be instructed in the 
 principles of construction lines. He should be shown 
 how to change a circle into a spiral, and that a spiral 
 consists approximatively, though not exactly, of semi- 
 circles (fig. 2). Then he may learn that there is a simple 
 law on which all decorative design involving curves 
 may be based. If from a circle, a spiral or any sec- 
 tion of these, that is to say, from any curve whatever, 
 
 OF THE 
 
 'CTNIVERSITY 
 
2 6 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 other external and internal curves be thrown, at any 
 point or points, the result will be the construction lines 
 or a skeleton of what must in all cases be a perfectly 
 
 FIG. 2. Rough Free-hand Spiral and Circle. 
 
 elegant design. This virtually amounts to a vine or 
 creeper with its branches, and a very large proportion 
 of the best and more advanced decorative design of 
 all ages is based on the vine (fig. 3). 
 
 FIG. . 
 
 These tangential offshoots are of two kinds, the 
 inner and outer, and their elegance is generally in- 
 creased when they, but especially the outer shoots, 
 
COMMON MISTAKES. 27 
 
 are drawn as lines of beauty, that is to say, in a form 
 approximating to an S. These outer and inner off- 
 shoots may be described as forming a ^) or an ({ 
 without a cross line. When the pupil understands 
 this, and can draw a curve, and throw off other curves 
 from it, he should be taught to double these lines, 
 either as parallels, or so as to form gradually diminish- 
 ing vines or cords, and then ornament them. Orna- 
 ment is chiefly effected by applying finials or end- 
 ornaments, such as buds, flowers, card-spots, &c., and 
 crockets or side-ornaments, so called from croche, a 
 crook or corner, as they generally form angles with 
 the stem. 1 A rosebud at the end of a twig is a finial, 
 the thorns or leaves on the stem are crockets. It 
 will be found necessary that the pupil should get by 
 heart and be able to draw from memory as soon as 
 possible a few definite simple ornaments, such as 
 trefoils, leaves, or buds, and to learn to make these 
 in due proportion to the stem. It is a rule with 
 singularly few exceptions, that if there be a wrong 
 way to design anything, the beginner is sure to adopt 
 it. He will always make an ofTshooting twig smallest 
 next to the parent stem, and he invariably makes the 
 finial too small for the pipe or stalk. Yet there are 
 reasons for all this, and the teacher should know and 
 explain them. The child draws the twig too small, 
 because it seems to him that there is at the point of 
 
 1 JAS. K. COLLING (Examples of English Mediaeval Foliage) limits 
 crockets to the ornaments of pinnacles and canopies, but adopts the 
 French term of crochet for all spiral heads of foliage as used in capitals, 
 &c. ; that is to say, when crockets are expanded into leaves forming the 
 greater part of the design, or filling up the space, they are crochets. I 
 specially commend the work of this writer, also those of Professor 
 HULME, and for straight line designs The Anatomy of Pattern, by 
 LEWIS F. DAT. 
 
28 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 junction an unduly large swelling. This may be 
 rectified by teaching him to begin the double lines 
 from the other side of the stem. The dotted portion 
 may then be rubbed out (fig. 4). All of the ornaments 
 used for stencils are applicable as finials. The making 
 finials too small is the result of that tendency to the 
 petty and trivial which manifests itself in all children, 
 and in adults of feeble mind who cannot carry art 
 beyond the literal imitation of flowers, or similar 
 "fancy work." The cure for this is very free-hand 
 drawing, and designing en grand or large. The first 
 designs should all be large. Anything like the literal 
 imitation of small leaves and petty flowers, or any 
 use of heavy lines or show in little detail, should be 
 avoided. As a rule nothing should be drawn for 
 many weeks which cannot be perceived by the naked 
 eye at a distance of fifteen or twenty feet. Children 
 left to themselves will always make petty figures. 
 They will draw scores of diminutive buds and leaves 
 on a small page. Just so in the infancy of a race : 
 it perfects the fineness of illuminating manuscripts 
 before designing grandly. Now it is always easy for 
 one who can draw "large" to come down to petty 
 patterns, but it is impossible for the petty worker to 
 rise to great execution. 
 
 Practice in curves, such as circles and spirals, 
 should precede that in straight lines. This may seem 
 a heresy, but I think it is a reform. It is as easy to 
 draw a circle around a cardboard disc as to rule a 
 line, and the very simplicity, rigidity, and palpable 
 accuracy of straight lines makes them as difficult to 
 draw as curves. This is certain, that after a little 
 practice in correctly throwing off free-hand spirals or 
 
ADVANTAGES OF ALTERATION SI 
 ^UFORNlA 
 
 curves, and examining or copying a few examples of 
 decorative art, even young children design with taste 
 and skill, and when they once begin their progress 
 is rapid. 
 
 I would say something here as regards rubbing out 
 and altering. There is an old-fashioned popular theory 
 that pupils should be trained to such exactness as 
 to be able to draw without using indiarubber. The 
 invariable result of this is a timid care and a striving 
 towards mere finish which is utterly at variance with 
 -all free and characteristic design. Let the reader 
 examine the sketches of any kind in pencil or crayon 
 or pen by RAPHAEL or MICHAEL ANGELO, or any other 
 of the great masters, and see how utterly they ignored 
 the system of attempting to produce " perfection or 
 nothing" at a first effort. How they drew, rubbed 
 out, and altered again and again ! Yet these advocates 
 of first sight accurate designing expect from school 
 children what RAPHAEL himself never dreamed of 
 achieving. The truth is, that of two children, the one 
 trained to design freely and alter freely, and the other 
 to be rigidly accurate from the first, the former will 
 in a few months far surpass the latter in correct 
 drawing. An exact parallel may be found in two 
 pupils trying to learn a language one being instructed 
 never to utter a sentence which is not perfectly correct 
 in every detail, while another is encouraged to chatter 
 freely. It will always be found that the latter has to all 
 intents, as regards the use of language, the superiority, 
 and that in the end he will converse more correctly, so 
 far as custom is concerned. 
 
 When a pupil can draw a spiral or volute, and 
 throw off curves from it like a ^J, parallel and orna- 
 
30 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 inent them, he should be taught the great fact that as 
 a rule to double a design is to more than double its 
 beauty, for this is the first step in symmetry, which, 
 according to F. W. Moody, " is a law of higher order 
 than even distribution ; it is a form of repetition, the 
 result of doubling or repeating twice." Any form, 
 even the ugliest, when balanced by its double, will 
 become ornament, and this symmetrical doubling is 
 one of the causes, and certainly not the least, of the 
 beauty of two-thirds of the works of art in the South 
 Kensington Museum. 1 Let the pupil draw a design, 
 and then put a looking-glass upright by its side. He 
 will see it doubled, and it may be doubled from several 
 sides. It may also be trebled and quadrupled. If 
 two pieces of looking-glass, let us say six inches by 
 six, be joined by a piece of muslin pasted over their 
 backs, so as to form a book or folio, as it were, to open 
 and shut, and this be placed up and down on any 
 pattern, and opened at different angles, it will multiply 
 it from three to twelve times, and thus by shifting its 
 position an infinite number of original designs may 
 be obtained. 2 The student may now form from semi- 
 circles wave-lines or any other combinations of curves, 
 double or parallel them, and apply ornament as before. 
 
 1 Lectures and Lessons on Art. By F. W. MOODY, instructor in 
 Decorative Art in South Kensington Museum, London. GEORGE BELL 
 & SONS. Lecture IV. DRESSER and DAY have also fully illustrated 
 this law. 
 
 2 This extremely useful article for all designers was re-invented about 
 twenty-five years ago by Mr. JOURNET, of 25 Great Portland Street, 
 London, by whom it is still sold. He calls it the folding kaleidoscope. 
 By means of it one can form an infinite variety of patterns. It 
 was originally described by BAPTISTA PORTA and KIRCHER, but was 
 then old. It should be in use in every art school. It costs six 
 shillings. 
 
MECHANICAL AIDS. 31 
 
 In learning design, the pupil may freely use riot 
 only compasses and rule, but circles, curves, and 
 ornaments cut from tin or card, to be used as stencils. 
 The youngest soon learn how to draw, repeat, and 
 combine these so as to form borders or centre- 
 ornaments. The art of invention is not only rapidly 
 developed by this short-hand method of drawing, but 
 there is also developed with it a greater interest 
 and confidence the feeling, in fact, of creativeness, 
 or being really an artist. Now, if with these merely 
 mechanical aids we combine constant practice in 
 free-hand drawing from the shoulder, it will be found 
 that the pupil soon abandons the former and relies on 
 the latter. No one swims long with bladders after 
 he can dispense with them. This method is, therefore, 
 a union of technological and free-hand drawing applied 
 to that merely outline decorative design which has a 
 place between the two. 
 
 Too much stress cannot be laid on the importance 
 of teaching a child to draw with a really free hand, 
 and on a large scale. Designs which are large and 
 simple are the most saleable. There should never be 
 more space occupied by beginners in a pattern than 
 by the ground, and vice versd. The principal reason 
 why pupils draw petty leaves and mean details, and 
 crowd them confusedly together, is because they do 
 not design with a free hand. They rest all the 
 weight of the body on the hand which is occupied in 
 drawing. In this position there is not more than a 
 square inch of sweep or play for the point of the 
 pencil, so that the whole arm must be pushed or 
 moved to enlarge this compass. Eesting lightly on 
 the wrist gives an enlarged sweep of perhaps two or 
 
32 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 three inches, this being an extreme maximum. When 
 only the fore-arm touches the table, the wrist-sweep 
 is again doubled. But those who draw with a free 
 hand from the shoulder can with confidence cover a 
 space of three feet diameter. And every child may 
 be trained to do this. TURNER, the great painter, 
 always painted without a maulstick. It gives not 
 only greater freedom of execution, but much more 
 accuracy. We have all been told not to bear down 
 too heavily on the drawing arm, but I say do not bear 
 on it at all. Rest the body on its own centre, or 
 rather bear its weight on the left arm. It is impossible 
 to do the latter without giving great freedom to the 
 right arm. The reader may test this for himself. If 
 he will press the left arm on a table, he will find that 
 he can write much more freely or with a far easier 
 sweep than if he threw his weight on or pressed with 
 the other hand. I need hardly say that I regard 
 drawing with chalk on the blackboard as useful 
 practice. Indeed, I am not sure but that if all 
 children were first taught to write and draw in this 
 manner we should have better chirography and 
 drawing. Writing is ten times as much of an art 
 among the Arabs and other Orientals as it is in Europe, 
 the chief cause being that by them it is executed 
 either with freely flowing reed-pens or brushes, and 
 that it is done so lightly that it is an axiom that to 
 write really well the paper must not be laid on a 
 desk or table, but held in the left hand while being 
 inscribed. 
 
 The principle of one thing at a time laid down in 
 the first chapter on memorising is as applicable to 
 design. No person not familiar with the practice can 
 
CHILDREN'S PROGRESS IN ART, 33 
 
 have any idea of the extraordinary rapidity with which 
 children learn to draw and design when they are con- 
 fined to simple outline patterns for decorative work, 
 under the stimulus of invention. It is because there 
 is no shading or " effects " or " picturesque " mingled 
 with their drawing to bewilder their brains that they 
 advance so quickly. As soon as they have a few 
 lines and finials by heart, and know how to set the 
 latter together to make circles, &c., they begin to 
 design and combine boldly. The extreme degree of 
 free-hand sweep, and the bold dash which result from 
 making branching curves, give a character to this 
 system of drawing which is not found in any other 
 with which I am acquainted. As the pupil is step by 
 step familiarised with a great variety of curves and 
 ornaments, he finds that to combine and vary them 
 becomes easier and easier. As a rule, with very rare 
 exceptions, or in my experience with almost none, the 
 child from twelve to fourteen years of age who can 
 draw a clean, light, free-hand line can be taught 
 in a few weeks, at the utmost in a few months, to 
 design beautiful original patterns. By this I mean 
 patterns worth executing in art, or patterns worth 
 money. When this is acquired all is acquired. 
 Either technological or artistic drawing may then be 
 learned in half the time usually demanded for their 
 mastery. 
 
 When the pupil can make a good design, and is 
 desirous of advancing to simple decorative painting, 
 he is taught to fill in the ground with India ink or 
 any flat colour, and from this proceeds to varied 
 monochrome or to large illumination. According to 
 the old methods, by which everything was taught at 
 
 c 
 
34 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 once, such as drawing and shading, outline and 
 blending, the mere beginner painted flowers in all 
 tones and hues. I believe, with TURNER, that it is 
 through monochrome or single colours alone that a 
 true colourist can be made. If we take two children, 
 and teach one to draw and shade together in the old 
 style, and then to " paint flowers " or to mix colours 
 from the first, and then train another through free 
 hand, outline, and monochrome to blending, it will be 
 found that the latter will, at the end of the year, be 
 far in advance of the former in every respect. I have 
 tested both methods, and found that the superiority of 
 what may be called the single method is incredible. 
 Simple decorative art is the best road to high art, and 
 it has this advantage, that those who stop by the way 
 at any stage have at least learned something useful 
 or valuable in itself. 
 
 THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF DESIGN. 
 
 When design is mastered to a certain extent it may 
 be practically applied to many arts. Of these the 
 cheapest, easiest, and most practical are modelling and 
 embroidery. 
 
 NEEDLEWORK. 
 
 In this art some knowledge of design is of primary 
 importance. Simple embroidery may to great advan- 
 tage precede plain sewing, though this is far from 
 being generally recognised as a truth. For good plain 
 sewing is really a difficult art. Experience must 
 teach any one that simple crewel work and outline 
 
NEEDLEWORK. 35 
 
 embroidery are much easier. The child who begins 
 with easy work may be led to hard work in half 
 the time in which the latter, by itself, can be learned. 
 This rule constitutes the beginning and the end of 
 the whole system of industrial art. Now, the 
 girl who can invent and draw her patterns always 
 " outlines " and " crewels " much better than the 
 bungler who has to rely on begged or bought 
 designs. Few would believe at what an early age 
 little girls who try can make their patterns. It does 
 not take a child long to learn that with a tea-cup, a 
 coin, and a pencil she can draw a semicircle stem 
 with from one to three grapes at the end, or that the 
 stem may be made double or with two lines. It is 
 no harder for her to learn to arrange these sprigs in 
 a circle or in a straight border. With a very little 
 practice in such stencilling she learns to draw. Those 
 who object to such a method as mechanical have 
 never tried the experiment of urging pupils to trace 
 or use the compasses, rule, and stencils. If they will 
 do so, and teach them at the same time to draw free- 
 hand lines, they will find that boys and girls soon 
 become impatient of using what are still in most 
 schools surreptitious and forbidden aids. Perhaps if 
 man were given all he wants in this world he would 
 want much less than he does. The class of girls in 
 needlework may begin with outline embroidery, or 
 filled-in work, or crewel, as taught by manuals. There 
 is a very easy and effective kind of work made by 
 stencilling or painting flowers in flat or dead colour 
 on brown holland, light canvas, or any similar stuff. 
 The colours may be either dye-stuffs or water-colours. 
 When the flowers or other patterns are painted they 
 
36 PEACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 may be surrounded with an outline in corresponding 
 colour of woollen or silk needlework. This is very 
 easy work, yet rich and effective. The beneficial 
 result of making even little girls in this class draw 
 their own patterns will show itself from the first in 
 all. With very little management, all that is made 
 in this class can, in most places, be sold at a profit ; 
 if not on the spot, by sending it to " depositories " or 
 art stores in the cities. From two to ten pounds' (or 
 from ten to fifty dollars' worth) of materials will 
 suffice to establish an ordinary school class in needle- 
 work. 
 
 MODELLING IN CLAY. 
 
 The next branch of industrial art study is modelling 
 in clay. If a teacher can draw or design even a little, 
 he or she may, with the aid of a manual, confidently 
 undertake to conduct such a class successfully. Clay 
 fit for the purpose is to be obtained in most places 
 at from three to five cents (halfpence) a pound. It 
 should be kept in a waterproof cask or box. A very 
 large box with a lid is best, as it serves not only to 
 hold the clay, but also for a depository for the work, 
 which must be kept damp from day to day. With 
 this certain tools are requisite, the forms of which are 
 given in the Art Work Manual for Modelling. Any 
 boy with the ordinary gift for " whittling " can repro- 
 duce them in pine wood. The fingers are, however, 
 the principal tools. Some artists produce very good 
 work with such adventitious aid as old spoons and 
 any chance piece of stick cut into the form which the 
 need of the moment may suggest. A pair of carpen- 
 ter's compasses are, however, indispensable. As mud 
 
MODELLING IN CLAY. 
 
 37 
 
 wasps occasionally make raids on sculptors for mate- 
 rial, so in our school the youthful modellers now and 
 then appropriate the tools of the wood-carvers for 
 certain mysterious purposes, a bent gouge being a 
 favourite implement wherewith to make scales on 
 fishes. Where there is a will there is a way, arid 
 pupils should often be told to think how effects are 
 to be produced. 
 
 Modelling is drawing in clay. Any child who can 
 copy an old shoe with a pencil can make it from a 
 plastic material. More than this, it is easier to model 
 anything than to draw it. A little boy can make a 
 mud pie much better than he can copy it on paper. An 
 old shoe, or a plaster cast of a rabbit, life size, forms a 
 perfect model for imitation. When jugs, jars, or vases 
 of green or wet clay can be obtained from a pottery, it 
 is easy for the children, after a few days' practice, to 
 ornament them with flowers, lizards, fishes, crabs, 
 leaves, or other figures. When the jars cannot be 
 obtained, they may be made by hand ; thus, cylindrical 
 cups are easily formed around a broad pipe of paste- 
 board. Baskets of clay are often made in beautiful 
 forms. A corrugated ground is produced by breaking 
 a stick in two and pricking the clay with its jagged 
 end. When finished and dried, articles may be sent 
 to a pottery and fired. The process of colouring and 
 glazing such work is not more difficult than rough 
 water-colouring. It is fully described in the Manual 
 of Modelling. All the requisite materials for it may 
 be had by express on sending an order to any dealer 
 in artists' materials in any city. 
 
 Let it be remembered that in modelling those who 
 begin by drawing well shape well. Their inventiveness 
 
 or THE 
 
38 PKACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 has been awakened. Nothing conduces to inventive- 
 ness so much as design. I incline to believe that 
 any man who can invent a machine could have been 
 an artist, and that every true artist is only an inventor 
 on another road. It is not theorising when I say 
 that the pupil who can design immediately shows 
 his superiority in modelling in clay. All children 
 in modelling follow a leader or go in a crowd. If 
 they are set to making little balls and birds' nests, and 
 miniature fruit, and similar petty trifling work, they 
 will keep on making feeble things. It is a mistake 
 even in the Kindergarten to give children petty 
 patterns. In the modelling class, if one gets a new 
 idea, such as making a cat following a mouse on a 
 vase, or a giant frog, all the rest will take to cats, 
 mice, and frogs. If one makes something great which 
 is admired, they must all do the same. And after 
 the mere rudiments of manipulation are mastered, it 
 is better that the pupils should work on a large scale 
 in great variety of subjects than be kept to petty 
 devices. It is the fault of too many current systems 
 of drawing that they limit the youthful mind to small 
 inventions. The boy or girl who can design has in a 
 way learned to invent, to seek for original devices, and 
 what is learned in the lead pencil expands in the 
 clay. With design and modelling all the minor arts 
 may be regarded as mastered. 
 
 WOOD-CARVING. 
 
 As a beginning in industrial art in a school I com- 
 mend design, embroidery, and modelling. Yet in some 
 places wood-carving may be preferred by pupils or 
 
WOOD-CARVING. 39 
 
 parents to modelling, as I have known it to be the 
 case in England ; or it may in time be added to the 
 three branches already described. For wood-carving 
 a very strong common table and about two dollars' 
 (eight shillings) worth of good tools and fifty cents' 
 or half-a-crown's worth of wood to each pupil may 
 be called an outfit. The steps in wood-carving from 
 drawing to cutting may be very gradual. It is to 
 be desired that children in schools should be con- 
 fined to "flat cutting," which is easy and profit- 
 able, and not be led at once, as they are in many 
 schools, to ambitious and difficult sculpture " in the 
 round." 
 
 With a competent teacher the pupil in wood- 
 carving learns sometimes from the very first lesson 
 to make a valuable or successful piece of work. I 
 have never known a pupil of Professor HERMAN UHLE, 
 teacher in the Public Industrial School, and also in the 
 Ladies' Art Club of Philadelphia, whose first or second 
 panel was not fit to make up. Of a class of twenty- 
 five boys and girls, from twelve to fifteen years of age, 
 under his teaching as I have already written there 
 is not one who could not earn eight dollars (i, 123.) 
 a week by steady work. All of these children have 
 learned to do this while attending school, and while 
 keeping up high " averages " in their other studies. 
 When a good teacher cannot be had, one or two well- 
 carved panels, costing from $1.50 to $2 each, may be 
 had from the school or from any carver, to serve as 
 models. Wood-carving is an open door to cabinet- 
 making ; the two go hand in hand, and the boy who 
 can handle gouges and chisels to produce ornaments, 
 and whose eye is thereby trained to patterns and 
 
40 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 proportions in wood- work, is already half a carpenter. 
 Carving requires beyond all other arts a knowledge of 
 design and modelling. I have had several coloured 
 pupils who were expert in it. 
 
 With design, embroidery, modelling, and wood-carving 
 a school may be certainly said to be fairly established 
 as to industrial art. They may all be learned in the 
 rudiments by book. When well practised in these 
 rudiments, pupils can advance themselves to the higher 
 branches. What I have described may be made a 
 part of the course in every village or private school. 
 When design is acquired, every art is acquired for those 
 who want it. When these four branches are familiar to 
 teacher or pupil, all other varieties of the minor arts 
 are really trifles, so far as acquisition is concerned. 
 
 STENCILLING. 
 
 This is the cutting out of patterns in cardboard, 
 which is then varnished, or in thin metal of any kind, 
 and painting through the spaces thus cut, with either 
 paint or coloured washes, thickened with glue, i.e., 
 " distemper." 
 
 The advantages of stencilling are but little under- 
 stood. By means of it every whitewashed wall in 
 the country might be made to look much better than 
 it would when covered with ordinary wall paper, 
 which paper, by the way, has been proved to be in 
 innumerable cases, when damp, a fruitful cause of 
 malaria. A well stencilled wall is artistic, since only 
 a good designer can draw the pattern, and it requires 
 artistic taste to combine the stencils in more than one 
 
PAPIER MACHE. 41 
 
 colour., This would give profitable employment to 
 thousands in every State. It consists of nothing but 
 drawing designs, cutting them out of cardboard or 
 sheet-metal, and then painting the patterns thus cut 
 with a broad brush and coloured washes or paint 
 on walls or other surfaces. The art is as yet in its 
 infancy, and the vast majority of all the stencils sold 
 are of a very commonplace, old-fashioned character. 
 The expense requisite for stencilling would be about 
 50 cents 1 a square yard for best cardboard; brushes, 
 from 30 to 75 cents each; washes, best quality, 25 
 cents a gallon ; paint, at the ordinary prices. It may 
 be executed in small size, and applied to chests, boxes, 
 cabinets, panels in doors, and in fact to all plane 
 surfaces. 
 
 PAPIER 
 
 This consists of waste paper moistened with paste, 
 and pressed in moulds or worked by hand into any 
 shape. It is a very cheap and easy art, little known, 
 and capable of wide application. It is closely allied 
 to modelling in clay and casting. By means of it all 
 flat surfaces can be decorated with permanent reliefs 
 as durable as wood. Every kind of merely ornamental 
 architectural moulding can be made of pressed and 
 moulded paper. It is also worked by hand like clay. 
 It is capable of being combined with paste, glue, clay, 
 chalk, leather in fragments, pulp, and peat, according 
 to many recipes which change it to as many different 
 textures. The number of practically useful as well 
 as ornamental objects made from these combinations 
 
 1 A cent is about a halfpenny. 
 
42 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 is really incredible. I know of one man who by 
 manufacturing a very simple object indeed from papier 
 mach has within a few years made a fortune. There is 
 no person who, if able to design, and somewhat familiar 
 with modelling in clay, could not make saleable objects 
 in this material. It opens a wide field to inventive- 
 ness, and can be practised by girls and boys at home 
 as well as made on a large scale in factories, as is done 
 in the case of plaques of this material. 
 
 CARPENTERS' WORK, JOINERY, OR CABINETMAKING. 
 
 Taken as an art by itself carpentry is much more 
 difficult than when practised in a school in connection 
 with design, wood- carving, and other arts. I find it 
 hard, very hard indeed, to make most people under- 
 stand this. They profess to be able to see how 
 something " practical/' such as the use of carpenters' 
 tools, can be useful, but the " theory " that the appli- 
 cation of design to " arts " can make a carpenter of a 
 boy in less time than by the old method, they do not 
 approve of. I have found in my school that it is 
 very usual for a boy or girl to ask if he or she may 
 not take up some new branch. "What have you 
 been doing ? " is the question. " Designing, modelling, 
 and a little carving." If the proposed class is not too 
 full permission is accorded. I am always certain that 
 the pupil who is at home in one or two branches will 
 take up any other almost as readily as if it had been 
 already practised. It would be precisely the same 
 in carpenters' work, or printing, or shoemaking, after 
 he had become familiar with our studio or atelier. It 
 is not what is taught in an industrial art school to 
 
SHEET-LEATHER WORK. 43 
 
 which I call attention so much as the fact that any- 
 thing technical and practical can there be very easily 
 acquired, if the right beginning has only been made. 
 
 SHEET-LEATHER WORK OR CUIR BOUILLI. 
 
 This is an art which yields good results in propor- 
 tion to its cost; but in common with stencil and 
 papier mache, it is very little understood or practised. 
 It consists of pieces of leather soaked in alum water 
 or plain water, or in some work only wet with a sponge, 
 on which patterns are then drawn by means of a toothed 
 wheel pricking through a design drawn on paper. 
 This pattern is outlined with a small hand wheel or 
 tooling instrument, and the background put down and 
 roughened with a common stamp or punch. When 
 dry the pattern may be painted or stained with black or 
 any other dye. Wet leather is capable of as much 
 modification as clay or papier mache. Not only can 
 sheets or skins be utilised in its manifold applications, 
 but also all kinds of bookbinders' and shoemakers' 
 waste. It can be applied to any surface, such a? 
 chairs, boxes, panels; tables, or cabinets. The sheets 
 of leather used cost from two to four shillings per 
 skin, according to the quality ; some kinds for very 
 elegant work are as much as from eight to ten 
 shillings, that is to say, sheet-leather is about the same 
 price as drawing paper or Bristol boards, or very little 
 more. Very elegant work can be made with thick 
 parchment. An outfit of tools which will serve for 
 much good work costs about eight shillings. The 
 Leather Work Manual contains full instructions for 
 
44 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 this art. Vide also "The Minor Arts" (Macmillan, 
 1880), also an article in the London Art Journal 
 explaining Vienna Cut Leather Work. In this latter 
 the lines of a picture are very slightly cut in the 
 leather with the point of a penknife, and are then 
 pressed in. They are then filled in with colour with 
 the tip of a very fine brush. 
 
 CERAMIC PAINTING. 
 
 Of ceramic or porcelain painting little need be said, 
 if it meant no more than covering plaques or saucer 
 plates with feeble pictures of flowers and dogs' heads, 
 as it generally does; but there is a vigorous style of 
 purely decorative tile painting in monochrome, or single 
 colours, which is almost unknown to most painters, 
 and which will yet become popular, and possibly ex- 
 tinguish the current debilitated imitations of ivory, 
 water-colour, and canvas pictures. The tile, as a 
 wall ornament, should as a rule be decorated in single 
 colours, simply and boldly designed, so as to be clearly 
 visible at a distance, in common with the architectural 
 details of a house. Were this kind of tile painting 
 commoner the art would be more legitimate than it 
 now is, and be more respected not only by those who 
 understand art, but by the ignorant. Single colour 
 china or stoneware painting may be begun in stencil 
 and carried on by hand. Those who have gone on 
 from design to filling in the ground with colour will 
 find it very easy. There is no certain sale or regular 
 demand for such fancy work as is generally found on 
 the plaques and tiles of art depositories and church 
 fairs, but a single-colour tile painter who can work 
 
DANGERS TO BE AVOIDED. 45 
 
 rapidly from good designs, and also make them, can 
 always find a market. Therefore this form of industrial 
 art may be introduced into schools, when artistically 
 designed stencils may be used for tiles. 
 
 The teacher should beware of letting pupils choose 
 too freely what they will do. Left to themselves, 
 all the silly ones, and not a few of the wiser, would 
 elect " to paint," probably to paint pretty little posies 
 and dogs or Greenaway babies, in water-colour, oil, or 
 china, which would be the positive end of all prac- 
 tical or useful art industry with them. If you would 
 keep a girl from becoming an artist set her at once at 
 flower painting. There is, it is true, a natural appetite 
 for colour and flowers as there is for sugar, but this 
 is no reason why people should be fed on it. It 
 should only be gratified after being well nurtured 
 on design and monochrome. Among the principles 
 adopted by the Board of Education in Boston, I 
 find the propositions concerning design by OWEN 
 JONES. Of these No. 6 declares that "flowers or 
 other natural objects should not be directly used as 
 ornament, but conventional representations founded 
 upon them sufficiently suggestive to convey the in- 
 tended image to the mind without destroying the 
 unity of the object they are intended to decorate. 
 This principle, universally adopted in the best periods 
 of art, is equally violated when art declines." 
 
 I have said in the foregoing lines that if you would 
 keep a girl from being an artist set her at painting 
 flowers. This, when first published, caused great 
 indignation. Now it is certainly true that there is 
 not one instance in a thousand in which young ladies' 
 flower- painting is above the level of "fancy work," 
 
46 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 and the same may be said of all the arts as taught of 
 yore in fashionable schools. Fancy work is allied to 
 that produced by machinery : it consists in manufac- 
 turing pretty and petty work without originality and 
 without thought. As in Berlin worsted work, and 
 the making wax flowers or wax coral baskets, it is 
 only necessary to know certain rules, so in the average 
 boarding-school china and flower painting one pupil 
 works as the rest work in the same way. Thus I 
 have often seen in an art school where all were free 
 to do as they pleased, two or three dozen damsels in 
 rows all painting flowers and dogs' heads, or perhaps 
 even girls 7 faces, one as second-hand and amateurish 
 as the other, and all characterised by ineffable feeble- 
 ness. Not one of these painters could have made a 
 decent outline decorative design, or achieved anything 
 original. Now the children in the school were above 
 fancy work, for they were taught to make original 
 patterns. This led to so much grotesqueness that a 
 literary gentleman who wrote a long article on the 
 school observed in it that young people, when taught 
 to design and urged to invent, produced work strangely 
 like that of the Middle Ages. This is very true. There 
 are in the school specimens of originally designed 
 repousse work which the best archaeologist in Europe, 
 seeing them photographed, would declare had been 
 executed in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. But 
 they were strong and original, therefore works of art. 
 Not only the designs, but the finish and touch on 
 the metal were like those of common or second-rate 
 mediaeval work. A few specimens of these were given 
 in the Century and St. Nicholas. It is a healthy and 
 natural beginning. In due time the grotesque will 
 
REPOUSSE WORK. 47 
 
 be abandoned for other styles. There is much 
 priggislmess and affectation in the current " fashion- 
 able" detestation of the grotesque. 
 
 REPOUSSE OR SHEET-METAL WORK IN RELIEF. 
 
 Until within a very few years no art was so little 
 practised by any save professional workmen as 
 repousse, and even with these hand- work had sunk to 
 the lowest stage of neglect. I trust I may be pardoned 
 for again mentioning, in this connection, that the 
 revival of repousse as a popular art dates from the 
 publication of my work on the Minor Arts, and of my 
 manual on the subject, and that this was due to the 
 teaching that although elaborate and perfect work of 
 this kind is expensive and difficult, yet that very 
 beautiful and really artistic plaques or panels may 
 be produced with ease by hammering sheet-metal on 
 wood. This principle was generally recognised during 
 the truly great eras of decorative art, that if the design 
 was good it might be set forth cheaply and easily. 
 At present there is a general tendency to believe that 
 to even begin any art there must be an enormously 
 expensive outfit. I have known women who had 
 never touched a brush or pencil propose to begin 
 china-painting with under-glaze, and to provide them- 
 selves for this with such a stock of expensive 
 materials as SARDANAPALUS l or NERO the imperial 
 artifex might have hesitated at treating himself 
 to. They did not know that to make a real work 
 of art, a tile, a single tube of colour, a penny brush, 
 
 1 BULWER, "Children of the Night." 
 
48 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 and a halfpenny's worth of turpentine are all sufficient. 
 But these would-be artists, who have such hope in 
 mere tools, seldom know much of design. And it 
 may be well to remind many people, teachers as well 
 as editors, that it is only the veriest snob in education 
 or in journalism who would sneer at any man for 
 devoting himself to simply teaching the rudiments of 
 any humble branch of learning or art. 
 
 It must be admitted that embossing sheet-metal, 
 especially brass, though popular as an amusement for 
 amateurs, is less generally useful than any of the 
 branches already described. It requires a finished 
 knowledge of design and a skill in tracing which few 
 possess if really good work is to be done. By means 
 of it sheet-metal is hammered into low relief by 
 working it cold on a piece of board, or into much 
 higher relief and more varied form by beating it on a 
 bed of composition made of pitch, plaster of Paris, 
 and brick dust, and annealing it. The tools used are 
 punches, usually costing from pd. to is. each. They 
 are generally either tracers for outlining patterns or 
 mats for grounding. The sheet-brass costs from I s. 
 to i s. 6d. a pound in small quantities. A full descrip- 
 tion of the art, in a readily accessible and cheap 
 form, both in cold hammering and by annealing, is 
 given in the Manual of Eepousse Work. Anneal- 
 ing consists in warming the work from time to 
 time as it becomes hardened from hammering. It 
 is easily done with a heater and tube from a gas light. 
 It is all important in repousse that the pupil before 
 attempting to work patterns should learn to make 
 or run lines, curves, &c., very accurately with the 
 tracer. Unless this is done, no good work will ever 
 
MACHINE AND HAND-MADE PLAQUES, 49 
 
 result. This work is, however, admirably useful as 
 a preparation for all who intend at some future 
 time to work in metal. Familiarity with the 
 hammer, the punch, and stamps leads to a really 
 practical knowledge of the properties of metal, and 
 how to turn them to advantage. There is, too, a 
 growing demand for many hand-made objects of beaten 
 brass. Facings for fireplaces, finger-plates for doors, 
 bellows, panels for cabinets, picture or mirror frames, 
 and a hundred other objects, may be easily made by 
 women and children. But let it be remembered that 
 neither sheet-brass nor any other kind of work is 
 worth taking up unless it is preceded by a knowledge 
 of design-drawing and perfect skill in the use of the 
 tracer. Without such preparation it at once degene- 
 rates, as china-painting has often done, into frivolous 
 fancy work. This work can also be elegantly executed 
 in sheet-iron, tin, pewter, copper, or silver. The 
 reader should be careful not to confound the hand- 
 made or true repousse work with the machinery-made 
 plaques and bellows, become of late so common, which 
 are stamped by thousands and by steam on dies. The 
 profits on these are enormous ; more correctly speaking, 
 they are profits on the ignorance of the public. I 
 have known a machinery-made plaque to sell for 
 seventy dollars, which, though sold as brass, was only 
 of spelter. The maker, not satisfied with, perhaps, 
 ,12 (or sixty dollars) profit, after deducting the 
 cost of the machinery, must needs make a few pence 
 extra by a swindle and a lie. To a true disciple of 
 art a hand-made plaque, after a really good design, 
 would be far more desirable than a cartload of these 
 shams. 
 
S o PKACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 There are millions of people to whom the word 
 art, as human action, suggests nothing but painting 
 pictures. Pictures are beautiful as flowers are beauti- 
 ful, but those who care for nothing in art but pictures 
 or flowers are like the French washerwoman who 
 declared that " she would wear for ornament nothing 
 but the most expensive diamonds or their imita- 
 tions." If you are not a genius and it is not pro- 
 bable that more than one person in ten thousand is 
 a "genius" in anything or unless you have had a 
 long and thorough training in art, do not attempt 
 picture-making. Without these qualifications you 
 may produce excellent garnets, topazes, or amethysts, 
 but not diamonds. 
 
 Painting in oil or water-colours, for the majority, 
 requires a special teacher. Yet when the inevitable 
 design-drawing is really mastered, monochrome or 
 single colour presents no difficulty whatever to a per- 
 son of ordinary intelligence, even without a master. 
 And after monochrome I see no reason why, with a 
 good manual, any one cannot gradually and carefully 
 mix colours and experiment and test and copy his 
 way, with the aid of Aaron Penley's work on water- 
 colour, without any real difficulty into skill. Those 
 who write a letter to an editor to know what colour 
 would result from mixing blue with yellow would, 
 perhaps, be too impatient to travel the only true road, 
 which, seeming long, is yet the shortest. Painting, 
 though the most popular branch among all pupils, 
 because producing such pretty results, is the last to be 
 thought of in an ordinary school. In proportion to 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 51 
 
 the time, trouble, and expense which it involves, it is 
 of less practical use than any of the minor arts. Yet 
 in one branch it is easy and commendable. I refer 
 to mural or purely decorative painting of walls and 
 ceilings. Here flowers have their place, and may be 
 appropriately introduced. In a large experimental 
 industrial art school decorative painting will of course 
 form a regular part of the branches. 
 
 And I would here emphatically declare, for the 
 benefit of certain critics, that nothing can be alleged 
 against flower-painting or picture-making as branches 
 of art, save their great abuse by ignorant and untrained 
 amateurs. Picture-making is the ]ast stage, the crown, 
 the summit and glory of art, to be reached only through 
 long labour in minor arts, and yet nine out of ten of 
 those who profess to teach art begin with this end. 
 
 TEXTILE FABKICS. 
 
 Weaving is not more difficult than much of the 
 embroidery, macrame-work, or netting practised by 
 many women, and it comes very near to the latter. 
 There are many stages in it, from merely ranging rows 
 of threads from corresponding rows of pegs, and work- 
 ing the pattern in by hand up to the loom. A cheap 
 loom for small work is easily made or purchased. I 
 have been in many houses in the Southern United 
 States where every inmate was dressed in cloth woven 
 on looms made by the men of the family with axe, 
 saw, and knife. These looms could have been as well 
 employed to produce elegant and tasteful work as 
 linsey-woolsey if the people had only known how 
 to do it! It is not in the mere quality of the 
 
52 PKACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 materials, in elaborately finished work, or in expense 
 that true beauty and value in art consist, but in design. 
 This may be seen in so simple a thing as a rag-carpet, 
 which any one can make. Sort the rag strings for 
 carpeting according to colour, and let them be woven 
 up singly. Thus you may have one which is black 
 or brown or blue. Take preferably a black for a 
 beginning, and work a pattern by running white tape 
 with a bodkin through the threads. Sew this where 
 needed. If Etruscan or Greek designs are followed, 
 the result will be a rug or portiere or hanging, cheap 
 indeed, but, if properly made, elegant enough for the 
 drawing-room of a duchess. The simpler the colours 
 the better, but a variety may be employed according to 
 the subject. In the East at the present day the most 
 exquisite weaving is done without looms, the threads 
 being simply arranged between pins and drawn along, 
 the pattern being worked or drawn in by hand. 
 
 PAINTED EMBROIDERY. 
 
 This is made by painting or stencilling patterns in 
 water-colour or dyes on any suitable stuff. The flowers 
 or arabesques are often simply outlined in woollen 
 or silk. The name of this work is misleading and 
 false, and induces a belief that it is merely a sham 
 or imitative art. It would seem that dyed and 
 painted tapestry was made as early as the woven. It 
 certainly can make but little difference whether a 
 decoration is made by weaving dyed threads or by 
 dying woven threads. The mania for making pupils 
 believe that no art can be practised unless a certain 
 
MOSAIC SI 
 
 expensive outfit and certain materials are used has 
 been of great detriment to decorative dying as an art. 
 If an American Indian can produce artistic results 
 with butternut, white maple, hickory bark, sumach 
 golden rod, black tea, &c., with only alum as a mor- 
 dant, I do not see why white people cannot do the 
 same, if they cannot afford to pay ten or fifteen 
 dollars for ten or fifteen cents (or fivepence) worth 
 of patented dye in labelled bottles. The advantages 
 of dye-painting on a woven fabric is, that it has quite 
 a peculiar character and beauty of its own, that by 
 means of it any house may be easily, cheaply, and 
 elegantly decorated, and that it will wash. 
 
 MOSAIC SETTING. 
 
 This ranges from a microscopically minute art, as 
 seen in Koman jewellery, up to large inlaying with 
 stones of any size. What I here refer to is made 
 with cubes about the fourth of an inch in length and 
 breadth. These are of two kinds those made from 
 hard stone of every or any kind and colour, and 
 those broken from sheets or plates of terra cotta. 
 The stone cubes for this work are sold in New York 
 as in London, but .at a very high price. They may 
 be made with a little practice by anybody with a 
 sharp-edged hammer and an iron bar or better still a 
 sharp-edged anvil or rest from almost any kind of 
 marble or stone. They are from a fourth of an inch 
 to a half inch square, set so as to form patterns in 
 cement; they make not only a durable and elegant 
 pavement, but also squares which may be used to 
 
54 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 cover walls, or as panels in cabinets. For summer, 
 mosaic floors are preferable to wood. They are 
 specially suited to bath-rooms. Cubes of earthenware, 
 though far inferior to stone, may, however, be used for 
 mosaic. They are easily made in moulds, and may be 
 baked or fired even by amateurs at a trifling expense. 
 The stone pieces are to be smoothed down with stone, 
 water, and sand. Much mosaic work is used in 
 London for floors, walls, and facades. It corresponds 
 to that of the Byzantine period, such as is seen in 
 Eavenna. Like tiles, mosaic is very durable, and like 
 dye-painting, it will wash. There is a very easy 
 kind of mosaic, known as Scagliola, made by taking 
 coloured stone in fragments of any size, or in powder, 
 and imbedding it in cement. 
 
 CROCKERY MOSAIC. 
 
 It occurred to me one day while in York that 
 all broken china might be utilised for wall and 
 ceiling mosaics. Dr. Coles of the Home Arts and 
 Industries Association suggested that there is a tool 
 in common use, which costs only half a crown, by 
 means of which the fragments could be broken into 
 squares, &c., with perfect accuracy. It proved to be 
 a success, and such mosaics are now produced by the 
 pupils of the association in many places in the king- 
 dom. There is no reason why all the broken china 
 or pottery of the world should not be utilised for this 
 purpose, since the variety of tones, shades, and colours 
 from it are far more varied than those of the ordinary 
 cubes. 
 
VENETIAN MAKQUETRY. 55 
 
 SCULPTURED BRICK. 
 
 Any brick and mortar wall may be sculptured. It 
 is a question whether after the relief is executed the 
 mortar should be stained red to match with the bricks, 
 or whether all should be left in primitive material. 
 Brick sculpture may be very elegantly executed on 
 a small scale, from a single brick up to half a dozen. 
 There is really no artistic reason why these should not 
 be set in red mortar or cement. A single sculptured 
 square set under each window of a house, or between 
 the stories on the front, will change the whole facade, 
 and greatly improve it. Large squares of brick of any 
 size can be made to order at many kilns. The work, 
 after carving, may be painted, or glaze-painted, and 
 again baked. By this means beautiful panels for filling 
 spaces in the facades of buildings may be made. 
 
 VENETIAN MARQUETRY. 
 
 Take a panel of any hard white wood neatly 
 polished. Draw on it a pattern, as simple as possible. 
 Outline this with a pen-knife or a small cutting 
 wheel, which is a sharp-edged disc the size of a three- 
 penny piece or less, set in a handle. Then paint the 
 pattern with wood-stain dyes. (Manders Brothers, 165 
 Oxford Street, sell the best for this purpose in nine- 
 penny boxes. One box will, with hot water, make a 
 pint of dye.) Fill in the cuts with a " filler," or with 
 black putty. Then cover the design with a thin 
 coating of size, and this again with varnish. 
 
5 6 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 METAL STRAP AND NAIL WORK. 
 
 Bands of sheet iron or brass from half an inch to 
 two inches in thickness produce beautiful effects when 
 applied as borders or in pieces to make crosses on 
 chests, &c. Cut them in pieces with a file, and make 
 holes in them with a two-shilling drill. Drive small 
 or knob nails through these holes. 
 
 Nails (brass, steel, or silvered) may be had of all 
 sizes, from those with a head like a pin, up to a bowl 
 two or three inches in diameter. These, arranged in 
 rows, diamonds, or other ornaments, produce a fine 
 effect in fact, the most elaborate designs may be 
 executed with them, as may be seen in many of the 
 old coffers of the Middle Ages. 
 
 BROKEN GLASS MOSAIC. 
 
 This is an exquisitely beautiful art. It is executed 
 by taking glass of all colours and breaking it to 
 different sizes, from fine powder up to a granula- 
 tion like rice or peas. It is set in the cement like 
 any other mosaic. The glass is not of course applied 
 grain by grain, but is sprinkled on the surface and 
 pressed. Larger cubes of ordinary mosaic and gold 
 squares, such as may be bought at all Venetian glass 
 shops, are also set sparingly in it. There is, I be- 
 lieve, a shop in Wardour Street where patterns and 
 materials for this work, there called Ceresa, may be 
 obtained. 
 
GESSO-PAINTING. 57 
 
 IVORY WORK. 
 
 This is an imitation of ivory or of highly polished 
 old leather and parchment binding. It may be applied 
 to any surface. Take a panel of carved wood, or a 
 sheet of leather. Cover it with a good coat of varnish 
 (flexible varnish for the leather). When this dries, 
 give it one or two coats of white paint toned with Naples 
 yellow. Then work the face with tracers or dull point 
 and stamp. A bodkin is preferable for the latter. 
 Then rub dark-brown oil paint into the lines ajid dots 
 thus made. When dry, apply two coats of best re- 
 touching varnish. In Vienna this work is executed 
 not only on cardboard, but on ordinary paper. This 
 work is very applicable to book-covers and albums. 
 Though termed ivory work, it is capable of great 
 variety. If black paint is used instead of white, a 
 perfect imitation of ebony is the result, and in fact 
 every colour thus treated looks well. Olive, with 
 shades of light and dark green, may be so treated as 
 to imitate old bronze. I am not aware that this last 
 effect has been attempted by any " manufacturers/* 
 
 GESSO-PAINTING. 
 
 This is one of the most curious and beautiful of 
 the minor arts, admitting a very wide range of execu- 
 tion, from the coarsest to the most minutely delicate 
 ornamentation. Gesso is the composition of powdered 
 plaster of Paris, or any similar powder, such as baryta, 
 whiting, &c., with size, glue, or gum, and as the 
 mixture is applied and the pattern formed with a 
 
5 8 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 pointed brush or hair pencil, the process may be 
 regarded as either painting in relief or modelling. 
 Mr. WALTER CRANE, from whom I acquired iny own 
 knowledge of it, says of gesso : " My own predilection 
 in gesso is for rather free-hand work of a character 
 something between painting and modelling, but the 
 art is capable of endless development and variation." 
 There are different kinds of gesso ; the simplest is 
 merely the powder mixed with glue to a proper con- 
 sistency. A common water-colour brush is dipped 
 into it, and the pattern is painted in relief. By using 
 a size of one part resin, four of linseed oil, and six of 
 glue, and adding to it whiting which has been soaked 
 in water till all is of the consistency of cream, a very 
 hard gesso can be made, which sets firmly, takes a 
 high polish, and which will endure much wear and 
 exposure. It is admirably adapted to being ivoried. 
 Should there be any cracks or shrinking in the work 
 when set hard, they are easily remedied by the 
 addition of more gesso. Articles made from fine gesso 
 cast in moulds are sold at a very great profit. Gesso 
 can be applied or coated to articles made of wood, 
 papier-mach^, &C. 1 
 
 There are so many more of these minor arts that 
 the list might be indefinitely extended. Suffice it to 
 say that there is no person, young or old, who has the 
 time and will, who cannot master one or more of 
 them ; the materials being so abundant and generally 
 so cheap and so accessible that it is not possible to 
 think of a place without something useful for the 
 purpose. 
 
 1 Vide " Gesso-painting," by the author, published in the London 
 Art Journal (J. S. VIRTUE & Co.), October 1887. With illustrations. 
 
TRAINING IN THE MINOR ARTS. 59 
 
 And here I have a conclusion to make which I 
 earnestly beg the reader to seriously consider. The 
 practical man will be very apt to say after running 
 over the list of the minor arts, "This is all very 
 fine, very pretty ; but do you call this actually pre- 
 paring a loy for the battle of life ? Is this getting 
 him ready for a trade ? " To which I, after years of 
 experience, reply with serious, sober common-sense, 
 " Yes." For it is the only way in the world to train 
 all children so that they can in an emergency turn 
 their hands from one trade or art to another. Think- 
 ing men have of late begun to be alarmed at discovering 
 that the tendency of machinery and the organisation of 
 labour is to turn men into mere unthinking machines 
 themselves. Instead of becoming an artisan or in- 
 telligent mechanic, the worker is all the time turning 
 into the ignorant maker of some sixty-seventh part of 
 a shoe, or the ninety-ninth part of a lock, and nothing 
 else, and caring no more for the rest than the actress 
 Eachel cared to know what was in the fifth act of a 
 tragedy since she died at the end of the fourth. And 
 by and by when a new invention comes, the drudge 
 on a fraction is thrown out of work. 1 If his wits had 
 
 1 The following extract is from the report of Mr. JOHN BURNETT, the 
 labour correspondent of the Board of Trade, on the " sweating system " 
 at the East End of London, which was published as a Parliamentary 
 Report, November 24, 1887. It illustrates a very great evil which is 
 rapidly spreading. 
 
 " The system of tailoring has undergone a complete revolution since 
 the introduction of machinery and the growth of a ready-made clothing 
 trade, and the great bulk of the cheap trade is now in the hands of a 
 class who are not tailors at all in the old sense of the term. The 
 demand for cheap clothes, irrespective of quality, has continually 
 tended to bring down the rates of remuneration of the least skilled 
 among the workers, and has caused the introduction of the most minute 
 
60 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 been trained in youth to design, his mind to form his 
 fingers to some variety of manipulation, he would not 
 in sheer dumb ignorance cry out, What can I do ? 
 He who can design and model a little, and knows, as 
 every child in a minor art school knows, the infinite 
 resources of materials, and how many ways there are 
 of working them up, is actually provided with what 
 is as good as a trade and that is the capacity to 
 readily find out and master a trade. To such a 
 " practical " man I would say : Do not let yourself be 
 blinded by the stern vanity of your " common sense " 
 into condemning these brass plaques, clay mouldings, 
 embroideries, and carvings as mere trash, which have 
 nothing in common with " staple " work. A boy 
 or girl who can make these things has learned some- 
 thing which you in all probability do not in the least 
 understand, for he or she has developed knowledge and 
 skill of a kind which will enable him or her not only 
 to learn anything practical with great ease, but to 
 regard all branches of labour as possible. 
 
 When a boy or girl of from ten to fourteen years 
 of age can look at all the arts which I have here 
 
 systems of sub-divided labour. Instead of there being now only the 
 customer, the master tailor, and his journeymen and apprentices, we 
 now have the customer, the master tailor, the contractor, and possibly 
 several other middlemen between the consumer and the producer, each 
 making his profit out of the worker at the bottom of the scale. Instead 
 of the complete tailor, we have cutters, basters, machinists, pressers, 
 fellers, button-hole workers, and general workers. The learning of any 
 one of these branches is naturally so much easier than the acquisition 
 of the whole trade, that immense numbers of people of both sexes and 
 of all ages have rushed into the cheap tailoring trade as the readiest 
 means of finding employment. The result has been an enormously 
 overcrowded labour market, and a consequently fierce competition 
 among the workers themselves, with all the attendant evils of such 
 a state of things." 
 
MISTAKEN IDEAS. 61 
 
 described in operation without any sense of wonder, 
 and feel perfectly confident that he or she can execute 
 any of them at once, is not that child in a more 
 advanced industrial condition than if its skill did 
 not extend beyond sawing and fitting boards, or filing 
 iron in a small way. Yet there are in the United 
 States to-day scores of thousands of men who persist 
 in ridiculing the former as "aesthetic," and praising 
 the latter as practical. It is not long since the 
 principal of a technical school (and of a very good 
 one) politely informed the public in print that the 
 brass plaques, &c., executed in my school were all 
 trash. His ideas did not go beyond the market value 
 of the articles. The same man had previously informed 
 the world in the New York Tribune that there could 
 be no greater wisdom than to send children to 
 technical schools (i.e., to his), " and no greater foolish- 
 ness" than to attempt to introduce work as a branch 
 into public schools. 
 
 "Come to our shop all others being impostors." 
 Since this opinion was issued hand-work has, how- 
 ever, been made a branch of instruction in the public 
 schools of New York, and it will in a very few years 
 be found in the schools of every country in Europe. 
 
 PRACTICAL TEACHING. 
 
 After having had an industrial art school under 
 my charge for several years, during which time more 
 than a thousand pupils, mostly mere children, have 
 been in the classes, I have arrived at certain con- 
 clusions, which are of the more value, since I con- 
 ducted the undertaking, not to prove preconceived 
 
62 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 theories so much as to simply ascertain what children 
 can do. To effect this I have in every way endeavoured 
 to sound the average capacity of children. It is far 
 greater than is generally supposed, but it lies in a 
 different direction, and is based upon entirely different 
 principles from those assumed as the conditions of adult 
 labour, be it mental or manual. 
 
 The practical results of a combined knowledge of 
 decorative design and modelling are these : The pupil 
 learns to use the eyes and fingers in a way which will 
 render any work easier. The boy and girl who can 
 draw and model even tolerably well can easily find a 
 situation wherever casting or any other kind of plastic 
 work is executed. There is a great demand for boys 
 with such knowledge. I could, without exception, 
 find paid places in a great variety of manufactories 
 for nearly all the pupils in any Public Industrial 
 School who have had from twenty to forty lessons in 
 design and modelling. 
 
 It may be well in this place to consider one or two 
 of the popular objections to industrial art in schools. 
 One is of those persons who, looking at vases witli 
 flowers or frogs, admit that they may be all very pretty, 
 but that they cannot see in such " fancy work " any 
 trustworthy means for getting a living. Of another 
 class are those who examine the work critically, ask 
 its market value, and then inquire if it could not be 
 made more cheaply by machinery, and, if so, whether 
 it is worth while to set children to making it. Since 
 this work was begun a distinguished reformer, who 
 professed great interest in art in schools, began 
 with me by saying, "I wish to see some of your 
 children's work. I want to know its market value, 
 
MARKET VALUE NO CRITERION. 63 
 
 and how much money it will bring. You see I am a 
 practical person." I did not see it, for it seems to me 
 to be most senseless and unpractical to expect goods 
 of average market value from mere children just 
 beginning to learn. There are people " deeply inte- 
 rested in education " who inquire what is the current 
 shop value of the work of a child in its second or 
 third lesson. It is perfectly true that in the hands 
 of competent teachers and directors the average art 
 industrial school may be always made to meet its 
 expenses; yet it is almost as unreasonable to reckon 
 on this as to expect that reading and writing will 
 " pay " from the alphabet onwards, or as Mrs. JEBB 
 has said, " that school copy-books should bring money." 
 In the words of WILLIAM GULAGER, of Philadelphia, 
 "Whatever is worth teaching is worth paying for." 
 Meanwhile it is worth remembering that wherever 
 ornamental castings in metal of any kind are manu- 
 factured, or wood, plaster, terra cotta, stone, or any 
 substance whatever is made to assume shape, there 
 the workman who can design and model even a little 
 is wanted. 
 
 I would say in this connection that I consider 
 exhibitions of mere children's work as of very 
 doubtful utility where the public is very ignorant. 
 That they are very popular, and that they serve to 
 advertise teachers, cannot be denied, and that they 
 stimulate an interest in art is apparent enough. Their 
 defect lies in this, that the public always look at the 
 work exhibited as the end and aim and sum total of 
 all that industrial education can effect. They see 
 brass plaques and designs, plates and panels, and 
 either call them aesthetic frippery or "playing at art," 
 
64 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 or judge them as a Philadelphia newspaper did, by 
 their inferiority to work executed in higher art-schools 
 by adults who have a large corps of teachers to in- 
 struct them every day in the week. Where there is 
 one person even an editor who reflects on what 
 a knowledge of design practically applied to several 
 arts can effect, there are a thousand who expend an 
 ignorant admiration, or as ignorant criticism, on the 
 mere experiments of the pupils. The only exhibition 
 which I would willingly make is of the children 
 themselves at work. This is really interesting. There 
 the visitor may see how many, almost infants, in a 
 few lessons have learned to design patterns, and how 
 easily a mere child grapples with clay to make a vase, 
 or manages the carving-tools. The true result of all 
 this is not shown in the vase or panel -it is in the 
 brain and fingers of the pupil, and it is not expressed 
 by the thing worked on. But the majority, as yet, 
 judge entirely and totally by the quality of the tan- 
 gible result, and are incapable of understanding that it 
 is no expression at all of the amount of power which 
 its production involves. So at the university, a youth, 
 in whose brain-cells and nerves is stored up the 
 talent and power of industry derived from a long line 
 of philological or mathematical ancestors, steps to the 
 front and takes the first honour, while another who 
 has worked ten times as hard, and produced in him- 
 self ten times as much relative mental development, 
 gets nothing. 
 
 LARGER SCHOOLS. 
 
 I have, in what is previously written, considered 
 the expediency of industrial art as a branch of educa- 
 
ADVANTAGES TO TEACHERS. 65 
 
 tion, and shown how it may be introduced to village 
 or private schools. I have, of course, only considered 
 the pupils, but it is worth remarking that the teachers 
 themselves, " learning while instructing," will also be- 
 come accomplished, and in many instances fit them- 
 selves for a more congenial career as artists or teachers 
 of art. No one can doubt that if every teacher in 
 America or England could practise one or more strictly 
 industrial decorative arts of a more practical nature 
 than are now taught in schools, there would be an 
 immense impetus given to our national culture and 
 industry. There was very little really solid in old- 
 fashioned drawing, water-colour, theorems, wax flowers, 
 and china flower plaques, but there is a great deal of 
 real value in free-hand design, and in executing it in 
 wood, metal, leather, and all other suitable substances. 
 Not only does the teacher find in decorative art a 
 means of making more money, but he or she is also 
 provided with what to all is an agreeable change from 
 other duties ; for, while teaching, the instructor, in 
 common with the pupils, can produce something saleable 
 or valuable. 
 
 THE INTRODUCTION OF ART TRAINING. 
 
 Where it is proposed to introduce industrial art 
 work to public schools in large cities or to whole 
 communities, there will be either much opposition or 
 great indifference to the innovation on the part of 
 those who do not understand it. The best way to 
 begin in such cases is to establish on a small scale a 
 single primary school of from twenty to thirty pupils, 
 to be taught design, embroidery, and plain sewing, 
 
 E 
 
66 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 modelling in clay, and wood-carving. This school 
 may be supported by private contributions and the aid 
 of ladies and gentlemen who will give time and teach- 
 ing for nothing, as many do in the Home Arts Asso- 
 ciation and East of London classes; or it may be 
 entirely based on appropriations from School Boards, 
 or the latter source may be eked out by the former. 
 When the school is established and well under way, 
 all that is necessary to convince any rational man 
 of its utility will be to have him inspect it while 
 in session. If managed with any ability, it will 
 speak for itself. The sight of the girls and boys 
 proving to the most prejudiced their ability to make 
 a living on leaving school, is all that is needed to 
 make converts. The walls of the school may be 
 decorated with specimens of work, but I do not urge 
 the appeal to these as the sole proof of the expediency 
 of teaching children to use their hands. As a rule 
 without exception, it is the unreasoning and ignorant 
 visitor who is amazed at plaques and panels made by 
 children, and who cries at every indication of what is 
 or should be only ordinary effort, " How wonderful ! 
 Is hot that child a genius ? Has she not extraordinary 
 talent?" The children themselves soon learn to 
 laugh at this false estimate of their skill. They know 
 that they can all do these things with practice. And, 
 as I have previously said, the ignorant examiner, 
 looking only at the results, and considering only 
 market values, immediately misunderstands the entire 
 system. Thus newspapers have unthinkingly com- 
 pared the results of the work done by little children 
 who had had, many of them, only a dozen lessons, or 
 at most twenty, and that once a week, with that 
 
THE "GENIUS." 67 
 
 effected by grown-up young women who had been for 
 years employed all day, and every day, in higher art 
 schools. Yet even these children showed, in propor- 
 tion to their age and opportunities, superiority in every 
 respect to all rivals. 
 
 F. W. MOODY has, in his " Lectures and Lessons on 
 Art," spoken wisely of the current vulgar opinion that 
 everybody who can produce a work of art is some- 
 thing quite out of the kind of ordinary mortals. 
 " That the study of art does produce that extraordinary 
 compound of self-sufficiency and ignorance called a 
 genius, is an undoubted fact. . . . There are, at the 
 present moment, in schools of art, probably more 
 so-called geniuses than in all the universities of 
 Europe." And he might have added that there will 
 never be any true art until it is popularly understood 
 that it is as open to anybody as the " genius," and to 
 understand true art should be as easy for one man as 
 another, and that it by no means requires that a man 
 should be born with a certain extremely rare spiritual 
 insight or aesthetic illumination. 
 
 PRACTICAL WORK. 
 
 In an ordinary experimental school we first need a 
 room. The upper story of a city school, when not in 
 use, is perfectly adapted to the purpose. It should 
 of course be well lighted. Tables made of two-inch 
 plank, placed on very strong, firm trestles, are re- 
 quisite, particularly if wood-carving and brass-work 
 are contemplated. Such tables do not rock. There 
 must be abundant shelving for many purposes. The 
 pupils will every one require a place whereon to put 
 
68 PKACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 half finished work. There must of course be chairs and 
 a blackboard. An adjacent small store-room or large 
 closet will be a great convenience. If this be wanting, 
 a large plain wooden cabinet must be provided. 
 
 It may happen that the director or principal of an 
 experimental school is capable of teaching not only 
 drawing but modelling. In like manner the lady 
 teacher of embroidery may be qualified to teach some- 
 thing else. In the smaller schools of course one 
 teacher must supervise everything. In the smallest 
 it will soon be found necessary to convert the most 
 advanced pupils into assistants. Economies of teach- 
 ing may be carried out in many ways. But where 
 it can be done the director should have no direct 
 teaching. There should be one instructor for every 
 branch. There should consequently be teachers for 
 drawing, carving, and modelling in clay. But in 
 different localities and in large schools well supported 
 many branches may be taught. I could easily 
 enumerate fifty, large and small, all worth learning, 
 and all very easy to learn if the pupil can design. 
 Thus leather work may be divided into several branches, 
 all elegant and profitable. There is sewn leather, in 
 which fragments of bookbinders' and shoemakers' 
 waste are cut into shape and sewed together, as well 
 as the two great divisions of sheet leather stamped 
 and leather moulded into shapes. In Eussia, Turkey, 
 and Persia there are whole villages or large communes 
 devoted to sewn leather work, and if really artistic 
 patterns were supplied there would be many thousands 
 of people in England and America doing the same. 
 
 With regard to what seems to be the only great 
 and real difficulty in popularising art and industrial 
 
PATTERNS WANTED. 69 
 
 art education, something may here be most appropri- 
 ately said. This difficulty is that of getting patterns 
 to guide taste. I long since suggested in published 
 lectures that this might be met by either private 
 charity or municipal or government aid. Sheets 
 of patterns for every branch of the minor arts, costing 
 not more than two cents a sheet, would be of incal- 
 culable value to every industry in which taste is 
 required. From art works already published, from 
 our museums and from those abroad, inexhaustible 
 material could be taken. It should all be drawn 
 from specimens illustrating and expressing some 
 marked era of art. Very little should be made or 
 drawn to order for these sheets, not even by the best 
 artists. What is wanted is instruction and inspiration 
 for artists, not from men, but from eras of culture. 
 When the demand makes itself felt our Government 
 will doubtless supply it. It has been met in England 
 in an inadequate way by publishing illustrated pamphlet 
 summaries of the works in the South Kensington 
 Museum. But what is wanted is simply large she.ets 
 with large outline designs of different kinds of art 
 industry work. Let me illustrate this by a single 
 instance. In many parts of America, boards, even 
 of oak, walnut, or more valuable woods, are cheap 
 enough, and men who can manage saws and planes 
 are not wanting. These people are often without 
 furniture, and pay extravagant prices for the flimsy, 
 worthless, ugly, glued together, and varnished trash 
 of the factories. Now there is a type and style 
 of very elegant solid furniture, such as was made in 
 South Germany for centuries, which would cost no 
 more than the glued and veneered trash. It is made 
 
7 o PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 by simply sawing, boring, and pinning or bolting 
 planks or boards together. Any man of ordinary 
 intelligence having the design for a table or chair 
 of this kind before him can take the measurements 
 and make it. A series of such designs at a low price 
 would be very welcome and very useful all through 
 the West of America and in the Colonies. 
 
 Nobody need hesitate to begin a school. Get a 
 few simple patterns and begin to learn with your 
 pupils to draw and teach together. In England the 
 Home Arts Association will supply you with designs, 
 manuals, and practical directions, and help you on. 
 
 There are several useful industries which would 
 soon be practised in thousands of families were cheap 
 illustrations devoted to them disseminated everywhere. 
 Such pictures would form a very important aid to 
 industry in schools. I have done what I could to help 
 in this respect by giving in the series of Art Manuals, 
 which were written for education, large working patterns, 
 those in any one of the works being adaptable to an- 
 other. Thus a design for sheet brass may also be used 
 for flat carving. It is to be regretted that in works of 
 art half the engravings are executed not with a view to 
 making them practically useful to workmen, but to give 
 a general picturesque effect. There is a great deal of 
 expensive shading, but the details are scumbled. This 
 is the case even in many of the illustrations of the 
 South Kensington works. 
 
 An almost indispensable element in art-work is 
 inventiveness. The popular mind instinctively settles 
 to certain branches as embracing all there is to learn, 
 while the fact is that when design is once mastered the 
 applications of it are infinite. A small wooden platter 
 
SMALL INDUSTRIES. 71 
 
 sawed from board one-third of an inch in thickness 
 in the shape of a boar's head, a tortoise, owl, or other 
 animal, touched with carving, inlaid with eyes of ivory 
 and bone, and finished with ebonising varnish, is a trifling 
 object. It cannot constitute a staple of industry. But 
 many thousands of such platters are made in Vienna 
 and sold. An ingenious person can invent, revive, or 
 discover such a small manufacture every day. It is 
 one of the great causes of poverty and suffering in the 
 world that the so-called practical men reject with scorn 
 all branches of industry which are not regular and 
 " staple." The idea of providing for the poorer classes 
 in Ireland by means of small industries has been treated 
 by writers as petty and ridiculous. When I published 
 my " Minor Arts," a London review, ignoring all I had 
 said as to establishing village and industrial schools, 
 made its main point by making me appear only as a 
 teacher of fools' work, because there was in the book 
 instructions for making certain children's toys. Now 
 the entire population of Ireland might be employed in 
 the minor arts without glutting the market, while the 
 fact is that only a fourth or fifth of it need relief, and 
 very large fortunes have been made in America within 
 a few years by the manufacture of some single toy. 
 It would be an excellent idea for the teacher of every 
 art school to request of pupils and their friends 
 suggestions as to what may be made. 
 
 TO BEGIN A SCHOOL. 
 
 Many hundreds of persons have written to me 
 saying that they would like to establish an art school, 
 or a club, but do not know how to go about it. And 
 
72 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 when I reflect on the time and practice which it has 
 cost me to learn how to fit out classes, it does not 
 seem strange. I would therefore suggest that to begin, 
 the interest of a number of persons in the undertaking 
 should be awakened. As an aid to this a perusal of 
 the pamphlet on "Industrial Work in Education," which 
 forms the basis of this chapter, may be commended. 
 By sending a list of names and addresses to the 
 Commissioner of Education, Bureau of Education, 
 Washington, with a note stating the object of the 
 writer, the Circular No. 4 will be forwarded to all 
 thus indicated, gratis and post-paid. This circular has 
 been the direct cause of thus establishing hundreds of 
 small art schools and societies. I commend this be- 
 cause, by so doing, in a great many towns interest 
 sufficient to organise a school or classes, or a club, has 
 been awakened. Few people know the power latent 
 in the simple phrase " calling attention to a thing and 
 exciting an interest in it." 
 
 It is well not to begin by attempting too much. 
 Even for a large school, design alone will be sufficient 
 for several weeks, and for six months nothing need be 
 added to this except modelling and embroidery. For 
 these little money is needed. I have found that there 
 is a mania with many to buy all kinds of articles 
 which may possibly be needed. 
 
 I will here recapitulate the possible or probable 
 requirements of an experimental school on a large 
 scale for a city : 
 
 A large room, well lighted. 
 
 From thirty to fifty feet of common pine shelving. More if possible. 
 
 One gas burner to six pupils. 
 
 Water, soap, and towels. 
 
KEQUIREMENTS. 73 
 
 One closet or cabinet (pine). 
 
 One waterproof barrel or large box for clay. 
 
 Clay, from 30 to 100 pounds. 
 
 Modelling tools, one set. 
 
 Carpenter's compasses. 
 
 Chest of carpenter's tools. 
 
 Drawing boards. 
 
 Drawing paper. 
 
 Pencils. 
 
 Fine sand-paper. 
 
 Cups or small tumblers. 
 
 Indiarubber. 
 
 Tiles for colours. 
 
 Foot-rules. 
 
 Compasses. 
 
 Water-colours. 
 
 Paint brushes. 
 
 Blackboard. 
 
 Wood-carving tools for each pupil. 
 
 Wood, half inch to inch, at from 4 to 10 cents a foot. 
 
 One set of Art Work Manuals or other handbooks, $3 (l2s.) 
 
 Whetstones or hones. 
 
 Broken china and cement. 
 
 A china-cracker, 2s. 6d. (or about 63 cents). 
 
 One grindstone. 
 
 One bucket or pail. 
 
 One fret-sawing apparatus. 
 
 Material for needlework for each pupil. 
 
 Leather, from 25 cents to $i a skin, besides waste^ 
 
 Tools for leather work, each pupil, $2 (8s.) ST&&^" 
 
 Stencil cutting, each pupil, $i ( 4 s.) ( -rj N j v^P 
 
 Brass work, each pupil ; tools, $l ; brass, $l\8sj 
 
 Flour paste or dextrine. ^'^SdyE^^NlA^,^-*^ 
 
 Plaster for moulds. 
 
 Coarse towels to clean the tables of dust. 
 
 A hand-bell. 
 
 It will be seen that it is very difficult to adjust the 
 prices for such a list. For a small school or club on 
 the humblest scale, drawing materials, two or three 
 carving tools to each pupil, boards or wood (such as 
 can be generally had for a trifle), waste newspapers, 
 
74 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 and common paste and clay for papier-mache, with a 
 little paint, bits of marble or stone of different kinds, 
 and a hammer and iron bar for mosaic making, with 
 rags for artistic rag-carpet work, and manuals, will not, 
 with management, cost in all more than from $20 
 (4) to $30 (6). A clever teacher with clever 
 pupils could almost undertake to begin work on $ I o 
 (2), and increase the stock of implements by sales. 
 If the teacher can only design, all the rest will or 
 may follow of itself. A good quality of wrapping or 
 cartridge paper costs less than drawing paper, and 
 answers quite as well for beginners. Many decora- 
 tive designers use nothing else. If a majority of the 
 patrons or pupils approve of it, elementary carpenters' 
 work may form one of the primary branches. Every 
 boy and man should know how to handle carpenters' 
 tools. But let it be distinctly understood that design 
 should precede all the minor arts, if there is to be any 
 system of practical instruction. 
 
 HOW TO SELECT WORK FOR PRACTICE. 
 
 It is extremely difficult to determine, beyond design- 
 drawing, modelling, embroidery, and wood-carving, 
 exactly what may or may not be taken up. There 
 are places about factories where the material for rag 
 carpeting is very cheap; in others it is dear. In 
 others mosaic stones or marble may be had for the 
 taking, while in certain places such material is not to 
 be had. It is true that the prices of materials and 
 implements for industrial art work are very variable; 
 but there is no place in which some of them are not 
 within the reach of the poorest. Sculpturing or 
 
SELECTING WORK. 75 
 
 moulding brick is a beautiful and profitable art, not 
 difficult to learn, and bricks or clay are to be had 
 almost everywhere. 
 
 There is one rule by which all such schools may 
 be safely guided. Making money immediately should 
 not be the main object of any branch of education, 
 but where schools are very poor a sufficient income to 
 pay for tools and materials may be confidently relied 
 on. Let the teacher, or those who are interested in 
 the pupils, after they can design patterns, and not till 
 then, consider what industries in their neighbourhood 
 will pay. In the first place, a stencilled wall is really, 
 if well executed, better than a papered one. Elegant 
 stencilling costs little more than that which is ugly. 
 It should be found in every house in the country. 
 Just at present it seems to be confined to the most 
 expensive mansions. If brass or sheet-metal work is 
 taken up, fronts for fireplaces are easily made, and can 
 be sold, as also finger-plates for doors, sconces, and 
 frames. Leather work will supply baskets, chair- 
 seats, and coverings for the backs of chairs, table- 
 covers, and albums. Of sewn leather, cushions or 
 pillows are extensively made in Turkey, Eussia, and 
 Persia. These can be made from bookbinders' waste. 
 Elegant coverings for furniture, rugs, and slippers are 
 also made of. this now wasted material, which may be 
 used for a great variety of purposes. Let it always be 
 remembered that if the teacher and pupils set them- 
 selves resolutely to make certain objects well, according 
 to what authority recommends as good patterns, they 
 can always find some agency in every town where their 
 work can be sold. But if they only produce average 
 charity fair work of the common flower plaque and 
 
76 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 dog's head school, it will not sell. The writer is in 
 the constant receipt of letters from people in the 
 country asking him where their small art work can be 
 sold, or even requesting him to kindly exert himself 
 to sell it for them. Now there is always a market for 
 anything worth having, but the only way to sell it is 
 to find out by inquiry some honest agent or merchant 
 in a city or town who will deal in art work, and trust 
 to him. The ladies' decorative art associations in 
 American cities all sell such work, with a discount in 
 their favour of about 10 per cent. It is to be advised 
 that, in all cases where the pupils produce work of 
 substantial merit, specimens adapted to house decoration 
 such as brass fronts and tiles for fireplaces, leather 
 chair-covers, and carved panels with squares of mosaic 
 be exhibited, not for sale, but as samples of work 
 which will be executed to order. 
 
 APPLICABILITY AND VALUE OF ART TRAINING. 
 
 It is a curious matter to reflect what may be done 
 for an ordinary country house by a family who will 
 devote their evenings to its improvement, with a few 
 tools and cheap materials. In the first place, good 
 planed plank or boards can, by pattern and measure- 
 ment, be converted by most men or boys into solid and 
 even elegant furniture. It will cost less when finished 
 than is usually paid for machine-made varnished and 
 veneered rubbish. I have before me, as I write, two 
 chairs, each 250 years old, as good as new. The 
 chair back fits by a socket into the seat, and is bolted 
 beneath ; the legs are simply stuck through holes, as 
 
OLD CRIES REVIVED. 77 
 
 in a three-legged stool, into the seat. The backs are 
 carved, and the result is a very beautiful yet con- 
 venient piece of furniture. They could be as well 
 made by the boys in the school. Tables, settees, and 
 all kinds of furniture may be made on this plan. The 
 floor of the cottage may be set in mosaic, at the 
 expense of time, an iron bar, a hammer, and stone of 
 different colours; or it may be inlaid in wood arid 
 covered with rag carpets in Etruscan or Greek pattern 
 all home made. The walls may be covered with 
 stencilled designs, or ornamented with carved panels 
 at intervals, or strips or panels of stamped leather 
 in old Spanish patterns, touched with gold. The 
 doors may be hung with rag carpet portieres, or cheap 
 materials, such as crash towelling, dye painted and 
 outlined with embroidery. The ceiling may be sten- 
 cilled or adorned with papier mach6 mouldings. 
 
 There are many people who say, as many have 
 said to me, " What is the use or sense of inducing a 
 backwoods dweller in a log cabin or shanty to adorn 
 his house in a manner which he can neither under- 
 stand nor enjoy ? " There are others who continually 
 cry that educating girls up to aesthetic tastes unfits 
 them for " mechanics' wives." This has been the old 
 cry in one form or another in all ages. It was heard 
 everywhere a century ago, as it may still be heard 
 occasionally from a few, that reading and writing are 
 the ruin of the " lower orders." There is a gentleman 
 in Philadelphia who has always maintained that our 
 civil war, which he regarded simply as a needless 
 nuisance because it inconvenienced him, " all came from 
 educating the common people so that they could read 
 the newspapers." Industrial art is rapidly becoming, 
 
78 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 in education and in life, as essential as reading or 
 writing. Thousands who are absorbed in politics, 
 whisky, or business, are as yet ignorant of this ; even 
 some editors seem to ignore it ; but the women, the 
 clergy, and the teachers are already generally aware 
 of it. But all the people in America do not live in 
 backwoods shanties, and where they do they are not 
 on that account to be universally set down as incap- 
 able of appreciating homes made beautiful. There 
 are millions of people in America, as in England, 
 not so badly off, whose homes, in which much money 
 has been spent, are not really creditable, good-looking, 
 nor comfortable. They would all have tasteful or 
 artistic and cheap adornment if they could get it. 
 The money which they pay for their present orna- 
 mentations represents just so much labour. Now, 
 this labour would be better bestowed on making for 
 themselves what they want, or, in other words, in 
 keeping the profits which at present simply go to 
 enrich the manufacturers of machinery made, and 
 very trashy and ugly objects. The problem of political 
 economy lies in the greatest possible distribution of 
 wealth and industry, and machinery does not distribute, 
 but places capital in a few hands. 
 
 The majority of men in America speak and think 
 of " art " in any form or phase as something that 
 may very well be dispensed with. It is to them 
 "fancy." Yet these men are all engaged in making 
 money, and when the spending it comes, they are 
 ignorant, and make fools of themselves. Deny it as 
 we may, there is a standard of taste, known to those 
 who have been educated in design and its applica- 
 tions, and according to this standard, the ignoramus 
 
ARTISTIC WORK IN DEMAND. 79 
 
 in America is continually making himself ridiculous. 
 " We are a new people," they say ; " ours is a new 
 country. Wait till the time comes say in a century 
 or two, when all the West shall be populated and 
 
 then " And then we should have reverted 
 
 to barbarism in our zeal for multiplying and "im- 
 proving" property. We have, as it is, over sixty 
 millions of people quite enough to begin a few small 
 experiments in culture when we consider that Athens 
 in its palmy days had only twenty-five or thirty 
 thousand free citizens. 
 
 There is another argument in favour of industrial 
 art education to which I have already referred, but 
 which cannot be too earnestly or too frequently 
 repeated. It is the enormous and rapidly growing 
 demand for hand-made objects. As education and 
 culture progress, people begin to find out that in 
 jewellery as in pictures, or even in fire-irons, a thing 
 to be truly artistic must be hand-made. It is not as 
 yet generally understood that machinery, though it 
 may manufacture pretty things, cannot make anything 
 artistic. There are no such things as artistic 'works 
 made in any way except by hand. Only the vulgar 
 and ignorant confuse or confound that which is 
 beautiful with what is artistic. The merchant is 
 guilty of an illiterate blunder who advertises as 
 "artistic" goods turned out by the million from 
 moulds. It is more correct to speak of a pair of well- 
 made and handsome trousers as artistic than of a 
 
 1 This is effectively what was said by a newspaper in commenting 
 on my efforts to encourage industrial art. The English reader will 
 bear it in mind that this work is intended for both divisions of Anglo- 
 Saxony. 
 
80 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 chromolithograph as such. This demand for hand- 
 made art will ere long give employment to that very 
 large class whom it is at present difficult to fit to 
 anything. The day is not distant when the public 
 will be so well educated as to distinguish clearly 
 between hand-made and machinery^made in every- 
 thing pertaining to ornament. When that time comes, 
 we shall be a nation not only of artists, but of mutual 
 purchasers of art work. Meanwhile let it be dis- 
 tinctly understood that art does not consist entirely 
 in prettiness. Its best characteristic is the impression 
 of individual character. This disappears in the 
 machine. In fact, the more perfect machine work 
 is the less is it artistic. The faultlessly finished piece 
 of silver work, such as no mere smith could ever rival, 
 shows indeed the result of ingenuity, but not of art. 
 A Soudan bracelet made with a stone and a nail is 
 far more artistic than a Connecticut mill-manufactured 
 dollar bangle, yet the latter is infinitely the more 
 " finished " of the two. 
 
 As for the argument that girls are unfitted for 
 becoming mechanics' wives by a knowledge of art, 
 it is like the hackneyed cry against the piano and 
 against all kinds of education or culture for the poor. 
 The best arbiters in this question would be the young 
 mechanics themselves, especially those who have been 
 at art schools. Much as has been said against the 
 piano, the mechanic himself is generally the first to 
 make his wife a present of one, and I doubt if he 
 would object to arts which are practised at home and 
 which bring money in. There is much cheap ridicule 
 of dados and what is misrepresented as being the 
 staple of all decorative art work, but the truth is 
 
THE CRAZE" FOR ART. 81 
 
 and it is to be desired that all newspaper wits would 
 admit it that the fancy work of the last generation 
 is gradually assuming a substantial and valuable form. 
 The "china craze," as it is called, was at any rate 
 better than potichomania or wax-fruit work. The 
 arts of which I have spoken deal with something 
 more " practical " than plaques. And here something 
 may be said of the very generally disseminated opinion 
 that the present popular desire to collect works of 
 art, and antiques, and archaeological " curiosities/' and 
 to ornament houses, is all an " aesthetic craze " or 
 fleeting fancy, which will soon pass away. Be it 
 observed that such " crazes " have always manifested 
 themselves in every country and in every age, begin- 
 ning with every era of true culture and intelligence, 
 and have only ended with it. The Medici family had 
 such a " craze " for six generations. Whenever people 
 begin to know anything beyond eating, drinking, and 
 the vulgar display of money and "family," they 
 begin to read that is to say, to take an interest in 
 history and humanity as it has been ; and this leads 
 at once to an interest in the past, and to intelligent 
 collection and preservation. This "craze" begun 
 again during the eighteenth century in England with 
 WALPOLE and Bishop PERCY it had never ceased on 
 the Continent since the Eenaissance among the better 
 educated, and it has been gradually progressing ever 
 since. While the absurdities of old spinning-wheels, 
 with other merely odd and crazy antiques in drawing- 
 rooms, must cease, it is quite as certain that the 
 value of any old work impressed with the true cachet 
 or seal of art will never diminish until a new revival 
 of taste shall have culminated and decayed. 
 
 F 
 
82 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 ART INSTRUCTION IN ITS RELATIONS TO THE TRADES. 
 
 I cannot set forth too strongly the fact that decora- 
 tive art is to be taught to children and girls, simply 
 because it is better adapted to their age or nature than 
 a trade or mechanical pursuits, and that whenever it is 
 possible the pupils should be put into practical work. 
 Thus when boys or even girls manifest an aptness or 
 a fitness for it, they may be taught simple carpentry 
 or joining, turning, or any of the trades, if there be 
 an opportunity to do so, and they can learn. It 
 requires many thousands of dollars or pounds sterling 
 to establish an industrial school, but industrial art 
 may be taught from the infants' school upward. Let 
 it, however, be borne in mind that industrial art, 
 especially as regards boys, is really only a training for 
 a trade, and that far from giving them a distaste for 
 useful work, it only whets the appetite. 
 
 I was one of the first, if not the first, to point out, 
 many years ago, in a lecture, a fact which has since 
 been clearly proved, that the decay of the apprentice 
 system must very soon lead to industrial education 
 in schools. Machinery is making men into machines 
 at such a rate that humanity is becoming seriously 
 alarmed at the inevitable result. The old apprentice 
 had a chance to rise, since he learned a whole trade ; 
 the modern workman, who is kept at making the 
 sixtieth part of a shoe, and at nothing else, by a master 
 whom he never sees, is becoming a mere serf to capital. 
 Even the industrial school with its " practical " work 
 can do nothing against this onward and terrible march 
 of utilitaria. It is in the teaching of art, and of the 
 
THE PAUPERS OF TO-DAY. 83 
 
 superiority of hand-work in all that constitutes taste, 
 that the remedy will be found. By and by, when 
 culture shall have advanced as it will there will be 
 an adjustment of interests. Machinery will supply 
 mere physical comforts. Man, and not machinery, 
 will minister to taste and refinement. Machinery 
 promised to supply food for all. There are more 
 people at present with virtually nothing to do, than 
 there ever were in the days of hand labour. They do 
 not starve, and they are not in rags, but they are 
 paupers. They walk about in decent clothes, but 
 they are dependents on parents, rich relations, or on 
 somebody. If they had any calling, industry, or art, 
 however small, they would not be paupers. And it is 
 for industrial art in schools to save them. 
 
 I have been assured by practical-impractical men, 
 that industries not "staple" are not worthy of being 
 recognised by a government. But these people mean 
 by "staple" certain settled, old-fashioned industries, 
 and they assume that there can never be any new 
 ones. Now when I, as I am credited for it by high 
 authority, revived repousse in brass, and its sister art 
 of stamped leather, or cuir bouilli, as manual employ- 
 ment for amateurs, I gave an impulse to an industry 
 which has set thousands of people at work. But I 
 am told "this is a fancy-work craze." Well, when 
 the same craze first sprung up it lasted more than a 
 thousand years, and it will do so again. The great 
 reason why Germany is taking the lead in the world's 
 markets is, because she teaches art and letters to her 
 apprentices. 
 
84 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 THE PHILADELPHIA SCHOOL. 
 
 This now(i 8 8 7) consists of about live hundred pupils, 
 boys and girls, all studying in the Public Grammar 
 Schools. Most of them before coming to it have already 
 learned to hold a pencil and draw a little, but this is less 
 of a qualification than would be supposed, since none 
 can then produce a design, a practical working drawing 
 fit to be " put in hand." In fact it is almost a matter 
 of total indifference to me whether a child can draw or 
 not. Those who can, and who have been taught by the 
 old method, continue to rest all their weight, or press 
 on the right hand or arm, and require a long training 
 to draw light lines, while there are few indeed who 
 would not make a bough smallest next to the trunk, or 
 who have a single ornament by heart. It is needless 
 to say that a pupil who knows nothing at all of draw- 
 ing is preferable for decorative design to one whose 
 ideas are limited to heavy lines, stumping, shading, and 
 picture-making. The pupil on arriving is set at copy- 
 ing some very simple design in outline only, and is 
 then told to double it, or else to draw a leaf so as to 
 compose a wreath by repeating it. There are two 
 classes one attending on Tuesday afternoons from 
 three to five; the other on Thursdays at the same 
 hours. These lessons are freely open to the public. 
 Those on Saturday afternoons, at which brass and 
 leather work are practised, are strictly private, as the 
 noise causes a confusion which is greatly heightened 
 by visitors walking about. 
 
 I have known one or two very clever girls who had 
 previously learned to draw properly succeed in making 
 a good original design even at a third lesson. But 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 85 
 
 this is very unusual indeed. I remember that once a 
 young lady of Boston who could draw, i.e., copy very 
 well, argued with me for a long time to prove that I 
 could never teach her to design, for she had no origi- 
 nality. I finally said " You have talked for half an 
 hour to convince me that you are incapable of doing 
 what I have never failed to teach to any public-school 
 child of twelve. Will you now devote half an hour 
 to learning to design." The result of the lesson was 
 that next morning at breakfast she showed me a really 
 beautiful original pattern, fit to be worked. But as a 
 rule children require from twenty to thirty or even 
 fifty lessons to produce good designs. This is partly 
 due to the fact that I have often from fifty to sixty to 
 teach at once, and that other avocations prevent me 
 from devoting my time to making or preparing " copies," 
 that is to say, motives for the pupils to work on. I 
 am positive that with abundance of good models or 
 designs, and with more time, or smaller classes, I 
 could teach a pupil to design a pattern in much less 
 time than is now required. It is a great disadvantage 
 that in my school the majority of the pupils are with- 
 drawn when they have not had more than fifteen or 
 twenty lessons, or before they have had time to fairly 
 learn to design and model. This is caused by my 
 receiving chiefly the eldest, or those who are about to 
 leave. Despite all these and many other drawbacks I 
 have fully succeeded in proving what this chapter was 
 written to demonstrate, that children may be taught 
 while attending school to make a living, or, if this term 
 be equivocal, I would say to be so taught as to become 
 preferred workmen and workwomen, or learners in many 
 kinds of factories and callings. Thus a boy or girl who 
 
86 PKACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 can design at all is very desirable as an assistant or 
 junior designer in a carpet-factory. To get such a 
 junior the manufacturer now goes to an art school to 
 receive a youth who has been trained for years solely 
 towards picture-making. The boy can copy blocks and 
 shade them, and draw landscapes in perspective, and 
 has been over-educated in rules and precepts, but as for 
 making patterns such as the manufacturer needs, he 
 rarely knows much about it. Many of my pupils have 
 produced designs which have been sold, and work which 
 has a value. But I have not as yet deemed it advis- 
 able to lay much stress on the school-work as suited 
 to either exhibition or sale. 
 
 The school was originally established chiefly by the 
 kind aid of Mr. EDWARD T. STEEL, the President of 
 the Philadelphia Board of Public Education, but it 
 was entirely carried out and kept in operation by 
 WILLIAM GULAGER, JOHN SHEDDEN, ISAAC A. SHEP- 
 PARD, WILLIAM M. SMITH, and JAMES J. COOPER, of 
 the Committee on Industrial Art Education. These 
 gentlemen aided me through much local opposition, 
 and if the school succeeded fully in proving what it 
 was designed to establish, it was due to their constant 
 help and encouragement. Since this was written I 
 have left the direction of the school. It has, however, 
 been greatly enlarged, and is successfully advancing. 
 
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 EQUALITY OF THE SEXES IN ARTISTIC CAPACITY. 
 
 IT may interest the reader to know that in design- 
 drawing there is no difference as regards merit or 
 capacity between the sexes. In brass-work boys excel, 
 not because it requires more strength, for it does not, 
 and the gentlest worker who makes least exertion does 
 best, but because women and girls will not take so 
 much pains to learn to run a line well with a tracer 
 on brass before proceeding to make what they are 
 confident will be saleable and beautiful productions. 
 In wood-carving the sexes are more nearly equal, 
 with an advantage, however, in favour of the male. 
 In modelling the equality is almost re-established. 
 Teachers who have had much experience in Europe 
 all declare that American girls or grown women, 
 while clever, are the most difficult to teach, owing 
 to their impatience. As a rule, when not under 
 restraint, they have not the patience to learn to 
 design, but are eager to take up at once one or 
 several arts, hoping to beg, buy, or borrow patterns, 
 as luck may provide. Those who do proceed by the 
 right road of drawing learn rapidly and do well. 
 While it is continually urged that women who are 
 all players of the piano never produced a great com- 
 
88 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 poser, or indeed a very great artist of any kind, it 
 is at least consoling to know that in the minor decora- 
 tive arts, which produce great eras of art, there is but 
 little difference as regards results, and if from small 
 beginnings we date our winnings, it may be that from 
 this training something may arise surpassing aught in 
 the past. 
 
 MISAPPREHENSION OF "ART" AN OBSTACLE TO 
 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 
 
 The most serious obstacle with which industrial art 
 has to contend is the extravagant and inflated ideas 
 which are popularly attached to the word art. It 
 has been so long identified with pictures and statues, 
 that in every newspaper, under the heading of " The 
 Fine Arts," nothing but news of pictures and statues 
 is expected. Now, as not one person in scores can 
 accurately distinguish a good picture from a bad one, 
 and as the kind of art knowledge which is current 
 sets itself forth in a vast vocabulary of cant, it is not 
 remarkable that "art" has become a terror. There 
 are men in high places who profess to be authorities, 
 who declare that " art " is something for only the very 
 few to rightly understand, and that it requires a special 
 inspiration and much education to appreciate it. When 
 every one, rich or poor, shall know what design is, 
 though it be only simply decorative, and has become 
 familiar with a tastefully ornamented house, however 
 humble, then art in its highest, purest, and noblest 
 sense will have no mystery for any one. It is most 
 unfortunately true that, while taste, learning, and cul- 
 ture are spreading rapidly, there has been so far no 
 
HOW TO ATTAIN HIGH ART. 8 
 
 rational or common-sensible effort to really teach 
 the poor and ignorant anything of the kind. There is 
 a great deal of writing about the ennobling tendencies 
 of art, but there have been as yet very few efforts to 
 really go down to the basis and make a proper begin- 
 ning. The dilettanti and cognoscenti, and of late 
 years the aesthetes, have all preached in their time 
 and way the glory of EAPHAEL or MICHAEL ANGELO, 
 and how desirable it would be to bring a knowledge of 
 them down to the people. But they have never tried 
 bringing the people up to EAPHAEL. Now, EAPHAEL 
 and MICHAEL ANGELO sprung from the people in an age 
 when every object was made with decorative art. They 
 were results more than causes. And when this shall 
 be the case with us, we shall have EAPHAELS again, and 
 not till then. There never was a real art in the world 
 that did not spring from the people, that was not fully 
 shared in by the people, and that did not belong to the 
 people. If there were to-day as much knowledge of 
 and fondness for design as there seems to have been 
 among the prehistoric savages of Europe, we should 
 in a few years raise our manufactures of every kind to 
 pre-eminence, and with them improve ourselves person- 
 ally, morally, and socially. 1 
 
 1 Mr. WILLIAM MORRIS, the eminent poet and artist, speaks to the 
 same effect in an address at the opening of a Fine Art and Industrial 
 Exhibition at Manchester, England : 
 
 " In truth, these decorative arts, when they are genuine, real from 
 the root up, have one claim to be considered serious matters which even 
 the greater works do in a way lack, and this claim is that they are the 
 direct expression of the thoughts and aspirations of the mass of the 
 people ; and I assert that the higher class of artist, the individual 
 artist he whose work is, as it were, a work in itself cannot live 
 healthily and happily without the lower kind of art if we must call it 
 lower the kind which we may think of as co-operative art, and which, 
 
90 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 There is a great coming revival of culture and of 
 art, but it will not be with us until we teach its prin- 
 ciples to every child in every school. There is an 
 instinct in mankind for decoration, for colour, for mani- 
 festations of what is beautiful. It has been starved 
 out temporarily by the practical developments of science 
 or by the useful. This was well ; but while comfort 
 should be paramount, there is no need of suppressing 
 taste. Those who talk about the sunflower mania and 
 " art craze " as something temporary, and who mistake 
 the aesthetes for the main army yet to come, are like 
 the ambassadors sent by an African king to visit 
 London, and who at the first small Arab village 
 thought themselves at the end of their journey. As 
 yet the people have not moved. A writer in a Cin- 
 cinnati journal, I know not who, has wisely said that 
 " because some people have blue jugs, and one gentle- 
 man an art gallery, therefore we are a great artistic 
 people. But where are the works of our united 
 citizens ? What have the masses of our people done ? " 
 
 What the masses of our people can do will be first 
 shown when every one of them shall have been taught, 
 first, decorative design, and then one or more minor 
 arts. This design will be simple, and deal merely 
 with outline and mere ornament at first. This is the 
 only easy and proper preparation for more advanced 
 drawing, be it practical or technological, or for pros- 
 pective picture-making. Hitherto all elementary draw- 
 ing has been misdirected either in copying shaded 
 pictures, or, what is little better, in stiff and formal 
 
 when it is genuine, gives your great man, be he never so great, the 
 peaceful and beautiful surroundings and the sympathetic audience which 
 he justly thinks he has a right to." 
 
MORAL RESULTS. 91 
 
 " systems." When all can design, and all know some- 
 thing about decorative art, the mystery will depart, 
 and the world feel less awed before old masters and 
 modern Gothic churches ; neither will it believe that a 
 pile of building is necessarily beautiful because it cost 
 fifteen million dollars. 
 
 MORAL EFFECTS OF ART INSTRUCTION. 
 
 I cannot urge too earnestly or too often on clergy- 
 men, as on parents, the fact that an interesting industry 
 is conducive to moral culture. Boys who are really 
 absorbed in some kind of industrious amusement are 
 kept out of much mischief. The world, unfortunately, 
 while it observes those who are always in mischief, 
 takes no note of those who are kept out of it How 
 much the more, therefore, is art industry in school to 
 be commended, since it not only keeps children busy 
 as an amusement, but aids them practically as to 
 future callings. Year by year sees the old bugbear 
 fading away, the demon of our childhood, which taught 
 that as all medicines to be effective must needs be 
 nauseous, so all school study must needs be wearisome 
 and painful. I am sure that industrial art will go 
 far to make children love school. In England rural 
 clergymen and many ladies soon saw into this, and 
 Mrs. JEBB, of Ellesmere, was the first to establish 
 village art schools. But if it be advisable from moral 
 grounds to teach children some way to employ their 
 leisure pleasantly, what shall we say of the terrible 
 number of the older grown who rush into vice, im- 
 pelled by the sheer ennui of idleness ? Here is an 
 immense number of girls knowing nothing but a little 
 
92 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 plain sewing, or, in the higher grades, a little piano 
 playing. They cannot all get places in shops or 
 factories, and if they do, many of them break down. 
 When a rainy day comes there is suffering indeed. 
 At such a time almost any fancy work, however trifling, 
 often intervenes to save them from ruin. There are 
 now many thousands of young women in America 
 who owe the real comfort, or what constitutes the 
 enjoyment, of life to the teaching or making what is 
 in itself almost worthless, to feeble cards and washy 
 plaques and wretched drawing and daubing; yet it 
 saves them. How much better would it be if they 
 understood design and the decorative arts, which are 
 not more difficult, and which are far more certain to 
 command a market ? 
 
 Ther$ is another class of young people, mostly 
 female, who, having taken the first step in vice, linger 
 awhile before the second, and then are rapidly and 
 utterly degraded. If we look through the ranks of 
 the uneducated, half educated, or even so-called edu- 
 cated young women, how many are there who have 
 any resources to fill up their leisure ? Is it a wonder 
 that they gossip, and thereby develop the sociable evil, 
 who makes even more mischief than her humbler sister, 
 the social evil ? I do not think that among the best 
 educated there is one in ten who has any hand-work 
 or resource, artistic or literary, in which she really 
 delights. It is the same with the men. Hence 
 politics, gossip, and the most frivolous waste of 
 time. The clergy know this, and they would welcome 
 any remedy for it. When I recently published in 
 The Messenger an appeal to them to aid in introducing 
 art into schools on moral grounds, I began at once to 
 
UNIVERSAL CAPACITY FOR ART. 93 
 
 receive, as I still do, letters from clergymen all over 
 the country in reference to the subject. It is a fact 
 that when a girl once masters an art she generally 
 remains true to it and makes the most of it. Its prac- 
 tice gives a certain sense of superiority and of self- 
 reliance which goes far to strengthen morals in the 
 truest sense of the word. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL ART AS AN ECONOMIC FACTOR. 
 
 There is not one person living, having the usual 
 command of brain and hands, who cannot learn to 
 design well in simply decorative drawing in a few 
 weeks, or, in extremest cases, in a few months, if he 
 or she will try to acquire it. There is not one person 
 who can execute simple design who cannot also master 
 one or more minor arts. And finally there is no youth 
 of either sex who understands one minor art who cannot 
 make a living by it or by teaching it. By mastering 
 an art I do not mean the ability to feebly copy a wreath 
 of flowers on a china plate, or to indifferently hammer 
 on a brass plaque a borrowed pattern. As it is within 
 the power of all to learn design, so it is quite as easy 
 to- perfect themselves in these arts without a master. 
 All that they require is will and industrious applica- 
 tion. This is not mere theory. It has been proved in 
 millions of instances. The history of whole countries, 
 nations, and eras has proved it. I will give the 
 examples. 
 
 In the East from remote times, during the days of 
 Greece and Eome, and through the European Middle 
 Ages, the conditions of life were such that but for 
 hand-made minor s art the number of_paupers would 
 
 OFTHF 
 
 UNIVERSITY; 
 
94 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 have been literally overpowering. Nothing produces 
 idlers and beggars so much as aristocracy or an ex- 
 travagant and wealthy court and nobility, and society 
 was then entirely aristocratic. Yet there were fewer 
 paupers then than there are now, if by paupers we 
 mean the entirely dependent. To-day in the United 
 States they wear good clothes and seem well off, but 
 they depend on somebody. There have been states of 
 society in which the producer was more cruelly taxed, 
 but none in which he supported so many. It is very 
 creditable to the average mechanic of the United 
 States that he spends twice or thrice as much on. his 
 family as does his British brother, but it is very dis- 
 creditable to his family that they take so much. 
 Now, if there were such a demand for hand-made 
 decoration in this country as there was, let us say, in 
 Europe five hundred years ago if every home, however 
 small, were properly adorned all in the country who 
 are willing to work would find employment. It is a 
 curious reflection that even in the time of Elizabeth 
 the " sitting room " of Anne Hathaway's cottage was 
 far more beautiful than most of our drawing-rooms, 
 for it was entirely lined with old carved oak. This 
 was the home of people who were then called poor. 
 The demand for hand-made decoration is coming very 
 rapidly. When it comes when people learn the 
 truth that a thing is not artistic because it is beautiful 
 there will be a vast field thrown open not only to the 
 poor, but to the poor who are neither very clever nor 
 strong. In any case, it is always worth while to have 
 some art which one can always teach for money, or by 
 which one can live. How many poor young people, 
 with spare time, spending all they earn for living, 
 
EXPENSES. 95 
 
 would be really happy when holidays approach if 
 they had a few dollars more ? And how certainly 
 they could depend on earning them if they could 
 embroider, model, and ornament, or colour and glaze 
 vases, carve panels, work in leather, or, in fine, decorate 
 homes in every way. It is hardly possible to suppose 
 that any one who could do all this need be very poor. 
 Yet all these arts, and many more, are actually within 
 the reach of all who choose to master them. 
 
 I have shown that the expenses of designing and 
 modelling amount to so little that they may be in- 
 troduced to the poorest country school. I find that 
 embroidery is often made to cost more than it should. 
 The wool for crewel, at five cents (2^d.) a skein, crash, 
 or common stuff of several kinds costs very little. 
 Scraps of velvet, cloth, and ribbon, for applique work, 
 are expensive or the contrary, as people are careful in 
 collecting. A class may be well-taught in design, 
 chiefly with the blackboard alone ; beyond this, good 
 wrapping or shop paper and lead pencils are not hard 
 to obtain. No rule can be laid down as to selling 
 work. The pupil should not try to sell anything 
 until it is really well made. Unfortunately the 
 delight of the amateur at his own work is always 
 such that his first or at least second or third attempt 
 always seems to him to be very valuable, and there 
 are always ignorant friends who are of the same 
 opinion. What has degraded china painting is the 
 enormous production of it by women who knew 
 nothing of design, and who were accordingly destitute 
 of the energy and character which spring from origi- 
 nality, and which is acquired by designing. And this 
 is applicable to all the feeble art work, or rather art 
 
9 6 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 degraded to fancy work, which is turned out in such 
 incredible quantities from unions, schools, and clubs 
 into depositories and agricultural or chanty fairs. 
 This will be the case so long as women or men are 
 satisfied with easily producing rubbish which is admired 
 by the ignorant, and which can be sold " somehow " 
 at some price. To sit in rows painting flowers, dogs 1 
 heads, and cupids, or even copying chromo lithographs 
 en grand, without the least knowledge of drawing, is 
 not art, and it is not amazing that small wits find in 
 the results much food for ridicule. 
 
 OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 
 
 I have found that a great deal of the opposition or 
 indifference to art industry in schools comes from men 
 who, because they are themselves ignorant, do not like 
 to have the whole world trained to what they are too 
 idle or stupid to master. Others argue that as their 
 children are not intended for pursuits into which art 
 knowledge enters, therefore no children need or ought 
 to learn anything of the kind. In the face of these 
 and many other equally wise objections, such as are 
 generally urged at meetings where the subject is 
 discussed, the facts remain that art industry can be 
 taught without infringing on other branches of educa- 
 tion ; that children while at school can learn to design 
 and model so well in a few months with one weekly 
 lesson as to readily obtain a place as under-designers 
 in factories ; and that, thirdly, they can even produce 
 wares which will sell. They can, at the same time, 
 acquire more culture and intelligence than the objectors 
 to the system can appreciate, but which is appreciated 
 
A PRINCELY SAYING. 97 
 
 by all persons who are themselves really well informed 
 or intelligent. On this point I speak with knowledge 
 from experience. I have observed that my pupils, 
 from the time they ceased to be mere copyists, began 
 to observe many things to which they were previously 
 indifferent, and manifested the awakening of a much 
 higher intelligence. 
 
 But there is a final argument which cannot be 
 resisted : it is that there is a tremendous demand 
 among the manufacturers of Europe and of this 
 country for decorative artists and artisans. It was 
 thought in England that the great art schools of South 
 Kensington and Manchester and such places would 
 afford a supply, but it has been as a drop in the 
 bucket. The industrial schools have been as inade- 
 quate. For it is not only a supply of artistic goods 
 that is needed, but also a taste for them a manufactory 
 and a market as well as a greater demand ; and to 
 meet this double want there must be extensive radical 
 art education among the people. The highest states- 
 men in Europe know this ; and the saying of the 
 Prince of Wales, cited in a late article in the Nine- 
 teenth Century, that learning and earning should go 
 together, indicates the solution of a great problem by 
 a brief rhyme. True, there are millions who do not 
 see this. The year before gas was introduced into 
 Philadelphia all her most influential citizens signed a 
 protest against lighting the city in any such abomi- 
 \iable way. The light which gas casts is trifling 
 compared to the enlightenment which would result 
 from the reform in education of which I speak, yet 
 there are still many in that city as in others who 
 ridicule the very idea of industrial art in schools. 
 
 G 
 
9 8 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 From time to time the world comes to a period 
 \vhen it discovers all at once, like a hungry somnambu- 
 list awaking in a room full of smoking charcoal, that 
 it is both starving and strangling. It cries now that 
 in education we are starving for fresh knowledge, 
 and are being stifled with old methods. People are 
 beginning to think there must be some shorter and 
 more practical cut to drawing than all the old road, 
 with its blocks, perspective, diagrams, and geometry, 
 ever indicated. These are all good in their way, but 
 there is no practical easy introduction to the art. 
 There is a growing belief that all study may be made 
 easier. There may be no " royal road " to mathematics, 
 but that is no reason why the way to everything 
 should be over corduroy planks and break-neck rocks. 
 There must be work to win art or learning, but even 
 hard work need not be offensive. 
 
 There is a final plea to be offered for the introduction 
 of industrial art into all schools. It is that by making 
 hand-work a part of every child's education we shall 
 destroy the vulgar prejudice against work as being 
 itself vulgar. This we greatly need, for there is no 
 country in the world where manual work is practically 
 in so little respect, or where there are so many trying 
 to get above it, as in the American republic. We have 
 had those by millions who proclaimed that " work is 
 only tit for negroes or mudsills." As it is, the native- 
 born citizen all too eagerly flies to any occupation in 
 which, by wearing a black coat all day and keeping 
 his hands soft, he makes one move nearer to being " a 
 gentleman." It is only in my native land that I ever 
 heard a man (a tavern-keeper), gravely boast, as a proof 
 of his social superiority, that he had never done "a 
 
DEFECTIVE EDUCATION. 99 
 
 day's work" in his life. While there are a few 
 superior to this snobbishness, there are still millions 
 who are practically enslaved by it. It arises from the 
 fact that work hand-work is not as yet sufficiently 
 identified with education and culture. Now, industrial 
 art in schools, based on design, and associated with 
 studies, will go very far to make manual labour " re- 
 spectable " in the eyes of those professing democrats 
 who pant in petto for aristocracy as the hart for the 
 water brooks. 
 
 Perhaps half the real suffering in Europe and 
 America is the result of the effort to appear " genteel " 
 by those who cannot afford it, or to seem richer than 
 they are. The small tailor sends his sons to college- 
 where they learn words and nothing more; he dies 
 leaving nothing, and the boys must earn a living in 
 some way for which their school, or, perhaps, college 
 training is worse than worthless. There is a novel by 
 GAUTIER, called "Raoul," in which the author endeavours 
 to show the terrible results of this mistaken aiming at 
 a mistaken ideal. The hero is the son of a poor 
 gentleman artist who has sent his son to college, where 
 he has learned Latin and Greek, and nothing more. 
 And with this slender equipment he must fight the 
 battle of life. So he teaches languages at a franc a 
 lesson "just what one gives to a street-corner porter 
 for running a five-minute errand " and so he goes 
 from misery to suicide. His friend, who is like him in 
 education, becomes a swindler. Now, the world says 
 of such men that they ought to have had more sense, 
 more energy, and have got more out of Latin and 
 Greek. And so one man in five or ten can or does. 
 But the others ? Suppose, however, that it is only the 
 
ioo PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 alternate one ? So these must make a failure of life 
 because they are not " sharp." 
 
 " Baoul," with a knowledge of a few arts, could not 
 have really sunk to the mud of poverty. The father 
 who sprung from poverty, who had all the strength and 
 roughness and obtuseness, with the natural fangs and 
 claws of the "practical," vulgar, ignorant man, suc- 
 ceeds in life. He trains a boy so that he may lose all 
 this draws his teeth and claws, tames him, and then 
 expects him to do better than himself, because, forsooth, 
 he has given him an " education " such an education 
 as I myself received at college, the only marvel in 
 relation to it being that any of its graduates ever rose 
 above being members of American Southern Legis- 
 latures. In fact the last number which I read of its 
 monthly magazine distinctly declared that if any of 
 these unfortunates ever had risen to literary distinction, 
 it was not by the aid, but in spite of the education 
 they had received. Truly the boast of the number 
 of great men who have graduated of old from certain 
 American colleges sounds like a BRINVILLIERS or 
 BORGIA pointing to her escaped victims as a proof of 
 her humanity. 
 
 It is not by carving panels, or modelling owls, or 
 such work, that I propose to rescue society from the 
 fate of "Baoul," but I do earnestly believe that an 
 universal familiarity with practical hand-work will go 
 far to train people to take up trades or callings which 
 they would now never think of. There is no universal 
 panacea for snobbery or poverty, but this cure will go 
 far to help many a weak brother to work. As regards 
 women, who claim a thousand times more pity and 
 sympathy, I am confident that if they will take deco- 
 
TEACHING TEACHERS. 101 
 
 rative art up in earnest and study it properly, not 
 as fancy work, but as art, or as rational and practical 
 industry, it will do more for them than all the learned 
 professions. There are more women than men in the 
 world, and for a long time men will take the lead in 
 those higher callings, so that really not one woman in 
 many can hope to do well as a doctor or lawyer. 
 But in manual minor arts she has as good a chance as 
 anybody. Now I wish to call attention to this fact. 
 I have seen an advertisement in a newspaper in which 
 a lady familiar with four languages and their literature, 
 with first-class certificates as to proficiency in drawing, 
 music, mathematics, &c., sought a situation as governess 
 for four shillings a week and her meals. And I should 
 not wonder if her employers got her for less. Well, 
 both in England and in America at present any lady 
 who can teach design and two or three minor arts 
 can easily get employment as a teacher. With some 
 knowledge of drawing she can in six months be 
 qualified to teach. I had in Philadelphia a class of 
 twenty-five ladies who did this in one session, and 
 who all became paid teachers. Be it observed that 
 they were taught gratis, and that great pains were 
 taken to make it known that anybody might be 
 taught for nothing ; but it was not a very easy matter 
 to get such pupils. It is possible that the classes 
 would have been larger had there been a charge, so 
 deeply rooted is the feeling that what can be had for 
 nothing is worth nothing. The result, however, was 
 that those who came, being superior to such vulgar 
 prejudice, showed themselves superior in intelligence. 
 This was several years ago, but even now it does not 
 seem to be understood that the application which 
 
102 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 would qualify a girl to teach the piano and Mangnall 
 would enable her to do far better in the minor arts. 
 
 The standard of taste in art or decoration is the 
 result of the study of what is generally admired as 
 best in what man has produced in all ages, and what 
 is most beautiful in nature. It is not true, as the 
 vulgar believe, that there is " no disputing about 
 taste." Now it must be admitted that the general 
 standard of popular taste is very low in Europe or 
 in America. Among a hundred carpets, such as would 
 sell most readily, it is unusual to find more than two 
 or three of a merely passably decent pattern. There 
 are three grades of carpets made in Philadelphia for 
 different parts of the United States, and those of 
 the third class are almost without exception to the 
 last degree abominable in outline, and, if possible, 
 worse as regards colour. This is just what I was told 
 by a carpet manufacturer who was perfectly aware of 
 the ugliness of his wares, who laughed at it, and 
 regretted that it was a necessity. He illustrated it 
 by showing me the kinds of carpets and rugs which 
 "sold like hot cakes." It was pitiful, for no Eed 
 Indian and no savage negro would ever have designed 
 aught so repulsive. Savage art is never half so savage 
 as that produced by the most enlightened nation on 
 the face of the earth, and English carpets are little 
 better. A lady who had studied art conscientiously 
 writes to me to say that her designs were rejected 
 by manufacturers as being " too artistic." I once 
 had an experience which illustrates the popular con- 
 ception of a work of art. A manufacturer of "artistic 
 furniture" in a far-western city was shown a cabinet 
 designed, carved, and inlaid with bone in our school. 
 
CHEAP WORK. 103 
 
 The design was Spanish-Moorish, the inlaying was 
 made simply with three dozen counters or " chips," on 
 each of which was etched with a graver a mediaeval 
 head, or Allah in Arabic letters. The visitor, on being 
 asked what such a work would cost, replied promptly, 
 seven dollars (283.) "That is to say," he continued, 
 "I would imitate the carved panels by sawing the 
 pattern out with a jig-saw and gluing it on it would 
 look just as well, and nobody would know the differ- 
 ence ; and the pieces of bone would cost only two 
 cents a piece. There would be no need of engraving a 
 different design on every one, and most of my cus- 
 tomers would prefer them plain." To which I answered, 
 "You could not execute such a piece of work for 
 less than fifty dollars (10). I do not ask what a 
 glued-together imitation would cost, but what would 
 be the expense of an original work ? You have not 
 probably in your State a man who could give you 
 such a design, and I am sure that any professional 
 designer in the East would charge you twenty-five 
 dollars for one, if you could get it for that. Neither 
 have you anybody who could even select from books, 
 and copy the etchings, and execute them by hand. 
 If you had they would cost ten dollars (2) more. 
 Now at our school there would be a new design made 
 for every cabinet executed. The making-up of that 
 cabinet cost twelve dollars, and it is much below the 
 usual rate." The visitor, on examination, agreed that 
 the cabinet-work had been cheaply done, and that 
 an original work would cost fifty dollars. Now I 
 would remark that this gentleman was very far from 
 being an ignorant or narrow-minded man. He had 
 enlarged and intelligent views as to education, and 
 
104 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 was active in endeavouring to have industrial art 
 introduced to the schools of his city. He simply re- 
 flected the universal popular idea, that the patterns 
 may come from anywhere, that all work is to be in 
 thousands of duplicates, and that an imitation at half 
 price which is glued and varnished up so as to pass 
 muster with the ignorant is "just as good as anything." 
 His conception of original designs was theft. 
 
 It is a fact that machinery- work does not give any 
 objects so cheaply but that hand-made art can rival 
 them even in price. What with expensive advertise- 
 ments and the enormous profits required by every 
 agent through whose hands it passes, the trashy 
 duplicates cost in the end as much to the consumer 
 as he would have to pay for original hand- work. 1 It 
 was pointed out to me by KARL KRALL, of the firm 
 of BARKENTIN & KRALL, London, that the credit 
 system has had much to do with producing a low 
 standard of art in decorations. A workman would 
 gladly produce, let us say, a set of fire-irons by hand- 
 work. They would be elegant and original. But he 
 needs, as all workmen do, money down on the com- 
 pletion of the job. Now a very great many rich 
 people in Europe and America cannot and will not 
 bring themselves to pay cash for anything if they 
 can help it. If a debt brought them in compound 
 interest ten times over, they could not be more 
 desirous of letting it run on than they are. Every 
 good has its evil : one of the evils of the vast develop- 
 
 1 I have seen in a shop window hundreds of times a brass coal- 
 pcuttle, machine-made, for forty shillings, or some other object of the 
 kind. A better one, hand-made, can be had for the same price (cash) 
 at the Home Arts and Industries Schools. 
 
TAXES ON ART. 105 
 
 ment of the credit system has been this antipathy to 
 pay ready money. The result of it is that the work- 
 man must wait six months, and perhaps twelve, and 
 " call again." The result is that he charges for time 
 and interest. The same happens to the maker of the 
 machinery-made and glued-together rubbish : he too 
 must give long credits. And the result is a deterio- 
 ration in taste. 
 
 A very direct tax on education and taste is to be 
 found in the barbarous and ridiculous American law 
 by which Customs-duties are laid on objects of art, 
 antiques, old books, engravings, and in fact on almost 
 everything which could be of use in teaching decora- 
 tive art. I once imported two barrels of small stones 
 or cubes for mosaic work for the use of pupils in 
 the public school. Although the law declares ex- 
 plicitly that material for the use of schools is duty- 
 iree, the Custom House officials declared that we must 
 pay 5 5 per cent, on the value. They knew very well 
 that this was not legal, but possibly thought that to 
 avoid trouble the demand would be paid. There is 
 a great deal of such work in all Custom Houses. 
 Fortunately we had friends who set the matter right. 
 There is in plain terms an almost prohibitory duty in 
 the United States on all objects which are of the 
 greatest importance in teaching decorative art. As 
 these objects are not and cannot now be made in the 
 country, the absurdity of such revenue laws is the 
 more apparent. And as they are generally imported 
 in small quantities, even when they are intended for 
 schools, the officials have it in their power to 
 "squeeze," or attempt to squeeze the duty, d la 
 Chinois. Many persons will pay a few dollars rather 
 
io6 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 than undergo delay. Whether these squeezes are 
 handed over to the government, I do not know. If 
 they are, so much more shame to the general govern- 
 ment. It will be seen from what I have written lhat 
 if the American people were desirous of directly dis- 
 couraging art and manufactures and culture, they could 
 not do it more effectively than by taxing the anicles 
 which above all others tend to develop the higher 
 branches of industry. 
 
 The last consideration connected with familiarity 
 with the minor arts is of great importance. Few 
 persons have reflected on their connection with the 
 intimate history or inner life of every age. They are 
 closely allied to intellectual culture. He who reads 
 history as it was taught in my youth is like a guest 
 at a cheap hotel table where all the dishes have the 
 same gravy. The great conquerors or orators of an 
 age all appeared to us as very much of the same sort : 
 the people were all very much alike. I remember 
 being told in my infancy, by my old quadroon nurse, 
 that at the time of the Deluge the people were taken 
 all aback by it. They never expected such a thing. 
 " Some were out a-shoppin' and some out a-guimin' 
 when the rain fell. They hadn't even trust enough in 
 NOAH to take their umbrellas." There is more of this 
 ignorance and cant among us than we are aware of. 
 Decorative art gives us the colour of an age. He who 
 has read DANTE once has read him, he who knows the 
 Cathedral of Florence has read him twice, he who 
 knows the pictures and decorative art-work of his 
 age has read him many times. The minor arts are as 
 much associated as the fine arts with all that pertains 
 to the very cream of culture. To know them at all 
 
EXPERIENCE. 
 
 107 
 
 is to know in time the names and works of BENVENUTO 
 CELLINI, ALBRECHT DURER, in a word, of all the great 
 men whose names and works cast the highest splen- 
 dour on splendid ages. The boy or girl who has gone 
 even but a little way into industrial art, visits the 
 great museums and collections of this country or of 
 Europe with a hundred times more real knowledge 
 and appreciation of their magnificence than can the 
 amateur who has only read, though it be "never so 
 wisely." No boy or girl learns to design, model, and 
 carve, inlay, and embroider, without in time reading 
 with keenest interest OWEN JONES, LABARTHE, FER- 
 GUSSON, WHEWELL, HULME, COLLING, DE EACINET, 
 and DRESSER, with many more such writers. And 
 with such practical knowledge and reading, every 
 object of taste and almost every book reveal beauties 
 and awaken associations such as the many envy and 
 the few possess ; for the one who has worked in 
 industrial art understands and feels decoration and 
 beauty as no mere reader can. I once read through 
 all that I could get on wood engraving, but two days' 
 work at a block taught me more than a library on the 
 subject could have done. For of all learning since 
 books were invented there was never aught like ex- 
 perience, and of all experience there is none like one's 
 own. 
 
 It should be remembered that industrial art may 
 not only be taught in schools, but also form the subject 
 or principle of a club, a society, or a private class, or 
 be practised by a family or an individual. There 
 should be indeed a Ladies' Industrial Art Association 
 in every village. It will promote culture ; it will or 
 should lead to much reading of history and its social 
 
io8 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 developments ; and it will be a source of pecuniary 
 profit. 
 
 It is to be supposed that in most instances these 
 private societies will aid the local schools by teaching 
 and by joint sales. Where even two or three unite 
 for such a purpose they will find that mutual aid and 
 consultation are quite equivalent to a teacher. Last, 
 not least, I can assure them that the work is fascinating 
 or agreeable to a degree which none can realise who has 
 not attempted it. When asked what was most remark- 
 able in the Ladies' Art Club of which I am president, 
 I replied, " The love of the students for their work." 
 
 There are certain facts which may well be borne 
 in mind as regards the School of Industrial Art in 
 Philadelphia. Firstly, It was a conscientious experi- 
 ment, based on much observation and study, to ascertain 
 of what work children are capable. The result was a 
 conviction that under fourteen years of age what they 
 can mainly master is what may be called minor art- 
 work, but that this is an admirable preparation for all 
 trades, because it makes them familiar with designs 
 and proportions, and gives them that use of the fingers 
 and familiarity with tools which renders all manual 
 labour easy. 
 
 Secondly, The development of constructiveness, or 
 the learning to make things, also enlarges or stimulates 
 the intellect. It was found by inquiry made of the 
 teachers in the grammar-schools that the children who 
 attended the industrial art school manifested more 
 intelligence than those who did not. They stood 
 high in their other studies. They were interested 
 in subjects which the others did not understand. 
 
UNIVERSITY) 
 
 ART AN AID TO 
 
 This will not seem remarkable when I say that there 
 were several girls of thirteen and fourteen who could 
 design very beautiful, or really faultless, Moresco 
 patterns on a large scale, and work them out so well 
 in stamped leather as to be able to earn a pound in 
 two lessons, 1 while others could produce equally good 
 work in repouss^, wood-carving, and barbotine, or clay- 
 modelling. This, and the familiarity with patterns, and 
 living amid such work, manifestly awoke an interest 
 in literary culture and in general information. 
 
 Thirdly, It was found by strict inquiry that the 
 art-work, far from being an extra burden or task added 
 to the ordinary school course, was really a relaxation, 
 and that it greatly aided other studies. I call special 
 attention to this, because I find that a great many 
 object to it as an additional load laid on the already 
 overtasked pupil, while others, in spite of every argu- 
 ment, see nothing in it but an extra holiday or after- 
 noon devoted to play, which must be made up by 
 extra hard work. I never knew an instance in which 
 the children, in order to have the precious privilege of 
 working in the art school, did not cheerfully make up 
 their " averages " of study in some way. It is not 
 sufficiently borne in mind that when children enjoy 
 study there is seldom much injury resulting from 
 cramming, and that play is rest. 
 
 Fourthly, It would have been difficult in any place to 
 
 1 When I speak of children earning such sums, it must be understood 
 that the work in every case went directly to the " consumer " for cash, 
 without any intermediate brokerage or commission. I have been told 
 many times publicly that a skilled workman in brass sometimes a 
 very able artist can only earn thirty shillings a week. The only 
 conclusion from this is is it necessary that the one who buys work of 
 him to sell again should earn perhaps thrice as much. 
 
no PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 have had pupils so perfectly adapted to give one an 
 idea of the average capacity of the young. Phila- 
 delphia contains a million inhabitants, and there were 
 1 15,000 scholars in her public schools alone (1884). 
 It was from these that my scholars were taken. Con- 
 sequently I had them from every class, rich or poor. 
 There were a few blacks, mulattoes, quadroons, the 
 children of Germans and of German Jews, and those 
 of other kinds of foreign parentage. Some of them 
 were very poor, but these were rare, as there is per- 
 haps no city of the same size as Philadelphia in the 
 world in which there is so little poverty or so few 
 very rich people. The general behaviour of the 
 children was incredibly good. Only once during four 
 years did I have occasion to severely reprimand and 
 dismiss three pupils (girls) for impertinence. I 
 allowed them to converse with one another on the 
 condition that they should only talk about their work 
 in subdued tones. When I observed that a pupil was 
 disposed to talk overmuch, and be idle or restless, I 
 had him or her (it was generally a boy) changed at 
 the next lesson to another seat. I carefully studied 
 the children, and adapted my teaching to every indi- 
 vidual. I am no believer in systems by which a 
 school can be taught as an army is drilled, by platoons 
 and masses. The feebler and the more incompetent 
 a teacher, the greater the desire will be to teach by 
 system and rule. Hence the popularity of progressive 
 courses, of drawing books, and other methods of 
 machinery teaching. As for me, I loved my pupils 
 one and all, and worked with every one as if I had 
 but one to teach. 
 
 I am often obliged to hear in England, when I 
 
AMERICAN CHILDREN. in 
 
 speak of the success with which I taught " Ah, but 
 your American children are all so clever, you know." 
 I do not know anything of the kind, nor do I believe 
 there is anything to choose among any children as 
 regards a capacity for industrial art-work. As I 
 never had occasion to find fault with more than three 
 or four out of more than a thousand during four years, 
 for bad behaviour, and as all the rest invariably acted 
 like little ladies and gentlemen, and as I am assured 
 that this would not be the case in a school of mixed 
 classes in London, I conclude that republicanism con- 
 duces to more refinement and good manners among 
 the poor than any other form of government. And 
 as docility and gentleness are certainly conducive to 
 art studies, I must certainly admit that American 
 children have in this respect a very great advantage 
 over others. When it was proposed to me in England 
 to teach art industry in a school in the East of 
 London, I was cautioned by my adviser; a well-known 
 English writer who had been in America, that I would 
 find my pupils much more coarse and unruly than 
 those whom I had taught at home. I speak of this 
 difference simply as a philosopher. It is possible 
 that in the future it may give America an immense 
 advantage in her manufactures. 
 
 I am not aware that any writer has called attention 
 to a fact which I observed from an early period of 
 my experiment, and which I studied very closely, 
 taking great pains to test it by inquiry and observa- 
 tion. It is this, that industrial art-work pursued 
 during one or two years is infinitely better adapted 
 to qualify children for the varied possibilities and 
 contingencies of life than if they had been taught 
 
ii2 PKACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 a single "trade" or only one practical mechanical 
 calling. For an industrial art (I do not say a fine 
 art) training makes it very easy for boy or girl to take 
 up any calling whatever, though it were cookery or 
 shop-tending or tailoring, because other and more 
 practical faculties than those involved in " the three 
 K's " have been awakened. I had ample opportunity 
 to ascertain that my female pupils did positively make 
 better shop-girls in consequence of having had their 
 quickness of practical perception and constructiveness 
 developed. No single trade-teaching can effect this. 
 Now to learn industrial art- work, design is necessary, 
 and the pupils thus acquire intelligence of the great 
 fact that there is a system in all works, and in life. 
 Those may call this too theoretical and ideal who 
 will. It will be more fully tested in the future. 
 The greatest difficulty with which I had to contend 
 was that of making the public understand that my 
 system was a general preparation of the young for 
 any occupation, and not a special training for certain 
 kinds of works. I do not know how many scores of 
 " sensible, practical " people, after looking at and 
 admiring the children's work, have said : " It is all very 
 fine, to be sure, but don't you think the children would 
 do better if they were learning the beginnings of 
 trades by which they could make a living ? " Now I 
 have never doubted that it is better to teach boys 
 turning and metal-work and carpentering than nothing. 
 But I contend that for all children, i.e., of both sexes, 
 of tender years between the infant school and fourteen 
 years, or let us say from eight to twelve, the minor arts 
 are the best which can be taught, and that they form 
 the one proper preparation for trades. 
 
TEACHERS. 113 
 
 When I first made my system known to the public 
 in London by a lecture before the Society of Arts, it 
 was objected by one newspaper that teachers could not 
 be found to manage art classes in every school. To this 
 I reply that no difficulty has so far been found either 
 in America or England in this respect. By this 
 system the teacher is partly self-taught, while those 
 who need advice, elementary designs, easy practical 
 manuals, and aid of many kinds, can obtain them by 
 simply addressing the Secretary of the Home Arts 
 and Industries Association. This society have now in 
 course of instruction a class of teachers who will go from 
 school to school. The whole rests upon a knowledge 
 of the fact that there are minor or easy arts which 
 any child or labourer can learn. This I have heard 
 denied in face of the fact that millions of mediaeval 
 Europeans and modern Arabs or other Orientals with 
 less brain than an average English school-child have 
 produced exquisite decoration. The truth is that 
 beyond what is very easy in such work the world 
 generally produces only confused and corrupt design. 
 As for mere hand finish, it is a matter of time and 
 industry. 
 
 There is something in reference to all that I have 
 said as to art in schools which I feel obliged to 
 mention, though it is done most unwillingly. Since 
 I have returned to England, the classes which I 
 established in Philadelphia have been very much 
 enlarged, and new branches added. One newspaper 
 commented on this " practical common-sense reform " 
 in a manner which would lead a stranger to the con- 
 clusion that my leaving the school was really a good 
 
 H 
 
1 14 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 riddance of bad rubbish, and that the only misfortune 
 it ever had was my having anything to do with it. 
 This was at least the opinion of a friend who sent 
 it to me. Now it is a fact that I had for years 
 earnestly desired to introduce these very "reforms" 
 or additions, and was only kept from doing so by 
 want of money. Immediately after I left, the appro- 
 priation for the school was greatly enlarged, and the 
 number of pupils doubled. It does not seem to 
 have occurred to the editors and private individuals 
 who spoke of a branch more or less (not introduced 
 on account of simple poverty), as if that constituted 
 the whole system, that the main object was the making 
 hand-work a branch of instruction in public schools 
 on a large scale. Nor did they consider the weari- 
 some exhausting labour of years in trying to find out 
 by experiment what children could do, and how to do 
 it ; or what it was to inaugurate a great and radical 
 reform which had never before been successfully 
 attempted anywhere. For it was in studying such 
 work, and fitting it practically into a course of public 
 school studies, that the real system consisted. Indus- 
 trial or technical schools with large endowments had 
 existed many years before, and it was because I did 
 not teach what they did that my school attracted 
 so much unjust criticism. I was continually asked 
 why I did not introduce branches, which would have 
 required far more money than I had at command, 
 and that too when it required all the ability of the 
 School Board, inspired by the utmost goodwill to me, 
 and the highest intelligence on their part, to secure 
 for me the allowance which they had done their best 
 to get. On one occasion the City Council, wishing to 
 
ART IN PRISONS. i r5 
 
 put an end to my classes, passed a law that my appro- 
 priation should be divided among the six or seven other 
 art and technical schools in the city. It was only by 
 the resolute action of the School Board that this was 
 evaded. 
 
 DECORATIVE ART IN PRISONS, LUNATIC ASYLUMS, RE- 
 FORMATORIES, AND SIMILAR INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 While conducting the Industrial Art Schools in 
 Philadelphia, I often reflected on the similarity in 
 certain respects between children, criminals, and 
 lunatics. The first have minds not as yet developed; 
 the others are simply intellectually defective, owing to 
 organic faults or moral weakness, whatever that may 
 be. Genius itself is too often allied to these in having 
 certain faculties developed at the expense of others. 
 INow these exceptions to those whose faculties are well 
 balanced, have almost uniformly a fondness for artistic, 
 or easy work involving taste : they will labour indus- 
 triously at it, when a " solid industry " repels them. 
 Eeflecting on this, it seemed to me to be a great pity 
 that prisoners and paupers should be put on tread- 
 mills, or kept at picking oakum, or at any such work, 
 if it were possible to find for them some more con- 
 genial employment, by which habits of industry and 
 application might be formed, so as to prepare them for 
 more serious or practical labour. Picking oakum or 
 even shoemaking very rarely leads criminals to like 
 their work, but wood-carving does decidedly. 
 
 My first inquiries were in Moyamensing Prison, 
 Philadelphia. I was, thanks to Mr. EDWARD EOBINS, an 
 inspector, enabled to converse freely with the prisoners. 
 
1 1 6 PRACTICAL ED UC ATION. 
 
 The first was a Frenchman, a very clever artist and 
 engineer, but a man who, owing to a want of will, or moral 
 feebleness, could not keep himself from petty larceny, 
 &c. By casually, as it were inadvertently, using 
 argot, or French thief-slang, in my conversation, I 
 little by little drew from him the fact that he had 
 been an old jail-bird in France. He had while in 
 prison invented a method of nickel-plating, and 
 showed me, drawn on W.C. paper with a stump of 
 a pencil which he had concealed, all the different 
 batteries of Siemens and others with the one of his 
 own invention. He had nearly lost his mind at one 
 time for want of work. Being set at shoemaking, he 
 learned in an incredibly short time to make very good, 
 even admirable shoes, and having as a favour been 
 allowed a few paints and brushes, with paper, became 
 almost happy. He disliked shoemaking, and said to 
 me that he could earn for the prison ^5 a week if 
 he could only have architectural draughting given 
 him. This was quite true, for his work was far 
 above the average. My great familiarity with gypsies, 
 and all kinds of such loose fish, and my talking with 
 him as if he were only "unlucky," enabled me 
 to win his confidence and interest. He thought, 
 according to his experience of prisons, that one-third 
 of all the criminals would eagerly take to decora- 
 tive art-work, and that the rest would fall in with 
 it. If I had had this man all to myself to employ 
 as I pleased, I could have "kept him straight," for 
 what he needed was some one to " boss " or rule him. 
 After I ceased to visit the prison he often asked after 
 me, manifesting great attachment. Before he was dis- 
 charged he sent me a beautifully executed model of a 
 
ART IN PRISONS. 117 
 
 working steam-engine made of cardboard as a parting 
 souvenir. In the same prison was a German fresco- 
 painter: as I spoke German, I won his confidence. 
 This man seemed to be suffering from want of con- 
 genial employment. He was, like the Frenchman, 
 very sure that art-work would be welcome to the 
 prisoners, and "keep the devil out of their heads." 
 I did not think it worth while to examine any Yankee 
 prisoners, for I knew without asking that they would, 
 if supplied with tools and materials, invent and manu- 
 facture champion apple-parers and patent mouse-traps 
 forever. 
 
 As for the women prisoners, they take to con- 
 genial, i.e., to art- work, more eagerly than men. At 
 one time a few ladies in Philadelphia were accustomed 
 to go once a week to the prison to teach the women 
 confined there embroidery. This lesson was the 
 great event, the great treat of the week, and it had 
 a sensible influence in refining the poor creatures and 
 making them patient. After a time one teacher 
 went to Europe, another was married, and the classes 
 were discontinued. The matron of the prison regretted 
 very much that there was not such agreeable work 
 constantly taught. 
 
 I assembled all the officers of the prison, including 
 the physician, and laid before them my experiences 
 and my theory. They understood the whole affair 
 far better than I did, and they expressed the opinion 
 that if work of a congenial and agreeable character 
 could be introduced, the discipline of the prison would 
 be diminished one-third. 
 
 There is in America a very large and influential 
 Prison Eeform Association, which holds annual con- 
 
u8 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 grasses. I was invited to attend the last and set 
 forth my views. I could not do so, being in England ; 
 but I am happy to learn from the Secretary, W. F. 
 BOUND, that an Industrial Art School on my system 
 has been introduced to the Elmira (N. Y.) Eeforma- 
 tory, and is a pronounced success. "I have," he 
 writes, " at this moment plaques and sconces (repousse 
 brass) from your designs by one of the pupils who had 
 only ten weeks' training in the reformatory. A sconce 
 made by a coloured pupil (black) after a design of 
 his own is full of vigour and grace. Before his 
 training by Professor WELLS it was not even suspected 
 that he had any talent in this direction. ISTow that 
 he is out of the Eeformatory, I hope to get him into 
 one of our schools of technical design. It was after 
 reading your pamphlet on ' Industrial Art in Schools ' 
 that Mr. BROCKAWAY of the Elmira Eeformatory 
 established, at my suggestion, the training school of 
 industrial arts, Professor WELLS being employed as 
 teacher, and it was a great success. The experiment 
 will soon be tried on a larger scale there, and I hope 
 in some of our prisons. I will let you know the 
 result." 
 
 There is near Philadelphia a very large reformatory 
 school. Into this my assistant, Mr. J. LIBERTY TADD, 
 introduced the industrial art system, and formed 
 classes with great success. I had, however, great 
 difficulty, with many very excellent and zealous friends 
 of education in Philadelphia, in making them under- 
 stand that there is a great difference between teaching 
 strong boys a practical trade at once, and preparing 
 all boys and girls for practical trades or for all work 
 by early training adapted to their faculties. It was 
 
ART AMONG LUNATICS. 119 
 
 too generally assumed that I simply taught cesthetic 
 and fancy work, such as wasted time and disqualified 
 children for doing anything " useful." 
 
 The industrial art-work of our school was also 
 taught by Mr. TADD in KIRKBRIDE'S Lunatic Asylum, 
 one of the largest and best institutions of the kind in 
 the world. It is to be remarked that the boys in 
 the reformatory school surpassed those in the public 
 city schools in cleverness, while the lunatics excelled 
 in ornamented pottery. 
 
 I could add more to this, for I could give scores 
 of interesting instances of such work being introduced 
 with happy results into asylums, schools, classes, and 
 families. What I have said will, I trust, induce all 
 who are in any way interested in prisons, reforma- 
 tories, and lunatic asylums, to consider the subject of 
 agreeable industrial art-work. I am certain that there 
 are no institutions where the inmates form, as it were, 
 a family or community, in which such work would not 
 exert a good moral influence. 
 
 I am quite aware of what has been tried in English 
 prisons as regards teaching trades as a reward for the 
 well-conducted, &c., but I still doubt whether the 
 moral possibilities of attractive work, especially on 
 a certain very large class, are as yet understood. 
 Certain branches taught are not the same as the prin- 
 ciple of all, that is, design, developed into all conceiv- 
 able branches. And, again, it makes a great difference 
 as to what kind of design we teach. 
 
HE. 
 
 ON DEVELOPING MEMORY. 
 " What man has done, man may do." 
 
 IT is not too general or too sweeping an assertion to 
 declare that there are for all subjects which are dis- 
 cussed two parties ; the one, generally in the majority, 
 which is cautious and conservative, and the other, 
 inventive and progressive. The world has recognised 
 this by declaring in a popular saying that "there are 
 always two sides to a question." Those who are on 
 the progressive side give us the new ideas which in 
 due time are adopted ; their first advisers being 
 generally as soon forgotten as the pioneer who 
 clears out the bush is forgotten by the farmer who 
 succeeds him. 
 
 There is at present a question very much discussed 
 by all who are interested in education. Now as educa- 
 tion is, if rightly considered, the most important social 
 question in existence, it follows that one which in- 
 volves its whole nature and progress must also be 
 discussed from a conservative as well as radical point 
 of view. This question is What shall be taught in 
 schools, and how much ? How many hours can the 
 
PICKING UP KNOWLEDGE. 121 
 
 average pupil study ? How many branches of study 
 can he take up ? Are reading, writing, and arith- 
 metic sufficient on this side the university or the 
 grave ? or is it a fact that the enormous latent 
 capacity of the schoolboy has never yet been developed, 
 and that he is like the monkeys which are supposed 
 in Africa to be able to talk, or do anything which man 
 can do, but refuse to display their talents for fear of 
 being set to work ? When one reflects on the vast 
 number of things which journalists and orators tell 
 us every schoolboy knows, it would indeed seern as 
 if knowledge is supposed to be poured by the peda- 
 gogue into the brain with a funnel, as the Nuremberg 
 people of old suggested it might be done. 
 
 Now it cannot be denied that this age, especially 
 in England and America, exacts much more as regards 
 knowledge than any preceding it ever did. We are 
 proud of our intelligence, we wish our citizens to be 
 generally "well informed." "Well informed" means 
 the knowledge of a great deal, in fact almost as much 
 as there is in the British or American Cyclopaedia. 
 It was for a long time popularly believed that all 
 that pertains to true culture and useful knowledge 
 could be " picked up " from newspapers and lectures. 
 During that period of easy, happy faith, the univer- 
 sities were ridiculed ; even high schools were looked at 
 with suspicion. That was the golden age of Penny 
 Magazines and Treasuries of Knowledge, and as yet 
 an army of enterprising book-pedlars are living on its 
 remains. But its glory has departed. Even the ideal 
 " smart Yankee " who could get himself a fair classical 
 and general education in three weeks, from the shop 
 signs and placards of a city, has been compelled to re- 
 
122 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 luctantly admit that the average human being who is 
 his own schoolmaster generally has an ignoramus for 
 a pupil. It is not true that all the cleverness and 
 "smartness," and picking up and self-educating in 
 the world, and reading at odd hours, and studying in 
 odd ways, will ever fully educate anybody. ABRAHAM 
 LINCOLN is a wonderful example of what perseverance 
 under difficulties may effect. ABRAHAM LINCOLN was 
 a man of a million, and yet to the end of his days he 
 was always painfully conscious that he was an unedu- 
 cated man, as every clever but uneducated man must 
 be, unless vanity has fairly carried him away. He 
 had not brought himself into identity or easy relation 
 with the world's culture ; he could not understand or 
 feel without an effort the things which a really edu- 
 cated mind takes in or recalls naturally. My authority 
 for saying all this, which is so repugnant to popular 
 opinion, is that of one of the most distinguished men 
 of science whom America ever brought forth. He 
 was a college professor, entirely self-educated, and so 
 far as the results of study are concerned he was far 
 beyond ABRAHAM LINCOLN, yet he often said, " There 
 is not a day of my life in which I do not regret the 
 want of a regular education." 
 
 The basis of this popular error, this trust in the 
 efficacy of Penny Magazines and the superiority of 
 irregular haphazard self-culture, is the false belief so 
 very generally current that education, in the main, 
 means only the acquisition of knowledge. Even those 
 who disavow it really believe it and act up to it. They 
 are like idolaters, who in every climate glibly declare 
 that their idols are only symbols of an invisible God, 
 yet who do really adore the wooden or painted image 
 
THE KNOWLEDGE FETISH. 123 
 
 itself, as is shown by their belief in its miraculous 
 powers. The more ignorant and vulgar a man is, the 
 more he thinks that knowledge alone is power, and 
 that the school must give a certain equivalent in 
 tangible acquisition for a certain sum of money. 
 During the Middle Ages it was popularly believed 
 that the mere knowledge of Latin in itself conferred 
 strange and mystical power. We find this supersti- 
 tion perpetuated at the present day, for instance, in 
 the exaggerated importance attached to the mere 
 knowledge of many languages. It is like confining 
 our admiration of a painter's, works to his palette and 
 brushes, and the apparatus of the studio. To many 
 children these constitute the marvel and mystery of 
 art. The small boy is always under the impression 
 that if he only possessed the paints and brushes, he 
 could work wonders. The world is much like that 
 boy, as regards education, which is in reality much 
 more than knowledge. 
 
 We hear it continually admitted that education, as 
 derived from educere, to draw forth, means the develop- 
 ment of all the powers of the mind, and yet there is 
 no practical manifestation of the faith. If there were, 
 we should hear nothing of too many studies being 
 introduced, of pupils being crammed and overworked, 
 or of a battle between the three R.'s and the three 
 hundred requisites for culture. On the one hand, the 
 age and increasing culture call for much and varied 
 knowledge in the well-informed man ; on the other, the 
 overtasked teacher and overworked pupil declare that 
 it is quite impossible. And this is what we are to 
 consider. 
 
 As regards the cry of " cramming," I am reminded 
 
124 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 of the fairy tale of the girl who was required to put 
 all the milk of a herd of cows into a pail. She did 
 it by miraculous aid. At present science would do 
 the same without any miracle, by condensing it into a 
 solid powder. It was an axiom that a pint cup filled 
 to the brim with water would hold no more, until 
 some philosopher discovered that added little by little 
 you could also put into it almost another pint of salt. 
 Few will deny that if school-children had better 
 memories or quicker powers of apprehension they 
 could learn more. We can add the salt of industrial 
 art. And yet, knowing this, we go on, assuming the 
 memory to be a constant quantity, and trying to find 
 out how much we can cram or force into it, instead of 
 improving its absorptive powers or concentrating that 
 which it is to absorb. The great problem is whether, 
 in addition to filling the memory, we cannot also first 
 develop or create it. 
 
 Now it would seem that the first thing a child 
 should learn is the art of learning. And this is not 
 taught at all. We hear mothers boast of Miss, that 
 she is learning French, and drawing, and German, and 
 geometry, and history, and science, and has lessons in 
 a dozen branches, and we know that it is all like Mr. 
 Blimber's Academy, "ve-ry ex-pen-sive," and very 
 genteel. But we do not know whether the young 
 girl is being taught what is worth all of this, and 
 more than twenty times more than all this the ability 
 to master anything. And yet there is no miracle or 
 mystery in it, and there have been teachers who 
 understood it, acted on it, and taught it. It consists 
 simply in making the pupil learn everything perfectly 
 from the beginning. 
 
. 
 
 X OF THE r X 
 
 tJNIVER'SlTYy 
 
 125 
 
 If a child were never allowed to " scamp " a lesson 
 or learn it imperfectly, it would soon develop a 
 stronger memory. It is really of little consequence 
 what is at first learned, compared to the manner in 
 which it is mastered. Whether the lesson be short 
 or long, whether an hour or a week be allowed for 
 that lesson, the pupil should never come into the 
 class until it is learned, as the school-boy saying is, 
 " up the middle and down the sides, inside and out." 
 Be it spelling, arithmetic, grammar, or geometry, it 
 should be so perfectly acquired that the recitation 
 shall be simply perfect. And it should be so often 
 reviewed as to put the least forgetfulness out of the 
 question. We have an illustration of this in the 
 so-called OLLENDORFF method of learning languages. 
 By mastering every lesson quite perfectly the pupil 
 can always attain perfection through this method, but 
 if a single stitch be dropped, the work is spoiled. 
 Even in studying by OLLENDORFF, a pure pronuncia- 
 tion should precede the use of the book; otherwise 
 the pupil will be impeded by the effort to learn two 
 things at once. In one form or another there is a 
 great deal of this dual difficulty tolerated in education. 
 
 There are certainly difficulties in thus developing 
 memory and intelligence. Children often cheat their 
 teachers as well as themselves in recitation. Who 
 is not familiar with the wonderful girl who learns 
 her lesson in ten minutes and forgets it all in five ? 
 Who does not know a boy who can conjugate a Latin 
 verb in due order, so as to deceive the very elect of 
 teachers, yet who, when called on to give the Latin 
 for " you might le," is " all at sea ? " There are the 
 perplexing creatures, too, gifted with visual memory, 
 
126 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 who, by shrewdly observing on what corner of the 
 book the teacher's eye is fixed, can recall the text ? 
 There are those whose memory spasmodically, yet 
 obstinately, rejects certain words or subjects, and who 
 are more blamed for it than they should be. 1 To 
 train memory or the power of acquiring and under- 
 standing in this way, requires not only unusual 
 patience, but great study of the pupil's peculiarities. 
 Therefore it is not attended to. When I was young 
 I went to several so-called first-class private schools, 
 but there was not among them one in which the 
 pupils were made to feel that the power to learn a 
 lesson was at first of far greater importance than the 
 lesson itself. Yet, on looking back, and living again 
 in that life, I can feel to the depths of conviction that 
 it could have been done. 
 
 The multitude are perhaps not to blame for igno- 
 rance as to all this. They know that knowledge is 
 useful, they believe it is a power in itself, and they 
 think it must in some way be whipped or forced in, 
 no matter how. "You can't drive that horse fifty 
 miles to-day," said a stable-keeper, aghast, to five 
 Cockneys. " Vy not ? " was the reply ; " ve've all got 
 vips." Now it is a principle of humanity that under 
 no circumstances should there be the immoderate use 
 of even a single whip. There are few, even among 
 thinking and reasoning people, who like to change 
 their views, any more than they do their homes. 
 The prisoner feels a pang at leaving his cell. Were 
 there not some of this principle implanted in us we 
 should have no stability, perhaps no principle what- 
 
 1 I myself am one of these. If my " recording spirit " or memory 
 once realises that it must retain anything, it utterly refuses to do so. 
 
HIGHER EXAMPLE. 127 
 
 ever. But very good principles must yield to better 
 when the hour comes. It is painful, I admit, for 
 a man born of a line of conservative ancestors, and 
 in whose brain certain great grandfathers are still 
 literally and automatically thinking by transmitted 
 cerebration, when newer minds force upon him new 
 ideas. They tell him to discontinue the whip, or 
 ask him for other arguments against a reform. And 
 then you find out what he is, and whether his will 
 and reason or his transmitted qualities and abilities 
 are the strongest. If he is weak, he takes to special 
 pleading, side issues, and hearsay evidence. Thus in 
 England the majority of people who plead for the use 
 of the whip in prisons or in punishment tell you 
 that since garroters have been whipped there is no 
 more garroting. It is not true, since in fact garroting 
 has increased, just as all kinds of brutality have 
 increased since government has set the example of 
 corporal punishment. 1 Men in all ages have shown 
 a great disposition to model their family discipline 
 upon that used by the authorities. Many argue that 
 we have all just so much memory allowed us, and 
 that nobody can increase it. A wiser type of con- 
 servative admits your principle, but points out the 
 difficulties in the way, and asks how they are to be 
 broken. Such an objection is this : " What will you 
 do if, in a class of ten, five pupils advance rapidly in 
 acquiring memory or developing intelligence, while 
 the other five are so slow as to seriously impede the 
 clever ones?" Well, it is something gained if we 
 admit that five could be made cleverer than they would 
 otherwise have been, but I grant that this is really 
 
 1 Harriet Martineau understood this. Carlyle did not. 
 
128 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 a great difficulty, and the larger a class must be the 
 greater the difficulty becomes. There are children 
 who are prompt to avail themselves of unlimited 
 kindness and indulgence, and who, like Punch's little 
 boy, call at once for plum-cake when they hear that 
 moral suasion is to be adopted. They are capable 
 of coming up every- day for a month with the same 
 and the easiest lesson always half-learned. Yet 
 strong as this objection is, it is not insuperable. A 
 very .clever teacher would not be troubled with it, for 
 there are men who drive and direct the will of even 
 the meanest boys as they please. It would yield in 
 many instances to the stimulus of rivalry. But the 
 true resolvent of the objection lies in this that if 
 there is anything at all in the theory, and if the 
 memory or power of perception can be at all stimu- 
 lated beyond what it would have been under the old 
 system, or if any beginning can be made at all, the 
 pupil will inevitably gain on himself. We all know 
 that water when it once begins to run soon washes 
 itself clean. 
 
 Everybody admits that bad habits are soon formed. 
 It is a pity that popular pessimism pays no attention 
 to the fact that there are also many very good ones 
 which may be quite as easily adopted. Now it is a 
 very good habit for a boy in the beginning of his 
 education to learn how to learn his lessons, and I 
 believe this could be done by making him feel at first 
 that the manner in which he gets his lesson, and the 
 perfection of it, is the end aimed at. As it is he 
 thinks naturally enough that to understand the lesson 
 in hand is all he has to do. To get through it with 
 the teacher is, as he believes, sufficient. Now if he 
 
WASTE OF TIME. 
 
 129 
 
 knew that to commit it perfectly as well as to under- 
 stand it is inevitable, I believe that the dullest boy 
 would soon take a different view of it. If he knew 
 that it would come rolling back on him again and 
 again until it was mastered, and yet again at any un- 
 foreseen hour as a review, he would take a new view 
 of the situation. He should learn it so as to dispense 
 with prompting so as to take it up where the last 
 boy left off; and to do this he should not in the be- 
 ginning be impeded with many lessons or long ones. 
 In the end he would be able to grapple with twice 
 as many tasks as he is now ever expected to study. 
 For knowing that he had simply one thing to do, to 
 get a lesson by heart and nothing more, and that this 
 was exactly graded to his capacity, and that further 
 he would not be perplexed by exerting his intelligence, 
 he would attempt his task with more hope and less 
 unwillingness than is the case with complex lessons. 
 
 In my youth I was at several schools and a college, 
 and I am firmly convinced that there was in all an 
 average waste or loss of time and work of at least 
 fifty per cent., owing to the needless difficulty of the 
 tasks allotted. I never once had a lesson that was 
 not really harder than it should have been. In a 
 class of twenty the lessons are such as are easily 
 learned by the. two or three cleverest ones, and this 
 is the standard for all. It is a false one. It is exactly 
 as if because a horse can occasionally do his mile in 
 two minutes, he should be expected to keep that pace 
 up all day. A boy should never have a lesson which 
 he cannot learn with ease, and it should be adapted to 
 his intelligence and power of memory. And therefore 
 I would oppose with all my heart the principle of com- 
 
 I 
 
1 3 o PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 petition in education where the object is not to teach 
 all as much as possible, but to reward a very few for 
 being cleverer than the rest, and so induce the majority 
 to neglect work. We are told that there is no royal 
 road to learning. If this be so, it is time we made 
 one. 
 
 Very few people know what the average human 
 capacity or latent power of memory really is when 
 it is properly trained. We have discovered that every 
 boy can learn to draw and design, despite the vulgar 
 error that it requires an innate talent. A very few 
 years ago this was a general belief. Now we have 
 learned that it was absurd. But we have not learned, 
 as we shall, that the same time which a boy takes 
 to learn arithmetic might, if properly expended, render 
 his memory and power of quick perception almost 
 miraculous. Yet it would in fact be no invention, 
 but only a re-discovery. It is certain that for cen- 
 turies in ancient India stupendous works, such as 
 few Europeans have now patience to read, were kept 
 in existence by memory before writing was known, 
 or at least before it was used for anything except 
 inscriptions. We think it a great thing when a 
 scholar can repeat all the odes of HORACE, but what 
 must memory have been when thousands knew the 
 whole of that three hundred thousand-Jogged lyric, the 
 Mahabarata ? The great grammar of the greatest of 
 grammarians, PANINI, was taught verbally and trans- 
 mitted orally with a mass of commentaries by other 
 authors for three hundred and fifty years. So were 
 the works of HOMER. Among the disciples of PYTHA- 
 GORAS- as among the . ancient Druids and many other 
 schools of antiquity, memories were the sole or chief 
 
WONDERFUL MEMORIES. 131 
 
 libraries. I have been intimate with a learned Chinese 
 who had passed the great examination of Pekin, and 
 I am confident that, though quite a young man, his 
 memory contained ten times as much as any European 
 I ever met. There are Jews living who can repeat 
 by heart from any given word the whole of the 
 Talmud, which is almost a library in itself. I am 
 indebted to Mr. T. C. HORSFORD of Manchester for a 
 well authenticated instance of memory in a Hindoo, 
 which shows in a striking manner the degree to which 
 memory by ear may be cultivated. This man, who did 
 not understand English at all, having had fifty lines 
 of " Paradise Lost " read to him, repeated it accurately, 
 and then rehearsed it backwards. It is very remark- 
 able that in all European education children are set 
 at hard intellectual tasks, on the theory that memory 
 already exists, instead of giving them the proper 
 training to create it. It is just as if children should 
 be set at physical labour far beyond their power, on 
 the theory that strength will come at once. 
 
 There are a few old people yet living in the High- 
 lands of Scotland who can repeat thousands of verses 
 of Gaelic poetry. I myself, in collecting the legends 
 of the Algonquin Indians, have been amazed at the 
 incredible masses of tradition which these Indians had 
 retained, word by word, sometimes for sixty or seventy 
 years. Among the ancestors of the Scotch, as among 
 the early Scandinavians and Teutons, not only were 
 long epics and thousands of ballads preserved by the 
 bards, but with them all the legends, history, and 
 business affairs of their tribes. There were among 
 the Icelanders very learned lawyers, as I gather from 
 the Saga of the Burnt NjalL Their courts and legal 
 
1 32 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 proceedings very much resembled our own, but theue 
 jurists all carried their libraries under their hair. 
 Now we know that these wonderful results were in 
 all cases obtained by training the mind in boyhood 
 with a view to developing the memory. Truly the 
 first thing which should be taught is simple memory. 
 
 Before printing had been a century in use people 
 found out that " the art preservative of arts " was 
 destroying the art of memory. In The Schyppe of 
 Fooles, a pedantic book-collector declares that all his 
 learning is in his " bookes," though not in his head. 
 This widely spread and rapidly increasing habit of 
 referring to books for much which had better be in the 
 brain, is having its result intellectually in the increasiug 
 rarity in literature of very great and original men. 
 Science, it is true, leads the clever men who follow it to 
 great discoveries. But science is systematic, art is acci- 
 dental. It seems wonderful indeed that the world still 
 has great scholars and thinkers in the face of this great 
 decay of memory. Fortunately many make exertions 
 in after-life and recover something. But they do not 
 owe anything to early education for this. Education 
 set them lessons, not to improve memory, but that 
 lessons might be learned, and a certain amount of 
 knowledge crammed into the mind. I never once 
 heard, and I never dreamed during all my school-days, 
 that perfection in the manner of learning my lessons 
 was an absolute object. I believed that I was taught 
 arithmetic that it might help me in business affairs 
 in future life, and geography that I might know about 
 the world, and Latin that I might get into college ; 
 and as regarded the last I had suspicions that it was 
 really of no use at all, but only a venerable heirloom 
 
LATIN AND GREEK. 133 
 
 or custom. I know better now. I know that Latin 
 is one of the most valuable of mental disciplines, that 
 for a majority of students it is more valuable than 
 mathematics, and that any study properly conducted 
 should give us far more than mere knowledge. Is 
 it any wonder that we hear continual attacks on Greek 
 and Latin in education, when the only plea put for- 
 ward in their favour by their professors is the value 
 of a knowledge of the classics ? The ordinary man of 
 the world will always maintain, and rightly, that as 
 regards mere utility, and even mere accomplishment, 
 a knowledge of French and German is worth more 
 than that of " the classical tongues." But as regards 
 what should be the primary object of education, he is 
 wrong, for Latin and Greek, when thoroughly and pro- 
 perly taught, are unrivalled as a means of developing 
 memory and judgment. Discipline of the mind should 
 precede " knowledge." 
 
 I have heard the objection raised to such a thorough 
 method of teaching memory that it would have the 
 effect of making the pupil learn his lessons probably 
 very perfectly and rapidly, but possibly in an unin- 
 telligent way, so that he would catch like a magpie 
 and recite like a parrot, but understand no better 
 than an owl. It is, in fact, assumed that a very 
 excellent memory detracts from intellect, and in some 
 manner injures judgment or reflection. This is as if 
 it should be believed that a great knowledge of lan- 
 guages would prevent a man from fully appreciating 
 the literature which they contain, when in fact great 
 poets are mostly good linguists. The main point to 
 my purpose at present is that it shall be granted that 
 by training by a particular method, and with no other 
 
1 34 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 end in view than to perfect the memory, it can be 
 thus perfected. How any memory, no matter how 
 powerful it may be, can be prevented from becoming 
 dominant over more valuable faculties, I propose to 
 set forth in another chapter. 
 
 The world abounds in theories untried and untested, 
 but the assertion that the memory of the average 
 scholar may be improved indefinitely has been tested 
 and tried to perfection. It was perfectly proved 
 in the early ages, when there were no books, and 
 when scholars were self-dependent. And with this 
 the fact was proved during the Middle Ages that not 
 merely the minority of men may have what would 
 now be regarded as marvellous memories, but all who 
 pretend to study at all. In the thirteenth and four- 
 teenth centuries students flocked to universities by 
 tens of thousands. Books were then very dear, and 
 the ancient custom of committing whole works by 
 heart still prevailed. What we read of the scholastic 
 disputations of the Middle Ages, and what we observe 
 of the colossal erudition then current, has often drawn 
 forth the remark that there were giants in the land in 
 those days. It is great scholarship at present to even 
 know how to find out in books what we want to 
 know. 
 
 It is very currently and very incorrectly believed 
 that this vast development of the memory kills off 
 more active and more valuable powers, and that it 
 makes the mind "a charnel-house for dead thoughts." 
 In proof of this, instances are alleged of men who 
 could master books at a single reading, or remember 
 whole sermons and repeat the entire Bible, who were 
 nevertheless not remarkably clever, All of these 
 
OVERTAXED MEMORIES. 135 
 
 instances may be true, but one might as well argue 
 that all clever arithmeticians are idiots because the 
 most remarkable ready reckoner I ever met could do 
 nothing but reckon. These one-sided minds are all 
 very rare and exceptional cases. Where there is some 
 incredible feat of memory in a feeble mind, it very 
 often happens that the mind not having been gradu- 
 ally trained to retain, was stretched and exhausted by 
 its effort. GEORGE BORROW tells us of a common 
 Spaniard who thus destroyed . his intellect by forcing 
 his mind to retain a long poem in a language which 
 he imperfectly understood. Young men at college 
 sometimes improve their memories at the expense of 
 their judgments or imaginations. These instances of 
 minds ruined by overcharged memories only prove 
 that they were not strengthened and trained before- 
 hand to carry so much. 
 
 I have read a remarkable and a probably authentic 
 case of a man who, owing to an accident or injury to 
 his brain, became, after his health was recovered, feeble- 
 minded, with the exception of his memory, which 
 developed to a prodigious extent, so that he could 
 repeat whole volumes after a single reading. But to 
 argue from this against developing the memory would 
 be entirely illogical. I have known an instance in 
 which a young girl had been so trained by unprincipled 
 and vulgar parents to exert only self-will and clever- 
 ness, that everything like truth, morality, or humanity 
 had almost entirely disappeared. I have known another 
 whose legs being crippled, all their muscular strength 
 had gone to the arms. But neither of these cases 
 would prove that young people should not be taught 
 self-reliance, or that the arms need not be developed 
 
i 3 6 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 by exercise. For after all the fact remains, that in 
 a vast majority of instances the man of letters, the 
 thinker of the age, the poet and the scholar, are iden- 
 tical, and that all greatly require very good memories. 
 For a language at least three thousand words must be 
 learned, and all who search deeply into literature or 
 science should know three or four languages. 
 
 There are some very interesting facts connected 
 with the study of languages which go very far to 
 verify what I have said as to the possibility of culti- 
 vating memory, and with it observation. To talk a 
 language with aught like ease requires, as I have said, 
 a knowledge of about three thousand words. As many 
 of these come from the same roots, or are correlated, 
 we may say that twenty- live hundred, or even two 
 thousand, will barely suffice. "Now I have found by 
 inquiry and experiment that the average intellect can 
 acquire about thirty words of a strange tongue in a 
 day, and that it invariably diminishes the number to 
 twenty-five, and then to twenty. This includes fixing 
 the words in the memory by exercises or conversation, 
 and constant reviewing. I remember when I was in 
 Egypt that Prince HASSAN, son of the late Khedive, 
 said he began the study of English by learning fifty 
 words a day, but soon found himself obliged to reduce 
 the number to thirty. Now at the rate of thirty 
 words a day any one can learn three thousand words 
 in one hundred days, and with them during the same 
 time acquire considerable facility in using them. For 
 such high pressure work as this I will suppose that 
 from three to six hours are taken daily. But then I 
 also assume that the language shall be a very strange 
 one, such as colloquial Arabic, Hindustani, or Persian, 
 
EARLY METHODS. 137 
 
 in which the grammar is easy, but the words are quite 
 foreign to the English speaker. Teutonic or Latin 
 languages will be found easier. Now it is established 
 that young pupils who are thus exercised in memorising 
 vocabularies, and at the same time in working the 
 words up as fast as they come in, soon acquire a 
 remarkable facility in learning in this direction. It 
 was essentially in this manner that Latin was taught 
 to children till within two centuries ; that is to say, 
 during the days of great memories. I have in my 
 possession two works, probably the first ever published, 
 for the purpose of teaching little boys Latin. One, 
 of the fifteenth century, by MURMELLIUS, in black letter, 
 is in German; the other in English. The latter 
 gives a great number of woodcuts illustrating all the 
 trades and professions, in which every object is num- 
 bered. Thus over a blacksmith is one, over his hammer 
 two, over the anvil three. Under the picture and in 
 type we find, one, f alter ferrarius, a blacksmith ; two, 
 a hammer, malleus; three, an anvil, incus. Beneath 
 the vocabulary are exercises, giving the inflections, 
 conjugations, &c., in conversation. This simple method 
 would be laughed at now in these days of philosophic 
 grammars and systems, but after all there were a 
 hundred boys then in the fifteenth century who could 
 not only read and write, but even talk Latin, where 
 there is one now. There was an immense advantage 
 in thus teaching Latin familiarly and colloquially, that 
 the students were soon interested in "the classics." 
 As it is, with the very great majority, Latin or Greek 
 is one dry and wearisome grind from the beginning 
 to the end. 
 
 Latin is no longer taught as a living tongue, nor 
 
I 3 8 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 memory as a means of learning anything. Step by 
 step tuition has shrunk from the vital and practical 
 in these, as in many other matters, to the formal, 
 timid, and difficult. We would like to have great 
 scholars, great results, and great general information, 
 and we employ the pettiest means to pursue them. 
 We are like the Indian who believed that the earth 
 rested on a tortoise, but what the tortoise rested on 
 he did not know. We are aware that knowledge is 
 based on study, but that study itself could have a 
 foundation is not dreamed of in our philosophy. 
 
 This training children to very great thoroughness 
 in the beginning, or to absolute exactness and perfec- 
 tion in the acquisition of lessons, with no regard at 
 first as to acquiring mere knowledge, would be a little 
 more difficult for the teacher at the beginning, and 
 a great deal easier for him long before the end. It 
 seems to me that to make a pupil try to acquire the 
 art of memory and knowledge at the same time with 
 it is very much like the current error of making a 
 student learn to pronounce a language, acquire its 
 form, and learn a new handwriting to put it in all at 
 once. Dr. SCHLIEMANN, the archaeologist and dis- 
 coverer, who is at the same time a remarkable linguist, 
 says that the only way to acquire a language rapidly 
 and perfectly is to learn the pronunciation perfectly 
 before attempting anything else. I never knew of 
 but one person who acquired French " like a native " 
 after twenty-five years of age. In this case it was 
 effected by studying the pronunciation and nothing 
 else for many weeks at the beginning. One thing at 
 a time, and that thing perfectly, is the golden rule of 
 learning. 
 
MEMORY AND DESIGN. 139 
 
 Most people will be ready to admit that children 
 should from the beginning be obliged to learn their 
 lessons perfectly. But as a matter of fact is it ever 
 done ? Did anybody ever witness or experience such 
 instruction ? I never did in any country. I mean 
 apart from the subject-matter of the lesson, adhering 
 to a single text-book, caring nothing for what the 
 pupil is learning, but everything as to how he learns 
 it, until the growing grasp shows that the strength 
 thus acquired may be set to useful, more intelligent 
 work. 
 
 Now it is well known to everybody who is practi- 
 cally familiar with manual arts, that a man may carve 
 in wood, or work in plastic material, separately without 
 knowing how to draw ; but if he can draw, though but 
 a little, all these arts, and many others with them, 
 become much easier, because all modelling and relief- 
 working are only applied drawing. So it is with 
 memory, which is to all learning whatever what draw- 
 ing is to the fine arts. And by proper tuition it is as 
 easy to acquire the one as the other. The mistake 
 which we make lies in believing that memory is 
 entirely an innate force, of which some have more 
 and some less, not to be materially varied by culture, 
 while we all practically act in the faith that if it can 
 be increased, it is to be done while acquiring knowledge, 
 simultaneously with it. Now it is a fact that while 
 beyond a certain point of proficiency one branch of 
 study or one art strengthens and assists another, 
 within that point, if it does not positively hinder, it 
 certainly does not help. That is to say, that after 
 a man has learned several languages thoroughly, or 
 several arts, or several branches of study of any kind, 
 
1 40 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 the studying several at once will be advantageous, 
 but, until memory has been greatly improved, it will 
 not. Therefore it seems that in the beginning there 
 should be as few varieties of study as possible, that 
 there may be more in the end. The strength of the 
 trunk must be in proportion to the weight and number 
 of the branches. 
 
 It is difficult to imagine on what grounds any 
 opposition could be made to such a system of educa- 
 tion as this which I propose. The sternest opponent 
 of novelties and of reforms can hardly object to the 
 proposition that pupils should be obliged to learn their 
 lessons perfectly. Now to learn perfectly involves at 
 first only one or two subjects studied with great care. 
 Learning perfectly, let me say, also involves the exer- 
 cise of intelligence as well as memory. These are 
 mutual aids. As it is, in most schools, the object is to 
 get the pupils over as many lessons as possible in a 
 certain time, instead of making them as clever as 
 possible in that time. The text that the letter killeth, 
 but the spirit giveth life, is as applicable in education 
 as to religion. As the Germans would say, we make 
 our education objective when it should be subjective. 
 It certainly cannot be said that this method of 
 educating memory is an untried novelty, when we 
 reflect that it was in successful operation for thou- 
 sands of years, during which time the greatest 
 triumphs of intellect were achieved. It is not a 
 mere conjecture of mine that in order to remember 
 whole libraries perfectly, the memories of the students 
 of ancient India were systematically trained before- 
 hand and strengthened. " As far back as we know 
 anything of India/' says MAX M&LLER, " we find that 
 
MEMORY I 
 
 the years which we spend at school and at the 
 university were spent by the sons of the three 
 higher classes in learning from the mouth of a teacher 
 their sacred literature. This was a sacred duty, the 
 neglect of which entailed social degradation, and the 
 most minute rules were laid down as to the mnemonic 
 system that had to be followed. Before the invention 
 of writing there was no other way of preserving litera- 
 ture, whether sacred or profane, and, in consequence, 
 every precaution was taken against accidents. Stranger 
 still is the fact that those Brahmans who may be con- 
 sidered the especial guardians of the sacred traditions 
 of India in our own day do not employ either the 
 written or the printed texts in learning and trans- 
 mitting their holy lore." "They learn it, as their 
 ancestors learned it thousands of years ago, from the 
 mouth of a teacher, so that the Vedic succession 
 should never be broken," and so well do they perform 
 the duty and so accurately do they transmit the text, 
 that " there is hardly a various reading in the proper 
 sense of the word, or even an uncertain accent in the 
 whole of the Rig -Veda, which consists of more than a 
 thousand hymns, averaging ten verses, and contains 
 more than one hundred and fifty thousand words." 
 
 Educated as we are, we think with impatience, or 
 else with unreasoning admiration, of these stupendous 
 feats of memory. We say, what is the use of it all ? 
 or else wonder at the superior patience and memory 
 of the Hindoo. Now the Hindoo has, by nature, no 
 better memory than the Englishman, as is shown by 
 the many young Indians at the English universities. 
 As for calling such perfect study a waste of time, I 
 would like to ask if the average university graduate 
 
1 42 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 is, on leaving college, any better off than the Hindoo ? 
 The Greek and Latin which he has acquired is half 
 learned, his memory has not been one quarter trained. 
 He has experienced the refining influences of culture 
 and of scholarly association, but his mental strength 
 has not been awakened. Now be it observed and 
 this is a very strong point that despite all our 
 libraries, lectures, newspapers, and progress we of the 
 nineteenth century have no more surpassed or even 
 equalled the Sanskrit-writing Hindoos in literature 
 or thought than we have the Greeks in art. Our 
 scholars are beginning to recognise Buddhism as the 
 most stupendous and brilliant system ever invented by 
 man ; no dramatist of our age has equalled KALIDASA. 
 I regard the story of Vikram and the Vampire as 
 the most perfect work of humour ever written, 1 while 
 PANINI has never been equalled as a grammarian. 
 The fact that the early ages when memory was so 
 much cultivated also brought forth correspondingly 
 great works of intellect deserves to be seriously 
 studied. SCHLIEMANN, in his Ilios, tells us that his 
 memory was lad originally, but that he so perfected it 
 by an indomitable will and hard work, that he at last 
 learned a new language every six months, so as to 
 write and speak it perfectly. As he was all the time 
 engaged in business, in which he eventually made a 
 large fortune, as a wholesale grocer, we may see that 
 even at the present day there are practical men who 
 appreciate the virtue of thoroughness. 
 
 Let me give a last illustration of the possibility of 
 creating a powerful memory in the young by means of 
 
 1 Not so humorous as the works of RABELAIS, it makes a far higher 
 application of humour. 
 
JAPANESE MEMORY. 143 
 
 practice. Japanese children, like Chinese, must pass 
 at least two years in studying mere letters or signs 
 before the process of reading may be said to begin. 
 The study is intensely hard, much harder than any- 
 thing known in our schools, and involves the exercise 
 of memory only. The result is, that among the literary 
 men of Japan we meet with wonderful instances of 
 learning. There is a work entitled the Koski Seibun, 
 which is a great compilation of all the myths and 
 early legends of Japan, made in the year 1812 by the 
 learned HIRATA ATSUTANE. "It is said/' accord- 
 ing to SATOW, " that he composed the three volumes 
 of the text and several volumes of the introduction 
 without opening one of the books from which his 
 materials were drawn/' In fact he had been many 
 years employed in what we may call writing it on his 
 brain. Every sentence of it was in his mind before he 
 touched a pen, and his authorities were, so to speak, 
 hung up before his eyes, and not stowed away in 
 places whence they might or might not be recalled 
 when wanted. 
 
 " What man has done man may do." What was 
 done of old by our Aryan ancestors or their sons can 
 be done by us. The art of printing should have been 
 our staff; we have made of it a crutch, and used it till 
 we cannot walk without it. There is no reason why 
 man in gaining so much from science should not also 
 regain all his own strength which has been lost. 
 
 I have intimated that the radical defect of our pre- 
 sent system of elementary education lies in our teaching 
 the pupil too much at once. Thus a boy of let us 
 say eight years, set at the Latin grammar, is expected 
 to train or develop his memory, his pronunciation, 
 
144 PKACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 and his understanding conjointly, or at one and the 
 same time. A man can learn to play on six instru- 
 ments at once, but no great performer was ever made 
 by such training. The education of the future, like 
 chemistry, will owe its improvement, first of all, to 
 analysis. We shall teach memory separately from 
 what is now supposed to be the main object of every 
 lesson. Common sense will tell every thinker that 
 this cannot be in every case mere memory. The mind 
 of the dullest scholar or even of the quickest, who 
 are generally the most heedless and likely to forget 
 will always take in so much of the sense of the text 
 as will serve for mortar to the bricks thus made. 
 But in the beginning the lesson should be solely for 
 memorising. Such epithets as " parrot-like " will not 
 be spared as regards this system, but it is not intended 
 that the training shall cease with the acquisition of 
 memory. 
 
 To put the system of developing memory into prac- 
 tice is not difficult. The parent or teacher should 
 begin by giving the pupil very easy lessons in an English 
 text-book. Proverbs or texts from Scripture are to 
 be commended, since they are almost invariably in 
 pure, simple, easy English. One thing only is to be 
 insisted on, that the lesson for the day be learned 
 perfectly, and that no effort be made to explain the 
 text, as this will introduce a new and entirely foreign 
 element. Therefore it will be well to select lessons 
 which the pupils already understand. One half of 
 every lesson, after the first one, should consist of 
 reviewing the previous lessons. It will hardly be 
 believed by old-fashioned teachers, but it is true, that 
 most children take pleasure in thus memorising when 
 
TRAINING THE MEMORY. 
 
 145 
 
 the lessons are not too long. It, was the great fault 
 of all my teachers in my youth/that from the infant- 
 school to the university there was not one who did 
 not require lessons which were far too long for the 
 majority of the class to acquire perfectly. Those who 
 were slow or not clever were shamed by the example 
 of the more gifted ; but while it sometimes made them 
 work harder and out of due proportion to their abilities, 
 it did not change their natures or encourage them. 
 The simple development of memory alone, if " parrot- 
 like," is both easy and agreeable, especially if the 
 teacher, instead of regarding the aim of the lesson to 
 be a set task to be equally mastered by strong and 
 weak, looks upon the development of each mind to be 
 the main object. 
 
 Under the present current system the chief inten- 
 tion is that the pupil shall simply learn a lesson. By 
 memorising with absolute accuracy this only being 
 required the dullest pupils soon perceive that they 
 are working, not to master a fact, but a faculty. The 
 only reason why we have not more clever scholars is 
 because great account is made of facts and very little 
 of faculties. A prize-fighter in training know^s that 
 the object of all his daily sparring and exercise is to 
 become strong, but we teach children as if the exercise 
 in itself was to be the end of all. 
 
 When children can recite and recall at will several 
 scores or hundreds of texts, proverbs, short poems, or 
 similar sentences with perfect accuracy, it will be found 
 that the faculty of memorising has begun to manifest 
 itself. At this stage the teacher or parent may at 
 any time begin to give out, without book, phrases to 
 be learned. Very great care should be taken not to 
 
 K 
 
J4 6 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 do this prematurely. This will be found to be a very 
 critical stage of education. It should not be attempted 
 until the child invariably masters the printed text. 
 This will not require nearly so much time as would 
 be supposed. In about three months pupils of ten 
 years of age will begin to manifest a remarkable 
 increase of power in memorising. It should not be 
 carried on or confused with any other lessons at first. 
 After from four to six months' practice, the exercises 
 in quickness of perception, described elsewhere in 
 this book, may be begun. These greatly aid memo- 
 rising. In time they will form one with it, both in 
 due order uniting with hand-work or constructiveness 
 to make a whole. 
 
 When the pupil can learn and repeat from review- 
 ing many proverbs or sentences, and has been found 
 capable of grasping and retaining phrases given ver- 
 bally, his or her mind will be invariably in a very 
 interesting condition. A new and really wonderful 
 power then begins to manifest itself. The force of 
 this power, which makes it marble to retain, as well 
 as wax to receive, lies entirely in frequent reviewing* 
 It is a very curious fact that the more vigorously 
 and frequently the reviewing or reviving lessons is 
 exercised, the quicker the memory or " mind " is to 
 receive first lessons. Such is the theory or method 
 of the Oriental sages, who have achieved miracles of 
 mental grasp. From this critical point memorising 
 has two forms one that of printed matter, the other 
 that of spoken sentences. To such an extent can 
 both be carried that it will become perfectly possible 
 for a youth to recall, not vaguely and by association, 
 but directly, every word heard during an entire day. 
 
TRAINING CONTINUED. I 4 7 
 
 It is perfectly possible to train any average mind to 
 recall with absolute accuracy every word of an acted 
 play, of a sermon, or of a conversation. And this 
 can be done without weakening the mind in any 
 manner. On the contrary, such exertions of memory, 
 when carried on under the influence of a correlative 
 training in quickness of perception, greatly strengthen 
 all its powers. 
 
 From this time poems and literary extracts, which 
 should be always so easy to comprehend as to require 
 no explanation, may be learned. At the same time 
 the exercises in committing verbal tasks may take 
 a wider range. If the pupil manifests decided or 
 superior power of memorising after four or five 
 months of practice, the lessons in quickness of per- 
 ception should begin. It will generally be found that 
 after six months the ability to simply commit lessons 
 will have increased so rapidly that more time should 
 be devoted to reviewing than to memorising. After 
 a year the latter will become the chief exercise ; in 
 due time it will constitute the only one. With 
 earnest work, in twelve months most pupils of ten 
 or twelve years will have acquired what would now 
 be called a wonderful memory. Younger pupils will 
 learn easily, but the reviewing will be for them more 
 difficult. Those who are older will learn easily if 
 they will y but they will be far more apt to confuse 
 the meaning of the text with mere memorising. 
 
 Any teacher or parent who has taught successfully 
 for six months will know how to adapt the lessons to 
 the pupil's progress and capacity. As the learner's 
 memory improves, of course longer sentences from 
 more advanced works must be given. If the ear has 
 
M 8 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 been well trained, sentences in languages unknown to 
 the scholar may be at times tried. It is needless to 
 say that at this stage exercises in reading, pronuncia- 
 tion, or elocution will not interfere with memorising, 
 but that on the contrary they will materially aid it. 
 This forms a second critical period, to be closely 
 watched, since lessons may now be studied with more 
 regard to meaning. No rules can exactly determine 
 when the pupil shall cease to merely memorise; it 
 must depend chiefly on the discretion of the teacher. 
 
 As it is the first notes of the bird which determine 
 his future song, so the first teaching of the boy or 
 girl goes far to determine the accuracy and quickness 
 with which sentences can be grasped and retained. 
 It may here be observed that both in memorising and 
 in acquiring quickness of perception the beginning 
 is almost mechanical. This is more than remarkable, 
 it is encouraging, since it induces the belief that 
 sluggish and stupid children may be rendered quick 
 and clever by being led through mere practical 
 adroitness to thought. How often we find in a boor 
 a certain shrewdness or activity of mind induced by 
 experience. The Germans have a word dummklug, or 
 " stupid-cunning," which exactly expresses this con- 
 dition. It is too generally assumed by most people 
 that whatever is is immutable, be it for good or bad, 
 be it an usage of society or the mental condition of a 
 child. If my practical experiments in education have 
 conducted me to any belief or conclusion, it is that 
 every child not actually idiotic or mentally diseased 
 is capable of infinite intellectual development, if a 
 proper method of education or of development be 
 applied for the purpose. And for the rudimentary 
 
EXERTING WILL. 149 
 
 stages certain merely mechanical or very simple pro- 
 cesses, as yet but little used, are of great value. 
 
 The pupil must be taught from the first to use the 
 will, and to understand what this means. Thus I 
 may see an object for hours, or every day, without 
 my taking much notice of it, or without its being 
 impressed on my memory. But if I look at it 
 intently, and try with closed eyes to repeat the image, 
 in a word, if I WILL to do so, and if I repeat this a 
 few times at intervals, I shall perhaps remember it 
 always. By repeating the process very frequently 
 with other objects I shall soon acquire the power 
 of easily recalling objects visibly. Now there are 
 children who can in a listless way con over a lesson 
 scores of times without learning it, just as we may 
 see objects every day without remembering them, all 
 because they do not use the will or make decided 
 efforts to retain it. If these children had been 
 trained in memorising alone, they would not relapse 
 into such apathy. For it is much easier to excite 
 the action of the will on a single simple subject than 
 on a difficult and complex one. In most primary 
 education, at present, the will is discouraged or en- 
 feebled by having tasks set it which are too confusing 
 and too difficult. 
 
 Every musician knows to what an extraordinary 
 degree the memory of sounds may be developed. If 
 these sounds thus retained represented words and 
 thoughts, none of the instances which I have given 
 of Oriental scholarship would seem remarkable. The 
 musician is trained to remember sound alone : if 
 children were in like manner exercised on words 
 alone, they would call into being a power which 
 
1 5 o PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 would in time enable them to recall words, sounds, 
 sights, and thoughts ad libitum. 
 
 It is not unusual to see men devote many months 
 or years to learning shorthand. In the majority of 
 attempts years are required before the student becomes 
 absolutely proficient. If the same time were devoted 
 to memorising, it would be found that note-books are 
 needless, and that the reporter need only listen to the 
 speech or play which he expects to write out at home 
 or in "the office." Every one is aware that there 
 have been exceptional cases of people who could 
 remember anything from a single hearing or reading. 
 The day is not far distant when it will be as generally 
 admitted that by a simple process of early training 
 every child may acquire the same power. 
 
part Hi 
 
 ON CREATING QUICKNESS OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 "Blood goes far, but breeding farther." 
 
 Old Icelandic Proverb. 
 
 IT would be as interesting as important to be able to 
 determine " how much, how far, what way, and by 
 what means " the average mind may be developed or 
 changed by education and circumstance from what it 
 is ? CAELYLE has wisely assured us that no culture 
 will develop a cabbage into an oak, though he 
 benevolently admits that training may determine 
 whether the cabbage shall be a good or a bad one. 
 The comparison is too limited, and unjust. Man is 
 no more a vegetable than he is a mineral. Had Mr. 
 CAULYLE risen to the animal kingdom, his simile 
 would have been better. Let us say that a lion can- 
 not become a dog, since no two types of mankind 
 differ more than the extremes of these animals. Yet, 
 by training, the dog was developed by the Assyrians 
 of old into a beast so monstrous and ferocious that it 
 could grapple with the lion, while the king of beasts 
 in , captivity is often degraded into a very currish 
 creature. Most of the people whom we meet declare 
 
I5 2 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 that we are clever or the contrary, according to our 
 "gifts" or natural endowments, although they gene- 
 rally assume full credit for all the talents they possess. 
 What they have they tell you they got by exercise 
 of will and hard work ; what they have not, cruel 
 Nature, they say, denied them. There are very few 
 people who have been too lazy to study languages or 
 to draw who do not declare that they have " no 
 faculty " or talent for such acquisitions ; there are quite 
 as few who have learned something of either who do 
 not take full credit for having done so by cleverness. 
 From which we may learn that vanity is often the 
 popular measure of human capacity. 
 
 I believe that observation and experiment would 
 very much enlarge the sphere now assigned to this 
 human capacity. Let us suppose that four English 
 infants, of average English brain, are removed to, and 
 grow up in, four foreign countries. The one is 
 educated in the Frenchiest of French circles in a 
 provincial town, among shrewd and lively but very 
 narrow-minded people, with whom a certain quick- 
 ness of observation in all small matters is greatly 
 admired, by whom no pettiness of mind is repre- 
 hended, so that it be kept from openly offending, and 
 to whom the theatrical in life is the real standard of 
 morality. Another child grows up in an old-fashioned 
 German circle, equally excluded from all foreign in- 
 fluences, but among well-educated people who assume, 
 as a matter of course, that culture in every form of 
 literature and art must be absorbed by whatever is a 
 rational human being. They are extremely strict in 
 certain points of morality and etiquette, in others 
 they are tolerant to looseness. The third child may 
 
NATIONAL INFLUENCES. 153 
 
 be brought up in the most reckless and independent 
 circle of the Western United States, and the fourth 
 in an aristocratic or royal family of Inner India, Siam, 
 or Burmah. Now can any one doubt that when grown 
 up these children, who would have been in all proba- 
 bility very much alike had they developed in England, 
 will be entirely different from one another, and mani- 
 fest talents and abilities of such varied quality that 
 most men meeting them would not hesitate to declare 
 that their natures were "radically different." How- 
 ever much their ancestry might manifest itself from 
 time to time in force of will or talent, training would 
 tell to the extent of developing new talents and tastes. 
 In one of the four at least some inherited ability 
 or characteristic which would have fallen on stony 
 ground in England would spring forth in rank luxuri- 
 ance, in another case something would be repressed. 
 I may remark, in this connection, that I have observed 
 that young Americans in England Anglicise very 
 slowly, while English youth in America, and even 
 English grown men, Americanise unconsciously with 
 startling rapidity, and lose very slowly the charac- 
 teristics thus acquired. Young Americans and Eng- 
 lishmen Germanise rapidly, but they acquire Erench 
 characteristics very slowly after mere boyhood. In 
 the East even grown-up European gentlemen who have 
 lived many years entirely among the natives often 
 develop to a striking degree all the external polish, 
 all the shallow deceitfulness, all the transparent re- 
 serve and suspicion which intuitively repel intimacy, 
 and which are so characteristic of the higher class 
 Oriental. I knew one of this kind who could not 
 apparently do the simplest thing without involving 
 
I54 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 in it some reserved " dodge " or wily hidden device, 
 which could be plainly seen through, just as one sees 
 through the deeply laid devices of an artful child. 
 He had lived at an Oriental court for many years, 
 seeing very little of Europeans, until his English 
 nature had become entirely Eastern, and full of 
 " tricks that were vain." 
 
 Now, making every allowance for any manifestations 
 of the original English nature, no one who had studied 
 such cases as these would deny that they would in 
 fact radically refute much of the popular presumption 
 that the mind is incapable of any great deviation from 
 what it has shown itself to be. Of the greatest 
 interest and value would be the knowledge not only 
 how much children can change according to their 
 culture, but what are the leading and latent faculties 
 which may be brought out to greatest advantage. I 
 incline to think that of all these the one which would 
 exercise the most influence on the character is the 
 faculty of immediate or quick perception. This and 
 memory, I believe, are susceptible of artificial culture 
 to a degree which is little dreamed of, and from these 
 great intellectual results may be derived. 
 
 It is to be observed that as parents or others decide 
 that a child is " naturally quick " or " naturally slow," 
 they cast its horoscope for life. Now it would be 
 more than merely " interesting," it would be a matter 
 of immense importance, to know whether we could not 
 in our schools at home bring to bear influences which 
 would have as great an effect on the young as a 
 foreign education. A boy brought up among Erench 
 boys will be much more observant of all that is droll, 
 gauche, or "characteristic," than if he had been 
 
VARIED INFLUENCES. 155 
 
 educated in Germany ; and in whatever country he 
 might have been trained he will develop in it a 
 certain kind of quickness or power peculiar to the 
 nation. If he is brought up at sea he will start from 
 the soundest sleep at hearing an alarmed whisper, 
 although the whisperer himself can hardly hear his 
 own voice in the tumult of the storm. If trained on 
 the American prairies he will be as readily roused by 
 the imitated sound of an owl's cry or a wolfs howl, 
 although he will not mind the original. Could we 
 conceive a boy as brought up from infancy as a girl, 
 and kept in innocent ignorance of his own sex, like 
 MADEMOISELLE DE CHOISY, who will doubt that he would 
 acquire all the usual feminine quickness of perception 
 as to the details of dress ? In every kind of calling 
 we can see, if we will, wonderful instances of develop- 
 ment, of readiness and tact when necessity has been 
 the master. Whether quick or slow by nature, the 
 boy of European or American birth will, as boys go, 
 develop, according to his education, such a variety of 
 quickness of perception, in so many degrees, as to 
 fairly justify us in concluding that if we had only 
 duly mastered the subject, the means exist of enabling 
 us to make any child observant. A man may judge 
 very wisely of a thing when he sees it, and yet be 
 slow to observe ; another may see everything, and 
 form no judgment whatever. But judgment was 
 never any the worse for quick perception, nay, it 
 often springs from it. Those who see readily think 
 rapidly. 
 
 I have elsewhere spoken of the manner in which 
 thieves train dull boys to become observant, and how 
 by merely practising with the eyes in watching objects 
 
I5 6 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 in motion these children in time are able to take in 
 at a glance and remember all that is in a room. 1 
 Children who play at games requiring cleverness are 
 generally "brighter" in many or most respects than 
 those who do not. The degree to which whist-playing 
 improves the perceptive faculties and the memory is 
 well known. 
 
 There is an American artist, EDWARD A. SPRING, 
 who, while teacher in a military academy, tested with 
 best results the possibility of creating quickness of 
 perception in its primary stages. He would write 
 a word, in letters three inches long, on a card or on a 
 revolving blackboard. This was rapidly conveyed or 
 turned from the right hand to the left, giving the 
 class opportunity for a mere glance at it. At first 
 no one could distinguish the letters, in time the 
 young eyes caught everything. Then the letters 
 were diminished in size and multiplied in number. 
 At last, instead of presenting, for example, the word 
 BAT, there were on the card only the parts of the 
 letters separated, e.g., \ /\ j " This was still 
 more difficult ; but in time even this by no means easy 
 eye-conundrum was promptly solved, as were others of 
 a similar nature. At the time of which I speak, all 
 the rocks and walls were covered with the well-known 
 ST. C. 1 8 6o-X advertisement. Mr. SPRING one day 
 prepared a card with the letters SP. C. i86i-Z. Of 
 course the entire class on being asked what it was 
 replied ST. C. i86o-X. This led to deceptive tests, 
 but the boys, forewarned, became still more observant. 
 In fine, the principle was fully tested, and I am happy 
 to say that Mr. SPRING fully agrees with me in 
 
 1 Vide Eye Memory. 
 
KINDERGARTEN TRAINING. 157 
 
 believing that by beginning with merely mechanical 
 experiments which simply awaken quickness of sight, 
 we can step on imperceptibly to those which make the 
 pupil quick to observe not only with the eyes but 
 with the mind. The result of this is an increased 
 tendency to contrast and compare, to perceive antitheses 
 and affinities of colour and of form in the visual world, 
 and eventually to do the same as to ideas in in- 
 tellectual action. This is the true golden chain of 
 culture. 
 
 I believe that every teacher of a Kindergarten can 
 prove that quickness of perception is not merely 
 drawn out of children, but that it is actually created 
 in them by the exercises which are practised under 
 FROEBEL'S system. I remember to have heard that a 
 lady at some wayside resting-place or hotel was very 
 desirous to know of what kind of strange children a 
 certain party might be which burst one summer day 
 into the reception-room. They observed the dimen- 
 sions of the furniture, they compared the colours, 
 they noted the design of the carpet, and all things in 
 the room or pertaining to it ; for they were pupils of 
 a Kindergarten, and had been trained to perceive, and 
 that promptly, by a clever teacher. But for their 
 education, doubtless the faculty of quick perception 
 would have remained dormant in many, and with it 
 other talents would have slumbered. 
 
 There are still many people who, after reading all 
 this, will say it merely amounts to what everybody 
 knows that a good education develops our faculties, 
 and that they may lie dormant without it. But I 
 mean more than this. I mean that as in acquiring 
 knowledge by study the development of the memory 
 
1 58 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 should precede everything, so in regard to all culture 
 or conduct the mind should be trained to quick per- 
 ception, and with a determined view to draw it out 
 and balance the memory. We know enough when a 
 man is to have a prize-fight or a foot-race, or take 
 part in a rowing-match, to train his muscles beforehand, 
 but as regards the memory or quick perception we wait 
 till the match comes off in the struggle for life, and 
 bid the pupil become strong or train while fighting for 
 the prize. An examination of all that has been drawn 
 out of the mind, or to what it has been raised in 
 different ages and in different lands, cannot fail to con- 
 vince us that education has not kept pace with science 
 in its advance. The professor has distanced the school- 
 master. 
 
 It must be admitted that while quickness of per- 
 ception or mental activity is closely allied to and 
 forms a part of the highest intellectual action, and 
 even seems to be a stimulus to the will itself, the 
 methods which I have commended for awakening it 
 are quite objective or physical, if not purely mechanical. 
 There are few boys so dull that they cannot be made 
 bright by the process followed by the London thieves, 
 so far as mere observation is concerned. But what 
 an immense advance is it towards thought when a 
 boy has cleared the space between eyes and no-eyes, 
 between noticing and not noticing! Now it is no 
 novelty that bodily quickness and litheness are in 
 many respects allied to and productive of corre- 
 sponding mental qualities. It was not without reason 
 that the writers of the last century really believed 
 that fencing had a great effect in forming character. 
 " Any one," says the old general in "Claude Melnotte," 
 
MEN AND WOMEN. 159 
 
 "who has carte and tierce at his finger-ends, is a 
 gentleman." " The rhetorician," says a writer in the 
 London Globe, (( was recommended to engage in it so 
 as to acquire ease of gesture ; " while WRIGHT, the 
 author of the " School Orator," declares that " it diffuses 
 elegance and ease all over the body, and even char- 
 acterises the look and gesture with an appearance of 
 intellectual vigour." 
 
 It would be not only interesting but important to 
 decide whether the extraordinary difference as to 
 observation of certain things which exists between 
 men and women is not quite as much due to the 
 difference between the games and physical culture of 
 boys and girls as to any innate difference. While 
 they are far more observant than men as to each 
 others' clothes, or of objects in shops, or indeed of 
 anything which is of personal concern, women pay 
 little attention to anything of general interest. They 
 do not notice placards on walls, while caricatures and 
 comic pictures in shop windows are only looked at by 
 men or boys. Once when I was an editor I was very 
 much annoyed by visitors knocking at the door. So 
 I wrote in very legible large red and black letters 
 three inches long, COME IN WITHOUT KNOCKING, and 
 put it on the door. I soon had occasion to observe 
 after this, whenever I heard a knock, that it was made 
 either by a negro or a lady. The negroes could not 
 read, and the ladies did not. This does not in my 
 opinion prove that there is a radical mental difference 
 between the sexes, but that a great difference has been 
 caused by early education and habits. This may 
 indeed have become hereditary and a source of uncon- 
 scious cerebration, but it would be removed in time, 
 
 .^jeesE LIBFM^^ 
 
 f Y OF THE y \ 
 
 (UNIVERSITY) 
 V ^ . , OF ; 
 
,6o PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 All the sports of boys tend to produce quickness, self- 
 confidence, and universality of perception ; those of 
 girls bear on themselves only. The nursing by a girl 
 of a doll, which is the replica of herself, is entirely 
 conducive to self-concentration, and teaching her that 
 she herself is born to be petted. There are great 
 advantages in it, and yet it would be better if girls 
 were trained more to physical culture, more to vigorous 
 exercise, and less to tenderness and dainty egotism. 
 The fear lest they should be " unfeminine " is mis- 
 placed when it makes them effeminate : even a tom- 
 boy is much likelier to take good and proper care 
 of herself in life than a mere " pet." I know what 
 the prejudices of society are, and what sentimentalism 
 has to say on this subject, but the most plausible of 
 its assertions would be ludicrous and laughable did 
 they not entail so much wrong to women and such 
 disaster. The assumption in America that a whisky- 
 sodden foreign peasant, who cannot read, is fitter to 
 decide by vote as to public officers in the United 
 States than the average American woman is charmingly 
 grotesque. 
 
 Boys are more generally observant than girls, 
 principally because being naturally of the belief that 
 they are of the stronger sex they cultivate sports and 
 practices to be continued through life, which develop 
 quickness and observation different from that developed 
 by the other sex. They create will out of faith. I 
 believe that this difference will, in a great measure, 
 disappear with culture. I do not believe that woman 
 can become mentally stronger than man, or ever equal 
 him physically. But I believe that as man progresses 
 woman will also advance 3 and that many points of 
 
THE AMERICAN MIND. 161 
 
 difference which are now a source of injustice and of 
 suffering must disappear. But there is a very irnpor- 
 tnnt matter which has been as yet quite left out of 
 sight in considering woman's place in politics. It is 
 this, that as no household is well managed without her 
 influence, and no education truly humane into which it 
 has not entered, so there can be no government and no 
 policy truly perfect without it. In the most brutal 
 and barbarous states of society woman is the least 
 respected ; those who would keep her back are those 
 who at heart retain most of the savage. 
 
 In recommending such very radical methods in 
 education as beginning it by developing memory and 
 quickness of perception before proceeding to the 
 actual acquisition of knowledge, I recommend a funda- 
 mental thoroughness which I am aware is most dis- 
 tasteful to w r hat is called " the American mind." This 
 "mind" represents a clever crude youthfulness which 
 is inordinately vain of its genius and its successes, 
 which loves short-cuts, chances, and lucky hits, and 
 which is most impatient of plodding hard work and 
 of discipline. The result of this is, according to the 
 researches of American statists, that in no country is 
 there such a waste of labour and capital in speculation, 
 or in endeavours to get rich in a hurry, and most 
 assuredly none in which so many youths leave college 
 knowing so little, or with minds so feebly trained. 
 We are " a wonderful people," and we certainly can 
 show for a wonder the greatest number of graduates 
 with a mere smattering of Greek, the fewest lines of 
 Latin, and the least 'knowledge of their own literature 
 " of any civilised nation on earth's face." This also is 
 a waste of the best capital time. 
 
 L 
 
162 TRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 When HOBBES the philosopher was six years of 
 age, he was, like GOETHE, and many others who have 
 become great, already at Greek. " How often does it 
 happen," says Professor GEORGE S. MORRIS in his 
 "British Thought and Thinkers," "or does it ever happen, 
 in free America, that youth are thus early directed 
 into the way of genuinely humane culture ? How 
 many of us, who repute ourselves liberally educated, 
 have not been painfully conscious, that, at the age of 
 twenty-five or thirty, or even later, we were still pain- 
 iully limping over ways in which, not simply the 
 enthusiasts of learning in an earlier time, but the men 
 who, in Europe, as thinkers and statesmen, now lead 
 our civilisation . . . while not only they, but thou- 
 sands of their less distinguished but classically 
 educated contemporaries, were already in youth vigo- 
 rous runners. We have yet to learn as a nation not 
 to waste our time in disputing about the value of 
 different styles of education, but to go on and educate 
 ourselves by early, persistent, thorough, and never- 
 ceasing training. We may claim that our national 
 temperament is such that early and persevering mental 
 application is dangerous for us. But patient thought 
 and study are not half so perilous for our nerves and 
 brains as the passionate fret and worry incident to the 
 strife for the possession of the thousand, now alleged, 
 necessaries of decent existence comforts, luxuries, 
 knick-knacks, places of honour, means of sho wing-off, 
 the not desiring which we are accustomed to regard 
 as denoting lack of honourable ambition, or ignorance 
 of that which makes life worth living. Genuinely 
 patient thought and study are as much a sedative as an 
 excitant, for they bring the repose of strength." 
 
GAMES AND SPORTS. 163 
 
 I cannot understand what objection can be raised 
 to the principle which I advance, that quickness of 
 perception should be cultivated in children as a 
 means of awakening observation, and as conducive to 
 taking an interest in all things within the scope of 
 a child's mind. This is already done to a certain 
 extent in the Kindergarten. When the Kindergarten 
 becomes the care of the State, and shall be incorporated 
 into the regular system of public education, then it 
 is probable that this which with memory forms the 
 most important factor of mind will be duly developed 
 with scientific care by the ablest intellects. For a 
 day is corning when education, and not petty politics 
 and the personal interests of mere ignorant demagogues, 
 will claim the active care of the people. 
 
 Games and sports are of great importance in 
 developing quickness of perception in childhood, and 
 for this reason the subject deserves great study, that 
 those may be encouraged which are most conducive 
 to cleverness. I believe that amusements may be 
 made as helpful to mental ability as to bodily strength 
 and health. In the great English schools six hours 
 a day must be devoted to play, and six to study. 
 Seen from a higher point of view all this play is really 
 study, as serious in the results as any book-learning. 
 When I was a boy, play with the most indulgent 
 parents was barely tolerated, in too many cases it was 
 directly discouraged. Hearty games were supposed 
 to be attributes of street-boys. At the colleges and 
 universities there was then the same dislike of amuse- 
 ment. Students who were known to play at ten-pins 
 or billiards were ignominiously dismissed. At my own 
 Alma Mater in America, there was literally no notice 
 
1 64 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 taken by anybody of the recreation or health of the 
 students, beyond enforcing rules prejudicial to them. 
 
 I am speaking entirely of the olden time, long ago, 
 when such ignorance did manifest itself not infre- 
 quently. But still, strange as it may seem, consider- 
 ing the perfection to which schools are believed to 
 have been brought, something still remains to be done 
 as regards recreation and health. Much could be 
 suggested, much discovered, much applied, with happy 
 results, even in such trifling matters as amusements. 
 For it is a fact that there are games which are posi- 
 tively superior to any book-work whatever in awakening 
 that quickness of perception which, once awakened, 
 goes forth into all the faculties, arousing new life, 
 even as light goes into all the worlds. No one will 
 deny that the street-boy who is obliged to make his 
 living as he can about town, develops, of a kind, far 
 greater cleverness, shrewdness, and observation than 
 the pet of the nursery. This cleverness is perverted 
 to low aims, but it might just as well have been 
 developed in study, in personal politeness, or in any- 
 thing good. If a hundredth part of the genius which 
 has been given to scientifically difficult Latin gram- 
 mars and astonishingly useless algebras had been 
 devoted to sports for developing quickness of mind, 
 the world would have been the better for it. 
 
 A very great objection often urged as to stimulat- 
 ing memory and quickness of perception in childhood, 
 is that they would awaken a precocity which would 
 probably be followed by premature mental decay, or 
 the development of certain faculties at the expense of 
 others. I call especial attention to this, for it is an 
 objection as plausible as it is false. Every one who 
 
ONE-SIDED DEVELOPMENT. 165 
 
 has ever known a feeble-minded boy crammed to 
 idiocy and who has not ? will perhaps be prompt 
 or prone to declare against any new invention to force 
 undue cleverness into youth. And many, too, who 
 have come across a child with one special natural 
 inherited talent, which has been carefully developed 
 at the expense of every other faculty, will declare that 
 it was the result of overdoing the youthful capacity. 
 Now, it is very true that it is not advisable to draw 
 all the mind into one talent, any more than it would 
 be to sacrifice the growing strength of the legs to 
 feed that of the arms. But I utterly deny that any 
 amount whatever of development of the memory in 
 childhood would have any injurious effect, if it should 
 be properly counterbalanced by an equal development 
 of quickness of perception. And an examination into 
 examples proves not only this, but that an astonishing 
 proportion of great men have been precocious, and 
 that this precocity was due to early education by 
 teachers who had hit upon methods analogous to those 
 which I now urge. Much is also due, of course, in 
 many cases to hereditary endowment, but of this 
 transmitted excellence, while I believe in it, I would 
 remark that it is like wit and stories of witchcraft, 
 wherein the lucky hits and strange coincidences stick, 
 and the misses are never counted. There are, after all, 
 a great many clever people who do not have clever 
 children, owing to something falling short in tissue or 
 cells, caused by neglect of health or the cropping out 
 of some feeble-minded ancestor, and there are not a 
 few geniuses who owe more to education than to any 
 other influence. 
 
 I cannot dwell too earnestly on the fact that the 
 
!66 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 development of quick perception by culture will be 
 found on inquiry to have been going on to a far greater 
 extent in the playground than we are aware of. We 
 do not know to what degree this or that boy has be- 
 come quick and observant ; but if you had taken him 
 from infancy, and kept him from play, or only at 
 feeble sports, you would assuredly have found him 
 slower in many respects. Nature has implanted the 
 instinct to play in children for a wise purpose, and 
 to deeper intent than most parents suppose. Savage 
 children all have stupid games. As romping and fro- 
 licking and hallooing are conducive to bodily health 
 and development, so the games which follow them in 
 due time are adapted to ripen the intellectual forces 
 which then begin to manifest themselves. Now this 
 fact should be recognised and turned to proper account 
 in education. It has been partially so in the Kinder- 
 garten, wherein some of the most valuable truths and 
 discoveries of the age have originated. But it may 
 be studied and applied to great advantage when the 
 pupil shall have passed beyond the Kindergarten into 
 higher schools. At present it is allowed to take care 
 of itself, just as boys were left in a great measure 
 when I was young to amuse themselves in their own 
 wilful ways. But it is better for the boys when they 
 are supplied with suitable means of sport: the gym- 
 nasium is better than the street, and draughts more 
 commendable than pitch-penny, albeit the latter is no 
 mean sharpener of the wits, as most gambling games 
 are " more's the pity." 
 
 Nature has indicated to man the proper course to 
 follow in education ; more than this, she has indicated 
 the means. The romping, bounding, and screaming 
 
THE ATTRACTIVE METHOD. 167 
 
 of infancy are, as I have said, instinctive efforts to 
 expand the muscles and develop the purely physical 
 powers, As the mind begins to show itself, the 
 young take to games, which are also the result of 
 an instinct to expand the budding mental powers. 
 Observe that the instinct is not as yet to acquire 
 knowledge or do anything conducive to the practical 
 business or duties of life. It tends simply to develop 
 the powers which in time will enable the youth to 
 fulfil his higher task. Now while sensible parents 
 know enough to aid Nature as regards health in 
 infancy, and while there are libraries of books on the 
 subject, there has been very little attention paid by 
 anybody to the processes by which the intellect really 
 develops and prepares itself for thought. You may 
 think that this is done in the schoolroom and by 
 lessons, but it is not there that the sword is sharpened. 
 Far from it. The majority of boys do not like their 
 lessons, and it is a law that these early developments 
 shall be instinctive, that is, agreeable. You may 
 keep a man alive and perhaps fatten him on food 
 which is disagreeable to his taste, but Nature does 
 not approve of such compulsion. When I was a boy 
 it was quite a general rule in Presbyterian New 
 England that children should be made to eat whatever 
 they specially disliked, and that it was a great virtue 
 in them to do so. It was a great mistake. 
 
 There are many processes by which quickness of 
 perception may be awakened. The most rudimentary 
 is that described by JACOB ABBOTT in " Hollo," by which 
 an infant's attention is drawn to an orange rolling in 
 the sunshine. I have elsewhere mentioned in the 
 chapter on Eye Memory the method pursued by 
 
j68 PKACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 thieves of tossing up a handful of mixed objects, 
 which the boys must observe at a glance and name. 
 The same may be done in a better and a different 
 way when the teacher is on one side of a screen and 
 tosses the articles up in the air. It is also a good 
 exercise when a number of round objects, all alike, 
 such as apples or balls, are rolled from one side of a 
 door so as to disappear on the other, in one room, 
 while the observers on the other are obliged to count 
 them while rolling. Better still is the game of Morra, 
 which may be best learned of any Italian, but which 
 consists of two throwing out any number of fingers 
 simultaneously, each player crying out as rapidly as 
 he can the number cast by the other. These are 
 simply elementary exercises, but they are of great 
 avail to awaken simple quickness of observation ; of 
 such efficacy indeed that by their means the dullest 
 and most sluggish boys may be made in certain 
 directions and to certain degrees wideawake as foxes, 
 or as the thieves call it " fly." These exercises are 
 simply optical, and excite at first only visual observa- 
 tion. This however is a great deal. A dull child 
 who has been made clever, though ever so little, in 
 any way, has made a beginning which can with 
 deliberate care be increased to a remarkable extent. 
 A step beyond this is the measuring distances by eye, 
 which I learned when I was in an artillery company 
 during the Emancipation or Eebellion. A stake is 
 planted at a certain distance from a given point, and 
 all the company are required to guess the number 
 of yards or feet from one to the other. In a short 
 time young men develop extraordinary proficiency in 
 thus ascertaining distances, and it is of advantage in 
 
SPORTING MEN. 169 
 
 many ways. The eye thus trained has taken an 
 important step towards art. This is an advance on 
 mere observation; by means of it a higher faculty, 
 that of comparison, has been awakened. Now a very 
 important element in practising these " games " is this, 
 that while the boys shall regard them as games, to 
 be enjoyed with free will, they shall be exercised 
 regularly, frequently, and to a greater degree than is 
 usual. Games are generally wild weeds : I would 
 cultivate them. No boy is unwilling to have his 
 sports improved : the Boys' Own Book, and all such 
 publications, so dear to youth, prove this. It is very 
 important that these exercises, however repeated and 
 elevated, should not assume too much the character 
 of drill and discipline, and become monotonous. Should 
 they cease to please, they will lose half their value. 1 
 
 As there are a great many women who continue 
 children through life in their devotion to dress and 
 gossip, so there are men who do the same by giving 
 their souls up to " sport " in its different forms. It is 
 difficult to conceive of any boy so stupid that he 
 could not by practice attain some kind of position in 
 the sporting fraternity ; the fact that such multitudes 
 of young men who are utterly without intellect or true 
 culture of any kind become such good judges of 
 horses, such expert gamblers, such knowing and " leary 
 coves " in the muddy mysteries of the town, sufficiently 
 proves this. These men all show that quickness of 
 observation alone may be developed by the means of 
 which I have spoken, and that the faculty is really 
 almost universal. Their defect is that while quickness 
 of mind has been developed, it has been misapplied. 
 
 1 This is a frequent fault in the Kindergarten. 
 
I7 o PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 The mere " sport," like the savage, is simply an over- 
 grown child, a poor creature not of arrested growth, 
 but of arrested moral development. Understand me, 
 reader, that I do not here confuse the athletic sports 
 or exercises conducive to health with any lack of 
 brains. I am speaking not of them, or of games, but 
 of the lower orders of humanity of all ranks of society 
 who never get beyond games or gambling, and for 
 whom life is all a playground without a school. On 
 the contrary, I am advocating the extended use and 
 application through life of all games and sports. But 
 the study of these overgrown children is interesting and 
 profitable, as is that of their congeners, the savages, 
 because we learn from them that a certain kind of 
 shrewdness and quickness may be developed in all men 
 Not only are all gypsy boys extremely clever and artful 
 in many ways, but also any other boys brought up with 
 them. In fact there is not one child in a hundred 
 who, under the pressure of necessity as a gypsy or street 
 arab, would not develop a quickness of observation in 
 certain directions which would seem miraculous in a 
 well-bred nursery child. 
 
 Now I rind that many admit that there are 
 marvellous powers of memory latent in every mind, 
 which may be drawn out by education. But they 
 apprehend that the development of a great memory 
 will crush the finer powers of intellect. Memory, they 
 think, grown to a certain size, will, like the cat in the 
 old German tale, become lord of all the house, or 
 nothing. On the contrary, others believe that develop- 
 ing quick observation and insight will lead to clever 
 superficiality, and neutralise memory and solid study. 
 I, however, believe that in due measure, fairly balanced, 
 
ft 
 
 **PX 
 
 UNIVERSITY) 
 
 THE TEACHER PROBLEM. 171 
 
 i -~***"^ 
 
 they will aid, support, and increase one another. It 
 would be an easy matter to fill a book proving this 
 from examples. "No one will deny that an undue 
 premature expansion of one portion of the mind or of 
 the body will destroy the balance. But a judicious 
 development of all the organs at once, pari passu, will 
 give the happiest results. 
 
 Education has for a long time been tending towards 
 this higher and joint development of memory first 
 and higher lessons afterward, combined with quick- 
 ness of perception developed by physical aids. It is 
 growing up in the Kindergarten, it is found in the 
 rapidly increasing conviction that the whole modern 
 system of teaching languages, with its complicated 
 array of hindrances in the shape of grammars, and its 
 opposition to the use of translations, is a weariness and 
 vexation of spirit. The final objection is indeed the 
 hardest to overcome, and it is this : " Where are you 
 to get teachers clever enough to understand and apply 
 all your principles ? " Even to this there may come 
 with time a solution. While it is true that the man 
 who can do nothing better turns teacher, while teaching- 
 is only a bridge by which ambitious youth crosses over 
 the gulf of poverty to a profession; while the tutor 
 costs no more than the coachman, and the whole 
 education of- the family less than the dinner parties ; 
 while the father really understands less about the 
 training of his children than he does about his horses ; 
 while bouquets outbalance books in the annual ex- 
 penditure, and ball- dresses brains, teaching will not be 
 the profession which it should. In Japan that man is 
 believed to be damned eternally who leaves behind 
 him no son to celebrate his funeral rites. Perhaps a 
 
1 72 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 wiser age than this will decide that the man ought to 
 be damned who treats the education of his children as 
 if it were of less importance than amusements, society, 
 and display. 
 
 It is remarkable when we reflect how much our 
 current education consists of merely cramming into 
 the memory, or even into setting other faculties at 
 work for a temporary purpose, equivalent to cramming, 
 and how little is done to awaken that quickness of 
 perception or ready apprehension which may be de- 
 veloped to almost any extent, and that into forms 
 and phases of wonderful variety, reaching up into the 
 highest powers of the intellect. Let those who think 
 this is Utopian study the most recent writers on 
 physiology, and judge by facts as I have done. I find 
 on inquiry that boys who are put into places requiring 
 great promptness of thought and action in all kinds 
 of business and manufacturing can do things whicli 
 seem miraculous to even grown-up ordinary people, 
 and yet where is the school which develops this 
 wonderful power at the same time with memory ? 
 How the two might mutually stimulate and aid each 
 other is beyond belief. And it can be done. 
 
 There is a great desire at present, as there is good 
 reason, to have all office-holders in the United States 
 qualified by Civil Service or Competitive Examinations. 
 The popular objection to this as a test is thus set forth 
 by an extract from an editorial article in the Phila- 
 delphia Evening Bulletin of February 7, 1881 : 
 
 " Some of the newspapers which are not very strongly 
 in favour of Civil Service reform are busy just now 
 urging that the system of competitive examination 
 among candidates for office is not always likely to 
 
CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 173 
 
 procure the best men. One of the authorities quoted 
 in behalf of this theory is Sir ARTHUR HELPS, who in 
 1872 wrote of the system as it now exists in England: 
 ' In my judgment, although the system has long been 
 adopted in China, it is a most inadequate one for its 
 purpose. It detects qualifications which are little 
 needed, while it fails inevitably to discover those 
 which are most needed/ And another Englishman, 
 a writer in a late number of a London magazine, says 
 of the system : ' The man who succeeds in examinations 
 has quickness in acquiring, memory for retaining, and 
 readiness in producing knowledge ; but he may be 
 altogether deficient in reflection, in grasp of mind, in 
 judgment, in weight of character. It appears to me 
 that the examination system tends to select minds 
 acute rather than deep, active rather than powerful ; 
 and the worst is that the heavier metal, being gene- 
 rally more slow in development, is apt to be left in 
 the background/ Without doubt there is a good deal 
 of solid truth in these propositions. The man who 
 can obtain the highest averages for his responses to 
 certain fixed questions in arithmetic and geography 
 may, of course, have really less practical and general 
 acquaintance with those things than one whose re- 
 sponses are not so good ; and he may have much 
 smaller fitness .for the performance of certain official 
 duties. We are not aware that anybody holds opinions 
 different from these. The most ardent advocate of the 
 competitive examination plan has not insisted that the 
 certain result of that plan is to produce the best men. 
 " The plan is urged because it is about the only 
 conceivable method which can be substituted for the 
 present method. It is absolutely impossible for the 
 
T 74 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 President of the United States to pick out the best 
 men for the offices from his own knowledge. If he 
 is forced to choose at random from the crowd, he must 
 permit other men to designate the lucky men, and that 
 duty of designation naturally and almost inevitably 
 devolves upon members of Congress, who are supposed 
 to be acquainted with the people in their districts." 
 
 That is to say, that the world has gone on perfectly 
 satisfied with examinations as a test for its lawyers, 
 physicians, clergymen, college graduates, and many 
 other kinds of qualified persons, but the instant it is 
 proposed to apply this method to Civil Service candi- 
 dates, its opponents at once rake out the radical error 
 which underlies all European or American education ! 
 There is not a single word in all that Sir AKTHUR 
 HELPS or any one else has said against it which would 
 not be more strikingly applicable to the qualification 
 of men for any of the learned professions. Why 
 candidates for consulates in France should not be 
 examined in French as well as International Law and 
 other necessary qualifications it is difficult to conceive. 
 To which the unprogressive says, "You don't want 
 merely a French scholar or a lawyer for a consul." 
 " Well, what do we want ? " " Why, you should have 
 a gentleman, and a live man one who is wideawake, 
 and quick to his business." 3 And I quite agree with 
 
 1 Since this was written I have read in one of the most widely circu- 
 lated and influential newspapers in the West of America an editorial 
 article in which it was boldly asserted that a knowledge of French and 
 a generally good education was a positive disqualification for office 
 abroad, with the old cry that what was wanted was a "live" man, a 
 practical person, &c. It may be remarked that, with occasional excep- 
 tions, these illiterate "live" men are dead failures when misplaced in 
 positions for which they have not been educated. 
 
PERCEPTION AND REFLECTION. 175 
 
 this. As society is constituted, the surest way to 
 obtain a gentleman, as I understand such an ideal, 
 would be to select men who have never been in 
 "politics," especially in its dirty or primary work, 
 there being nothing so belittling or enfeebling to the 
 intellects or antagonistic to refinement as such employ- 
 ment, and a " live " man should know enough to learn 
 French or at least one living language properly. 
 
 The ultimate result of quickness of perception is to 
 induce " reflection, grasp of mind, judgment, and weight 
 of character." Observe how naturally in this citation 
 " grasp of mind " is associated with reflection. To 
 catch readily at and apprehend single objects, state- 
 ments, or ideas, is only the first step in this branch. 
 After the pupil shall have been exercised for a time 
 in this, comparison and association will come of them- 
 selves. The popular tendency is to sever quickness 
 of perception from reflection, but the wisest thinker 
 is always keenest to grasp ideas. This is illustrated 
 both in philosophical reading and in jurisprudence: 
 he who is slow in either is useless in their practice. 
 
 It is certainly true that quickness of perception is 
 not in itself, any more than memory, reflection or 
 wisdom. But the two mutually aid and develop one 
 another into higher qualities. The world is so well 
 satisfied of this that it has gone on for a long time 
 taking even memory alone as a satisfactory test of 
 cleverness. Few and far between have they been who 
 objected like Sir ARTHUR HELPS. As Uncle Toby 
 would have it that the mother must be in some way 
 related to her child, so these good people have insisted 
 that in default of a better way, a young man who 
 could repeat the wisdom which he had learned from 
 
I 7 6 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 books was about the nearest approach to being book- 
 learned which they could conceive of. If the world 
 is willing to trust so much to memory alone, what will 
 it not trust to it when allied to a faculty which quickly 
 associates and compares all that memory brings ? 
 
 I trust, however, that no reader will think that the 
 training of the mind to quick perception and prompt 
 action is to be limited to the casting up of divers 
 objects, to measuring distances by the eye, or even by 
 games up to chess and whist. It is true that the 
 study of games except as mere amusement has not 
 much occupied mankind. In KABELAIS' splendid 
 scheme for educating a perfect gentleman there is 
 included every game at cards or aught else then 
 known. But from games upward there is a series of 
 developments of the faculty of readiness which gradu- 
 ally approach and blend, or are identified with much 
 higher powers. A very remarkable mental exercise, 
 but little practised, consists in reading to a class pro- 
 positions more or less difficult to grasp, either in 
 mental or moral philosophy, mathematics, or any 
 branch of science, the object as in mental arith- 
 metic being for them to understand as promptly as 
 possible what was given. When minds have been 
 properly prepared for this, they exhibit results which 
 would startle most people. But they seldom are 
 properly prepared by being gradually led up to it. I 
 have seen something like this in a school, but the 
 object of the teacher manifestly was not to strengthen 
 or develop the capacities of the pupils, but to strain 
 them to puzzle and overload them. And there is a 
 great deal too much of this in all our current educa- 
 tion. Non multa scd multum, " not many but much," 
 
COUTURE'S METHOD. 177 
 
 should be the motto for every school. I suppose 
 that is to say, I lay it down for consideration that 
 this exercise of requiring pupils to promptly appreciate 
 or catch the sense of what is read to them is capable 
 of great development, and of exerting a great influence 
 in expanding the intellect. We know from COUTURE'S 
 method of teaching drawing, that the great majority of 
 artists can not only learn in time to sketch with great 
 accuracy people as they walk past us, but that those 
 who draw in this manner do so more accurately 
 and with greater power and better expression. Now 
 ordinary lectures do much to make students quick to 
 catch difficult points. But the student who should be 
 exercised in difficult points alone would have a vast 
 advantage at the lecture. The process is precisely 
 parallel with COUTURE'S glance- sketching. 
 
 It would be of little use to attempt to teach memory 
 or quickness of perception unless they be taught 
 properly ; that is, very gradually. My own recollec- 
 tions of all education are that of being loaded to the 
 last ounce I could bear, of being required to do more 
 than I could do thoroughly, of " staggering " at all 
 seasons, and of always having been under fear that I 
 could not accomplish my duty. To this day I am 
 tormented in dreams by the fear of my American 
 college examinations ; the old torture and anxiety rises 
 as from the grave, till I wish in my soul, on awaking, 
 that I had never seen my miserably mismanaged Alma 
 Mater. Let me observe that these torturing dreams 
 are drawn only from the American part of my student 
 career. Of Heidelberg, Munich, and Paris, where I 
 studied to infinitely more profit for three years, I 
 never dream at all. 
 
 M 
 
i 7 8 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 I have in fact no recollection whatever of having 
 been at any time taught how to study rationally or 
 in any way by anybody. I can remember that as 
 a rule I had a multiplicity of long lessons which 
 I could by very hard work just contrive to learn by 
 heart, with little understanding and less interest, to be 
 succeeded the next day by an equally confusing swarm. 
 And I can see now that if my mind had been properly 
 prepared to study before being set to learn by rote 
 such quantities, that I could have been trying to 
 understand and perhaps enjoying my texts. As for 
 students appreciating the " beauties " of Horace, the 
 golden glow of Ovid, the grand glory as of sunlit 
 seas of Homer, the mystery to me is that one in his 
 soul ever sees any difference in interest between the 
 text and the dictionary. That a few do, in spite of 
 the way in which they are taught, is a proof of the 
 wonderful recuperative powers possessed by the human 
 intellect. 
 
 The application of the principle of mental arith- 
 metic to all branches of thought, but very gradually 
 and cautiously, is perhaps the greatest problem in 
 education. The world has been "getting on after 
 a fashion " in most of its education with little more 
 than memory, which the pupil was obliged to pick 
 up for himself as he went on. I have shown, as I 
 trust, that memory may be greatly improved upon 
 certain principles, and that the pupil thus provided 
 and strengthened will then begin to study with a 
 clearer mind, not being obliged to do two things at 
 once that is, to learn to remember as well as to 
 learn the lesson. Secondly, the memory will be even 
 more aided and developed by exercises in quickness 
 
SUMMARY. 179 
 
 of perception, and it is in the mutual action of these 
 on each other that the highest results may be antici- 
 pated. If we examine the history of education, and 
 especially that of great and wise men, we find that in 
 many forms these principles have shown their truth 
 and vitality. Memory was of old systematically 
 developed to a degree now unknown, and that among 
 millions of men. Quickness of perception has been 
 brought out in manifold ways by the needs of life 
 and by amusements, and we know it can be created, 
 but to take it from its wild flower stage into the 
 garden of culture, and scientifically utilise it in educa- 
 tion in connection with memory and as a corrective 
 or aid, lies in the future. 
 
 SUMMARY. 
 
 To recapitulate, and to set forth clearly what I 
 have written, I would say, firstly, that memory can be 
 developed in all children to a greater extent than is 
 usual by the simple method of making a child learn 
 easy lessons perfectly, taking great care not to exercise 
 it on more than one or two subjects, until the art of 
 learning is acquired. Secondly, that the memory must 
 be counterbalanced by increasing quickness of percep- 
 tion. This is brought out at first by processes which 
 train the eye only to rapid perception, but which, as 
 they are changed, awaken intellectual observation and 
 rapid action of the mind. When a person has been 
 thus trained we may expect that he will be observant 
 of resemblances, contrasts, and probably readily per- 
 ceptive of humour and the principles of poetry. Exer- 
 cising quickness of perception is extremely conducive 
 
-iSp PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 to detecting or perceiving contrasts, and real or 
 apparent resemblances or points of identity. This 
 leads to " a sense of humour," a ready comprehension 
 of simile and metaphor, and by proper training to an. 
 appreciating of poetry in every form and phase. ^ 
 
 The stages of training may be set down as follows : 
 
 Training the eye to perceive objects at a glance, as, for 
 instance, when a handful of coins, beads, keys, &c., are 
 thrown up and caught. Counting as they roll by a 
 number of balls or marbles. Doing the same with balls 
 of different colours and sizes, and then with different 
 objects. Passing cards with inscriptions from the 
 right hand to the left. The art of juggling or leger- 
 demain abounds in exercises well qualified to render 
 a pupil quick to perceive. Solitaire with cards illus- 
 trates this. 
 
 Measuring and estimating distances by eye, as marked 
 out. Conjecturing the proportions of houses, rooms, 
 and all objects. Mental perspective. Comparing 
 and classifying faces, heads, and figures of men and 
 animals, with observations of proportions as charac- 
 teristic of species. 
 
 Mental arithmetic. Applications of its principles to 
 all other studies that is, it may be succeeded by 
 verbal instruction in geography, composition, languages, 
 &c., with examinations. It is a fact that a wide- 
 awake, quick-minded boy or girl can learn, under- 
 stand, and remember a lesson better when thus com- 
 municated than from a book. And the process induces 
 quickness. 
 
 Problems in mental geometry, physics, moral philo- 
 sophy, physiology, and aesthetics, given to the pupils 
 with a view to their rapid appreciation. This is not 
 
QUICKNESS OF PERCEPTION. 181 
 
 proposed as a method of study, but simply as an aid 
 to such study. 
 
 I assume that the scholars thus trained have also 
 been continued in improving their memory, and in 
 hand-work. This supposes that they will be apt to 
 remember, and that their memories are in fact supplied 
 with certain material. By increased quickness of per- 
 ception they will gather rapidly, and by memory they 
 will retain it all. Now as quickness of perception 
 improves and leavens memory, so hand-work or con- 
 structiveness acts on the two, or their resultant, in- 
 spiring a certain practical and common-sense quality 
 into education, which cannot be too much esteemed 
 or encouraged. 
 
 The world has long recognised the truth of these 
 principles, particularly as to quickness of perception. 
 But while it has smiled at them approvingly, as 
 curious and pretty when seen in infant schools, it has 
 never thought of developing them into serious and 
 higher branches any more than it has of making art or 
 hand-work an integral part of all education. Now I 
 would keep not only the schoolboy but also the uni- 
 versity undergraduate busy, among other things, with 
 exercising his mind to quickness, as he should his 
 body. For I assume gymnastics to be accepted as a 
 part of all education. Improving the memory, and 
 with it rapidity of thought, should not cease with 
 the rudimentary exercises of childhood. Like rolling 
 snowballs they should be kept going, in order to 
 increase in growth. 
 
 Singleness of purpose is a great power. Until the 
 pupil has positively acquired the ability to memorise 
 at will, until he can grasp and retain almost whatever 
 
1 82 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 he pleases, he should not be confused with other 
 studies or exercises. But when this power begins to 
 really manifest itself, then the exercises in quickness 
 of perception may begin. It will be found that the 
 two greatly aid one another. To see rapidly is a 
 faculty which perishes with the realisation, unless it 
 be aided promptly by memory, while memory grows 
 rapidly when exercised by her rapid partner. 
 
 We will suppose that a child has been so long 
 trained in memorising alone as to readily retain any 
 sentence, or to a certain degree a sequence of sentences. 
 At this stage the exercises in training the eye to per- 
 ceive may be begun. For the very young the throw- 
 ing up a handful of different small objects is the best 
 beginning, to be accompanied by rolling different 
 coloured balls across a doorway. Pictures of all kinds 
 may next be shown, and the class required to describe 
 them from a minute's observation. It is also well to 
 train the pupil to observe as rapidly as possible the 
 dress and appearance of a certain given number of 
 people, so as to describe them accurately. Very few 
 grown people can do this well, but any child may be 
 trained to do it very well in a few words. It is a 
 valuable art, which will be of great use through life. 
 To perceive accurately is in fact almost the same 
 thing as to describe accurately; at least it will be 
 found that those who observe closely always describe 
 well. This is another illustration of the great truth 
 that simple elementary, almost mechanical beginnings, 
 with ordinary minds can be made to lead directly to 
 far higher intellectual powers. 
 
 At this stage the pupil may also be shown sen- 
 tences distinctly written in large characters, which he 
 
MENTAL POWER. 183 
 
 may just have time to read, and then be required to 
 repeat. This is not unknown to the Kindergarten 
 teachers, but its importance is as yet far from being 
 understood. There are very few grown-up men who 
 would not acquire a really marvellous mental power 
 if they were to practise it. The adult who enjoys in 
 all its fulness quickness of perception has acquired 
 a power which will aid him in every profession or 
 calling. Priest, lawyer, doctor, shopman, or artisan 
 succeed in most cases more by being readily observant 
 than by any other faculty. That this may be acquired 
 in its every form or phase admits of no doubt. I 
 knew a man of whom it was said that he never knew 
 how anybody was dressed. This came to his ears, and 
 from that time he could describe the garments of all 
 his acquaintances. 
 
 As memory after certain exercise acts in accordance 
 with quick perception, so the two, especially the latter, 
 give and take to and from eye-memory. The show- 
 ing a written sentence on a board, only so long that it 
 may be read, will recall the method by which COUTUKE 
 advised beginners to learn to sketch passers-by. All 
 of these experiments have been made with success, as 
 curiosities; unfortunately they have not been persevered 
 in, or made constant influences in education. Another 
 stage, that of games, has rarely been regarded save as 
 mere amusement. It might be a curious subject of 
 inquiry to ascertain what humanity would be if it had 
 never known any games of skill ? Can any one imagine 
 a childhood entirely devoid of such exercises, and what 
 the probable results would be on the subsequent adult 
 minds ? Many of my readers can well appreciate how 
 practice in games would be aided by a greatly improved 
 
1 84 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 memory. Add to this mental arithmetic, let us say 
 to two hours of memorising daily let there be one of 
 the latter branch and one or two of games of different 
 kinds, all conducted with a view to make the pupil 
 observe and remember. 
 
 Memory and quickness of perception unite and can 
 be perfected in the development of the constructive 
 faculty which is allied to both and calls for both. 
 The two are one in art. How this should be studied 
 is shown in the chapter on Industrial Art in Schools. 
 
 If there are any readers who ask when, where, and 
 how in this system the ordinary branches of education 
 come in the reading, writing, geography, and arith- 
 metic I reply, what the more intelligent reader has 
 probably surmised by himself, that if the teacher have 
 any intelligence at all he will begin to introduce such 
 branches as require thought at his own discretion 
 very gradually, as he perceives that the memory and 
 quickness of perception of the pupil are becoming so 
 strong that the grasp is easy. Two points he must 
 bear in mind. Firstly, not to abandon at any time the 
 training of memory and quick perception ; and secondly, 
 to beware of overcrowding or forcing the ordinary 
 subjects of learning. The harder he works in the 
 morning the easier will it be in the afternoon. 
 
part IF. 
 
 EYE MEMORY. 1 
 
 THERE are few people who have ever reflected on the 
 fact that every one has within him a faculty which, 
 if properly developed, would completely change our 
 system of education, by increasing to an incredible 
 degree our power of mental acquisition. This faculty 
 I term Eye-memory. It has already been recognised 
 by writers as Visual Eepresentation, Imaginary Appear- 
 ance, and Volitionary Pseudopia, each term expressing 
 the subject in a manner characteristic of its inventor. 
 It occupies a ground between memorising and quick- 
 ness of perception, belonging to one as much as to 
 the other. 
 
 We are all in the habit of hearing the utterances 
 of other people during our waking hours, of reading 
 books and catching sounds. But unless we delibe- 
 rately set ourselves to work to get these utterances, 
 ideas, or sounds by heart, we only retain a vague 
 general impression of them. Getting by heart, or 
 "memorising," is effected by concentrating or in- 
 tensifying the attention, and by frequent repetition. 
 
 1 A lecture delivered before the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, 
 March 29, 1880. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 (UNIVERSITY 
 
 V OF 
 
186 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 When this is extensively practised in youth, the 
 power of memory is thereby greatly strengthened or 
 improved, while the thinking faculties are, by the 
 same process, stimulated and disciplined. This is, in 
 fact, the real aim of most early education. Only the 
 vulgar and ignorant believe that the acquisition of 
 knowledge and the learning certain definite quantities 
 of mathematics, languages, or history alone constitute 
 an education. A wiser man knows that it is the 
 training of the mental powers which forms the true 
 result of culture. 
 
 Now just as the mind may be instructed and dis* 
 ciplined by mere reading, that is to say, indirectly 
 taught by symbols called letters, so it may be directly 
 supplied with facts or phenomena by eye-memory. 
 This is the impressing by will on memory things 
 which we have seen. Thus, for instance, if you close 
 your eyes and try to recall the exact appearance of 
 any object with which you have been familiar, you 
 will find great difficulty in doing so. As a rule 
 children possess this faculty to a much higher degree 
 than grown people. But if you put the object before 
 you and look at it frequently you will succeed in 
 learning it, so as to be able to read it at will. The 
 longer you study it with a determination to remember 
 it, the more vividly will its colour and general appear- 
 ance come before you. It is possible, with practice, 
 to develop this faculty so as to produce the most 
 extraordinary results. The absent friend may be re- 
 called at will, so that his form appears as clearly 
 defined as in life, and by frequent exercise you may 
 surround yourself with familiar or imagined scenes 
 which appear like nature. This power may be ex- 
 
VISUAL REPRESENTATION. 187 
 
 tended to books. You have all heard of people who 
 " cipher " from imagined visual numerals, and of others 
 who had the power to recall sheet-music, and to play 
 from the notes thus brought before the eye. I have 
 read of a Scotch preacher who said that, while 
 apparently preaching without notes, he was really 
 reading from a manuscript which he saw mentally 
 before him. He could see even the marks of punctua- 
 tion. And this use of the faculty of visual repre- 
 sentation occurred whenever he had written a sermon 
 and read it carefully before going into the pulpit. I 
 venture to believe that it would be possible, with 
 practice, to recall any page of anything which we had 
 read, or rather seen, and in like manner to get by eye 
 a gallery of pictures. As it is, we may appreciate 
 and thoroughly enjoy works of art. But unless we 
 deliberately exert our will, and intentionally impress 
 them on the memory with much trouble, they will 
 not recur, to us as real things. They will not come 
 when we call to them. Why is it that, after going 
 through a gallery, we remember a few pictures arid 
 forget others ? Simply because we have unconsciously, 
 through interest, brought our memory to bear upon 
 the few. Had we been trained from childhood to use 
 this visual memory in the same manner in which 
 we are trained to exercise mental memory, we could 
 probably recall at will any object which we had once 
 willed to remember. 
 
 There have been, however, many persons who have 
 acquired this desirable art. Thus we are told that 
 NICOLAS LOIR, an eminent French painter and engraver, 
 when in Italy, devoted his time to contemplating the 
 works of the great masters, his eye-.meinory becoming 
 
1 88 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 so retentive by practice that he was able to sketch the 
 pictures which had pleased him most. 
 
 I have met with a coachmaker, also a draughtsman 
 who, after seeing any vehicle pass by, however rapidly, 
 can draw and colour it in detail to the minutest orna- 
 ments, and who can do the same of any object which 
 he saw even forty years ago, if he had taken pains at 
 the time to learn it. I know a lady who, while in 
 Europe, memorised many galleries of pictures and 
 shop windows. FRANCIS GALTON, who has of all men 
 most thoroughly studied this subject, has completely 
 established the fact that there are in England hundreds 
 of accountants who carry out sums in arithmetic 
 entirely by visual representation. This power is 
 popularly admired as a rare gift ; in reality it is irre- 
 pressible in a few, involuntarily developed in others, 
 and is innate in us all. 
 
 The importance of developing this faculty has sug- 
 gested itself to many artists. Thus COUTURE advised 
 his pupils to let the eye rest for an instant on passers- 
 by in the street, and then attempt to draw them. I 
 have seen this put in practice with perfect success, 
 and have heard from others authentic experiences of 
 it. The various stages of the process were extremely 
 curious and interesting. At first only a hat, and 
 perhaps the general appearance of an arm, or a leg, 
 can be caught, but in a few days the expression of 
 the whole figure is seldom missed. No one who had 
 not practiced this, or seen it done, would believe how 
 rapidly the observation and memory are developed by 
 this kind of " flash photograph " drawing, or what an 
 air of vivacity and motion is imparted to the figures. 
 I recommend the practice of it specially to those who 
 
EYE-MEMORY. 189 
 
 intend to draw for the illustrated newspapers. They 
 are often obliged to make notes or hasty sketches of 
 moving masses of men, and they perforce acquire a 
 certain degree of eye-memory. But we need only 
 study the details of most of their pictures of crowds 
 to see that it is not highly developed with them. 
 
 While collecting facts on eye-memory, I wrote to 
 Dr. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES for information, and I 
 need not say that I was not disappointed, as I received 
 from him his work entitled " Mechanism in Thought and 
 Morals," in which I find that the subject of "pictured 
 thought," as a branch of conscious mental action, has 
 not escaped his attention. He has ingeniously illus- 
 trated it " by the panorama of their past lives, said by 
 people who have escaped from drowning to have flashed 
 before them." This actually happened to Dr. HOLMES 
 himself, as it did to my brother HENRY PERRY LELAND. 
 I also received from Dr. HOLMES the work on " Visions," 
 by Dr. EDWARD H. CLARKE, edited by himself. In 
 this book that which the author calls "the power of 
 the will to produce objective pseudopia" or to see that 
 which is not before the eyes, is treated almost ex- 
 haustively, as regards the physical explanation of the 
 faculty. " Sight," says Dr. CLARKE, " is not a function 
 of the eyes, but of the brain. There is a way by 
 which volition plays with its utmost energy upon the 
 angular gyrus, or some other centre, and drives its 
 machinery into action. If this can be accomplished, 
 vision is accomplished. When we consider that there 
 is no part of the body which cannot be affected some- 
 what by volition, it would be singular if the visual 
 ganglia should be the only ones withdrawn from the 
 influence and authority of the will." In illustration 
 
 
I9o PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 of the fact that the will can reproduce what the eye 
 has seen, Dr. CLARKE cites the case of a gentleman 
 who, being fond of statuary, succeeded, after a few 
 trials, in producing visions of statues, and even in 
 imagining new ones. This author has, in my judg- 
 ment, completely established the fact that every object 
 making an impression on the brain, or visual apparatus, 
 leaves an organic trace there, which may be reproduced 
 at an indefinite period afterwards by cerebral action. I 
 find in fact, in the " Visions " of Dr. CLARKE, as in the 
 " Mental Physiology " of Dr. WILLIAM B. CARPENTER, a 
 sound basis for, and a perfect confirmation of, all that 
 I claim as regards eye- memory. 
 
 GOETHE tells us, in his work Aus meinem Leben, 
 Wahrheit und Dichtung y that having one day seen 
 ideally a picture by VAN OSTADE, he cultivated the 
 faculty so as to afterwards produce at any time subjec- 
 tive copies of pictures and works of art. DE QUINCEY 
 recognised and distinctly describes the faculty of 
 recalling or creating visions at will. In fact, the 
 illustrations that this power exists are so numerous, 
 and the physiological explanations of it are so copious 
 and satisfactory, that it would be impossible to bring 
 them within the limits of the longest lecture. But I 
 have not been able to ascertain that any writer has 
 ever contemplated the deliberate cultivation of voli- 
 tional vision as an aid to every branch of intellectual 
 education and of art. I do not know that any one has 
 contemplated the possibility of its being introduced 
 into schools and taught in classes. I believe myself 
 that entire books will be thus memorised with little 
 effort, that all which the eye has seen the trained will 
 will revive, and that, far beyond all this, imagination 
 
EYE-MEMORY. i 9 r 
 
 aided by volition, will evoke from the mystic brain 
 cells, where they lie by millions upon millions asleep, 
 all manner of beautiful forms, and create from them 
 at will others more beautiful. Would not this be a 
 new life for every man and woman of culture ? Would 
 not, in such a life, much that is mean and much which 
 now degrades us vanish like mists before sunshine ? 
 Yet all this is just as physically possible as that 
 sounds and sights should be transmitted by electricity 
 and preserved ad infinitum. 
 
 But to return to the application of eye-memory to 
 art. When I was in St. Petersburg, Eussia, I found 
 that great attention was there paid, in the School of 
 Design, to free-hand drawing. The happiest results 
 were secured by telling the pupils to study a given 
 object for ten minutes, and then, the object being 
 removed, to draw it. Mr. JOHN SARTAIN has told me 
 that, in his youth, his teacher of drawing, the celebrated 
 VARLEY, would place the image or picture to be copied 
 in one room and tell the pupils to work in another, 
 allowing them to go from time to time to look at 
 it. I understand that the Eussian method has been 
 practised in some schools in Philadelphia. It cannot 
 be denied that when the model is always directly 
 before the pupil the latter seldom observes anything 
 carefully, nor does he study the relations of the details 
 of form, light, and shade, and colour, as he would when 
 memorising. I have come to the conclusion that it 
 requires full half an hour for most people to get by 
 heart or eye the simplest object in the world that is 
 to say, a billiard ball, with all its lights and shadows. 
 But when the artist is compelled to get the whota 
 object actually by heart, he studies the relations of the 
 
I 92 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 different qualities or details, arid develops in his mind 
 higher and much more vigorous powers of observation. 
 Thus trained, his eye sees more at the first glance, he 
 becomes self-reliant, he does not depend on the thou- 
 sand times repeated, half-observant, glance. 
 
 We have all heard of BLAKE, the artist, who saw 
 spectral delusions or imaginary phantoms so vividly 
 that he used to copy them. Once, when he was thus 
 painting CHAKLES THE FIRST, as he believed, from life, 
 for a friend, he stopped in his work. " Why do you 
 not go on ? " asked his friend. " Because WILLIAM 
 THE CONQUEROR has just stepped in the way, and before 
 him," answered BLAKE, very seriously. I will tell you 
 a story upon this story, out of my own experience. 
 Once, in London, after a dinner party, I was in our 
 host's library with a French gentleman, one of the 
 guests. Finding that he was evidently well informed 
 in art matters, and as there were several volumes of 
 BLAKE'S pictures on the table, I showed them to him. 
 He had never seen anything of BLAKE'S before, so I 
 told him what I could remember of that extraordinary 
 man, and how he used to paint from spectral delusions. 
 " But he must have been mad," said the French gentle- 
 man. " Not at all," I replied ; " he was almost a 
 genius en/in, monsieur, c'dtait un Dore manqud he 
 was almost a DOR!" The point of this remark was 
 not apparent to me till some time afterwards, when I 
 learned, to my astonishment, that it was to Monsieur 
 DOR himself that I had addressed it ! 
 
 Monsieur DOR is an artist of wonderful invention 
 and of great fertility, but I know of none in whom the 
 public have perceived so precisely what his limits are. 1 
 
 1 This was written while Don was yet living. 
 
EYE-MEMORY. 193 
 
 We know what he knows by heart, and what his 
 eye-memory has mastered, and when he is drawing 
 on the old stock figures. Had he cultivated the 
 faculty of visual memory in youth to perfection, he 
 would have avoided such mannerism as we observe. 
 For such culture would fill the mind with facts or 
 objects which would be in the highest degree sugges- 
 tive and inspiring. We have all found in our own 
 experiences that we remember certain scenes with 
 great vividness when certain persons or certain plea- 
 surable associations are connected with them. We 
 remember the brow of the hill, the amber sunset sky, 
 the foliage like dark bronze against it, because some 
 young lady, perhaps, caused us to remember it. Our 
 will was unconsciously exerted. This association of 
 scenes with persons and events has become part of 
 the stock-in-trade of the modern novelists. We all 
 know how a certain scene was indelibly branded in 
 the heroine's memory how, to the end of her days, 
 the ticking of the clock and the patterns in the carpet 
 all rose up whenever anything recalled "that awful 
 hour." Yet there is a basis for curious or valuable 
 observation in all this. We have in it a confirmation 
 of my assertion that there are causes which will 
 strengthen and develop to an unusual degree our 
 memory of objects. 
 
 I have said that the power of memory by sight may 
 be increased to a degree of which we have no conception, 
 and also that young people, as DE QUINCEY declares, 
 possess this power more than those advanced in life. 
 To prove this I will read to you a passage from 
 the life of the celebrated French conjurer, EGBERT 
 HOUDIN. It was this passage which first attracted 
 
 N 
 
I 9 4 PEACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 my attention to eye-memory, and caused me to reflect 
 on the indefinite degree to which it may be extended 
 in education, especially in that of artists. I must 
 premise that this famous juggler had invented a trick, 
 called Second Sight, which I saw performed by him 
 and his son in. Paris in 1848. He found that to 
 effect this it was necessary to cultivate not merely his 
 mental memory to an extraordinary extent, but to 
 remember things as they appeared. The trick con- 
 sisted effectively of getting by heart, or remembering, 
 the exact appearance of every object which might by 
 any possibility be brought by anybody to his exhibi- 
 tion. The son of HOUDIN, a boy, was blindfolded ; 
 the fat.her, in another part of the hall, looked at the 
 object, and his son promptly described it. There was, 
 of course, a method of secretly signalling from one to 
 the other ; this is sometimes effected by a telegraphic 
 wire in the floor, worked by the foot. 
 
 "I resolved," says EGBERT HOUDIN, "on making 
 some experiments with my son EMILE, and in order to 
 make my young assistant understand the nature of 
 the exercise we were going to learn I took a domino, 
 the 4 $ for instance, and laid it before him. Instead 
 of letting him count the points of the two numbers, I 
 requested him to tell me the total at once. 
 
 " ' Nine/ he said. 
 
 "Then I added another domino, the 4 3. 
 
 " ' That makes sixteen/ he said without any hesita- 
 tion. 
 
 " I stopped the first lesson here ; the next day we 
 succeeded in counting at a glance four dominoes ; the 
 day after, six ; and thus at length we were enabled to 
 give instantaneously the product of a dozen dominoes. 
 
EYE-MEMORY. 195 
 
 "This result obtained, we applied ourselves to a 
 far more difficult task, over which we spent a month. 
 My son and I passed rapidly before a toy-shop, or 
 any other displaying a variety of wares, and cast an 
 attentive glance upon it. A few steps further on we 
 drew paper and pencil from our pockets, and tried 
 which could describe the greatest number of objects 
 seen in passing. I must own that my son far excelled 
 me, for he would often write down forty objects, while 
 I could scarcely recall thirty. Often feeling vexed at 
 this defeat I would return to the shop and verify his 
 statement ; but he rarely made a mistake. 
 
 " My male readers," continues Monsieur HOUDIN, 
 " will certainly understand the possibility of this, but 
 they will recognise the difficulty. As for my lady 
 readers, I am convinced that they will see nothing 
 remarkable in it, for they daily perform far more 
 astounding feats. Thus, for instance, I can safely 
 assert that, one lady seeing another lady pass at full 
 speed in a carriage, will have had time to analyse her 
 toilette, from her bonnet to her shoes, and be able to 
 describe not only the fashion and quality of the stuffs, 
 but also say if the lace be real, or only machine-made. 
 I have known ladies to do this. This natural or 
 acquired faculty among ladies, but which my son and 
 I had only gained by constant practice, was of great 
 service in my performances ; for, while I was execut- 
 ing my tricks, I could see everything that passed 
 around ine, and thus prepare to foil any difficulties 
 presented me." 
 
 Having thus cultivated observation and memory, 
 the juggler and his son proceeded to render themselves 
 familiar with an incredible variety of small objects. 
 
i 9 6 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Conjecturing, as the result afterwards proved, that 
 they would have many curiosities or antiques, such as 
 old coins, arms, and jewellery, brought to them to 
 describe, they visited many museums. It is very 
 evident, not merely from HOUDIN'S own account, but 
 from what was practically shown in his public exhibi- 
 tions, that in a few months the father and son added 
 incredibly to their stores of knowledge or information, 
 retaining a vivid picture of every object which they 
 deliberately willed to remember. Having developed 
 the eye-memory by hard work up to such a point that 
 they could see a thing almost as clearly as if the 
 original object, or indeed whole rows of such objects, 
 were present, they found that the faculty, once well 
 acquired, kept itself in action with ordinary practice. 
 They now learned very readily the characters or letters 
 of many languages, such as Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, 
 Eussian, and Turkish, the names of all surgical instru- 
 ments, and of many other technical objects. Walking 
 through a library, they could recollect the appearance 
 of whole rows of books, with the titles on their backs. 
 There can be no question that EGBERT HOUDIN was 
 an unusually clever man, of great powers of observa- 
 tion and quickness, which had been greatly improved 
 by the practice of juggling. Yet, making every allow- 
 ance for his remarkable talent, I am all the more con- 
 vinced that his experiences and discoveries indicate 
 that the faculty of an indefinite development of 
 eye-memory exists in every one, especially in the 
 young, and that it will at some future day enter 
 largely into education, and form its physical basis. 
 Anybody can verify for himself the simple fact that 
 any object may be eye-memorised by special study. No 
 
OF THE 
 
 (UNIVERSITY, 
 
 197 
 
 casual observation, unaccompanied by the will to re- 
 member, will enable us to do so much as can be effected 
 by determined effort We may see a face a thousand 
 times, and yet in most cases we cannot recall it so 
 accurately for artistic purposes as if we had delibe- 
 rately studied it a dozen times with that object. But 
 it is especially to art students that I commend the 
 practice of it. When you are copying an object, it 
 makes a very great difference indeed whether you 
 look very carefully at the original, and into its every 
 condition, or merely glance, at and set down what you 
 half observe and half imagine. For it is a fact that 
 in the most accurate copying we draw largely upon 
 our imaginations. We are copying, let us say, a vase 
 or a book, and, having secured a general conception 
 of its proportions, we proceed by speculation or fancy 
 more than we are ourselves aware of. As I have 
 already said, when the model is directly before the 
 pupil, he does not generally study it carefully as a 
 whole, nor observe or memorise the proportions of 
 its different parts. He copies it simply part by part. 
 Now I would urge that the wonderful power of eye- 
 memory, or of recalling objects exactly as they appear, 
 should be deliberately cultivated, especially in the 
 young. I think that by practising as EGBERT HOUDIN 
 practised with his son, and by competing as they com- 
 peted, very remarkable results would very soon be 
 obtained. The pupils need not be taken about to 
 shop windows; shelves and tables at home, with 
 objects arranged on them, would answer the purpose 
 for primary lessons. 
 
 The next step, which goes beyond all that EGBERT 
 HOUDIN conceived, just as it transcends the ordinary 
 
I 9 8 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 object-teaching of the Kindergarten, is the photo- 
 graphing some one object, as, for instance, a statue, 
 so indelibly upon the eye and memory by the 
 exercise of close observation, will, and renewal in the 
 memory, that it can even serve as a visible model. 
 In children who cannot draw, the faculty may be 
 developed by examining them on maps and the 
 relative boundaries of States. This is often done 
 now, but when I was at school maps were indeed hung 
 before the scholars, and we were required to learn 
 them, yet it never entered into our teacher's head, or 
 into our own, that the whole map might have been 
 learned in less time by visual memory by looking at 
 and closing our eyes, and recalling at first the different 
 colours of the different States, and then their relative 
 position, and finally their shapes. The method by 
 which this process of getting, for instance, a map by 
 eye, and even the peculiar processes by which different 
 people will attempt it, are well described by Dr. 
 HASLAM (" Sound Mind "), who in turn is commented 
 on by Dr. A. L. WIGAN in his " Duality of Mind " 
 (pp. 313, 314). 
 
 But it would be well if children could all draw, 
 since drawing and memory are great mutual aids. I 
 quite agree with FROEBEL, the Kindergarten philo- 
 sopher, that it is highly important that a child should 
 acquire some facility in drawing even before he learns 
 to read and write, since the representation of actual 
 things should precede the representation of signs and 
 words. In connection with the subject of object- 
 teaching and drawing, EMILY SHIRREFF, the author of 
 the "Intellectual Education of Women," observes that 
 "it would be curious to inquire how much of the 
 
EYE-MEMORY. 199 
 
 loose thinking, the hazy perception of truth, which 
 characterise the majority of even the educated portion 
 of mankind, might be traced back to the absence of 
 any definite impressions made in childhood in connec- 
 tion with the instructions given to them. Outside 
 the schoolroom they acquire definite impressions, but 
 they are acquired at random, and may be wholly 
 wanting in accuracy." 
 
 The writers on the Kindergarten, and on object- 
 teaching in connection with elementary drawing, have 
 hit on a great truth in their endeavour to teach 
 children to form definite impressions. But I doubt 
 if any of them, or any one living, knows how inde- 
 finite all our memories of objects are compared to 
 what they might be. Object-teaching causes children 
 to learn the appearance, names, and qualities of things. 
 "And many persons," says Mrs. HORACE MANN, 
 "object to it because it is playing with things, and 
 the opposite of study." The cultivation of eye- 
 inemory must, however, be admitted by the greatest 
 enemy to all new ideas in education to combine all 
 the discipline of intense study with all that is useful 
 in object-teaching. It is the very opposite to any- 
 thing like loose thinking or vagueness. It calls for 
 the closest observation and the greatest exercise of 
 the memory conceivable. Therefore it is good dis- 
 cipline for the mind, therefore it should be a 
 legitimate branch of education. But be it observed 
 that this practice of the visual memory, while re- 
 quiring intense application and much practice, is not 
 disagreeable in the sense in which much study is 
 disagreeable. In fact it cannot be pursued with 
 profit an instant after it becomes wearying. As soon 
 
200 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 as you tire of it, then, in the words of WESTWOOD; 
 "the visions flee and the dreams depart." The 
 memory will only work of her own accord at this ; 
 she will only remain as a willing guest. Force her, 
 and she flies. 
 
 On the other hand, success in the practice of visual 
 memory is so encouraging that after we once realise 
 our progress the most strenuous effort becomes in fact 
 a voluntary pleasure. I conceive that for its cultiva- 
 tion classes should be formed, at which maps, pictures, 
 or any objects being shown for a minute, or for several 
 minutes, those assembled shall endeavour to impress 
 what is set forth on the memory. Now the difficulty 
 at the very outset will be that many of those present, 
 instead of literally getting the object ~by eye, and 
 making the exertion necessary in the beginning, will 
 perhaps unconsciously make up their minds at a glance 
 as to what the object is, and then in their description 
 or depicting make a clever enough superficial account. 
 These are the ones who, in drawing from a model, 
 look at it a thousand times, carelessly, and yet lose 
 half of what they had gathered in every glance, and 
 make it up by drawing as they think it ought to be 
 not as they have actually seen it. Strictly honest 
 work, and a desire to improve keenness of observation 
 and accuracy of memory will soon remedy this defect. 
 
 I attach great value to bold outline drawings, such 
 as are used in primary classes, as introductory subjects 
 lor such study. These, by their simplicity and the 
 striking contrast between white and black which they 
 present, make an impression which is easily retained 
 by an effort of the will. If this impression be recalled 
 frequently during a week, and occasionally revived by 
 
EYE-MEMORY. 201 
 
 study of the original, it will become permanent. Two 
 things are to be observed in connection with this first 
 study. Firstly, it is of the greatest importance that 
 it be accurately and correctly conceived, since every 
 error of method which you introduce into it will pro- 
 bably be repeated in the second trial, and grow in 
 strength with every successive effort. It is the first 
 notes. of the birdling which are almost unchangeable. 
 Secondly, that the more thoroughly it is effected the 
 easier will the next experiment be. It is not advis- 
 able that there should be any straining to learn the 
 object in a hurry. Your mind may possibly be 
 involuntarily distracted by some other cause. Your 
 physique may be slightly disorganised. You may be 
 constitutionally of the disposition which requires many 
 gentle and gradual repetitions to impress anything on 
 your memory. Hasten slowly. 
 
 Practice in anything makes perfect. From outline 
 drawings you may proceed to objects, from simple 
 objects to statues and the human figure. I have 
 spoken of people who can recall a piece of music, 
 who can literally see in the mind's eye every note, 
 and play from it. I have also mentioned the clergy- 
 man who learned his sermons by eye. I think that 
 this might be effected by beginning with a single 
 line, let us say a text or a proverb, very legibly 
 written in bold, thick letters, at least an inch in 
 length, and in learning them perfectly by eye, care 
 being taken that the imagination shall have no part 
 in rewriting them on the memory. The number of 
 lines may be increased and their size diminished as 
 the power of acquisition is developed. 
 
 We all know that, in some way, this power of 
 
202 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 recalling objects vividly is latent in us, , We read 
 familiar books in our dreams, we see the departed, 
 we recall past scenes in reveries, we sometimes imagine 
 faces and remember them after waking. In fevers and 
 in similar states of nervous excitement we think that 
 we see phantoms mingling with real objects. What 
 we thus create involuntarily, in an unhealthy con- 
 dition, we can also produce healthily, and subject 
 to the laws of reason, by voluntary action. In these 
 dreams, scenes are recalled by association. I have 
 already said that the awaking in our memory of every 
 detail of a scene connected with some startling inci- 
 dent is a fertile theme with novelists. I shall never 
 forget the wonderful, the magnificent sunset which 
 followed the burial of WASHINGTON IRVING. The 
 western sky, like a vast sea of golden fire, in which 
 were islands of a deeper crimson glow, as though 
 Heaven had thrown its glorious gates ajar to welcome 
 the ascending soul, will always be impressed on my 
 memory. I have doubtless in my time seen sunsets 
 as beautiful in the Far West on the prairies, on the 
 plains of Eussia, or in Egypt ; :but I cannot remember 
 any of them as I do that one on the Hudson. 
 
 It may perhaps be thought that as all of this is 
 so generally the result of involuntary action, there is 
 no connection to be established between it and the 
 will. Those who would understand this problem, so 
 iar as it has in all probability been solved, may read 
 what CARPENTER has said in his " Mental Physiology " of 
 primarily and secondarily automatic motion. What I 
 assert is that the will can stimulate involuntary or 
 automatic motion. Did it never happen to you that 
 you cannot recall a certain tune until you by an 
 
EYE-MEMORY. 203 
 
 exertion remembered the place where you heard it, 
 or the person who played it ? Sometimes, in order to 
 remember a certain remark, you must first recall the 
 time of year when you heard it, then the city in 
 which you were, then the house in which you dined, 
 and finally the person who was seated by you who 
 made the remark. All of these preliminary steps are 
 recalled by deliberate, voluntary action. It is not 
 necessary to enter into a metaphysical analysis of 
 theories of free will and causation. You will probably 
 admit that we can revive, in a more or less perfect 
 form, when we choose, that which we remember, and 
 that the vividness of these memories can be increased 
 by practice. 
 
 The practice of eye-memory stores the mind with 
 beautiful images, and increases our artistic sense. It 
 may be developed so as to place at our disposal gal- 
 leries of pictures and statues, scenes in the opera, 
 landscapes, or picturesque bits, the forms and faces of 
 friends, or, in fact, whatever we have seen. It may 
 be denied by many that such a power exists in us to 
 such a degree, but I venture to assert that, among all 
 who are present, there is probably not one who has 
 done his best to develop it. For there is no mental 
 faculty involving so much which is useful or curious 
 which has received so little attention. 
 
 I will now enter upon an abstruse and yet very 
 practical phase of eye-memory, which is also closely 
 analysed by CARPENTER and CLARKE. EGBERT HOUDIN, 
 in his autobiography, carefully explains that whilst 
 performing his Second Sight he always practised a 
 double consciousness. That is to say, while performing 
 his trick, he at the same time kept in mind the 
 
2o 4 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 objects which be had memorised. In fact, he lays 
 much greater stress upon this double or simultaneous 
 action of the mind than upon the extraordinary feat 
 of getting thousands of objects by heart. Every 
 juggler will understand this. Every juggler knows 
 what " working" means. It means, while substituting 
 an object, or effecting " hanky-panky " by manipulation 
 (which requires the shrewdest mental action), to divert 
 the attention of the audience at the same time in 
 another direction. Should he even tell you that at 
 exactly nine o'clock he would pick up a rabbit, with 
 his right hand, from behind a screen, and put it into 
 a hat before the audience you would not see him do 
 it. Because at that very instant he would raise his 
 left hand and snap his fingers in the air, or point to 
 something. If there were a thousand persons present, 
 every eye would be caught and drawn away by the 
 left hand, and during that instant the rabbit would be 
 taken out and put in the hat, and nobody present 
 would see it. To do this, the juggler must exert a 
 double action of the mind. The simplest form of this 
 is seen in the child's trick of rubbing one hand up 
 and down on the chest, while you pat your head with 
 the other. EGBERT HOUDIN illustrates this by telling 
 us that while obliged to study law in his youth, he, 
 while reading, used to keep tossing four balls in 
 the air. 
 
 Now there is certainly the same double action 
 of the mind while drawing. It requires thought to 
 observe the model or to form the ideal in the mind, 
 and it also requires thought to perform the action of 
 drawing. You cannot get over this by saying that 
 the drawing becomes merely mechanical. While I 
 
EYE-MEMORY. 205 
 
 have been writing this lecture I have thought of the 
 formation of every letter while I wrote. There are 
 people who are said to write mechanically, but I 
 cannot. Should I do so my writing would be 
 illegible, even to myself. You would say, perhaps, 
 that to do two things at once must detract something 
 from both. I find invariably that the more I think 
 about something else, the more carefully I write. 
 Ladies say that they can sew best while talking. I 
 have heard of an actress who was never so thrilling 
 in her tones, never so heartrending, as while embracing 
 her rival : she was at the same time pinching her. 
 This was also a double action of mind. There used 
 to be something of the same kind when I was at 
 college, among the young gentlemen who read novels 
 in chapel during sermon-time. Yet, on reflection, I 
 doubt if in this instance the mental action was exactly 
 balanced. 
 
 I have met in my life with two instances of 
 sculptors, both Frenchmen, who required but a single 
 glance at any man to be able to model a perfect 
 likeness of him. One of these artists, M. GARBIELLI, 
 once took an admirable and very expressive portrait 
 of JAMES GORDON BENNETT, whom he had seen only 
 once, as the original went by rapidly in a carriage. 
 A very curious instance of the length of time during 
 which a picture may remain accurately impressed on 
 the memory is shown in a feat performed by Mr. 
 JOHN SARTAIN, well known as one of the ablest 
 advancers of art in Philadelphia. Thirty-five years 
 ago, when the old Academy of Fine Arts in Chesnut 
 Street was burned, there perished in the fire a very 
 valuable picture by MURILLO, entitled " The Roman 
 
206 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Daughter." Very recently Mr. SARTAIN has drawn it 
 from memory. And Dr. ABERCROMBIE tells us that in 
 the Church of St. Peter, in Cologne, the altar-piece is 
 a fine picture by RUBENS. This was carried away by 
 the French in 1805, but a local painter made from 
 memory a copy which seems to be absolutely perfect. 
 The original has been restored, and the copy is pre- 
 served along with it, and even when rigidly compared 
 it is impossible to distinguish one from the other. 
 
 There is in Philadelphia a gentleman named JOHN 
 RYDER, a JESSUP student at the Academy of Natural 
 Sciences. I am told that he has the power of instan- 
 taneous observation, and of subsequently copying, to 
 a degree which far transcends anything I have as yet 
 heard of. Thus, having seen but for an instant any 
 of the rapidly moving animalcules in any medium 
 through a microscope, he will, produce a perfect like- 
 ness of it, admirably coloured and shaded. I am under 
 obligation to Mr. D. S. HOLMAN, the Actuary of the 
 Franklin Institute, for this curious and valuable 
 illustration of the advantages of eye-memory, And 
 since recording this instance I learn that Dr. JOSEPH 
 LEIDY, of Philadelphia, possesses the same power to 
 as great a degree. 
 
 One of the first physicians in Baltimore has 
 informed me that there is in that city, a patient of 
 his, a gentleman who possesses eye-memory to a degree 
 far transcending anything of the kind on record. He 
 can recall, it is said, visually, entire books which he 
 has read years ago, and remembers anything he reads 
 whenever he exerts the determination to do so at the 
 time of perusal. 
 
 I know personally a lady, Mrs. ELEANOR MEREDITH, 
 
EYE- MEMORY. 207 
 
 a teacher in Philadelphia, who at one time, in conse- 
 quence of illness, lost her mental memory. In order 
 to restore it, she practised getting poetry by heart, 
 beginning with a poem of LONGFELLOW'S' of about 300 
 lines. She could not learn it as she wished, but the 
 result of strenuous effort was its visual acquisition, 
 every line and mark becoming visible at will. After 
 a time the lady's original memory returned. This case 
 is curious, as indicating an absolute difference between 
 " mental " and visual memory. I have also met with 
 another lady teacher in the same city, who was induced 
 to turn her attention to art by finding herself possessed, 
 to a remarkable extent, of eye-memory. A certain 
 landscape, which she could recall at will, delighted her 
 so much that she determined to draw it. It was her 
 first effort, and after many trials she succeeded in pro- 
 ducing a tolerably good picture. There is a waiter in 
 New York who is much employed at balls to superin- 
 tend the guarda rola. He can identify the owners 
 of five hundred hats in one evening. He does this 
 by associating the face of the wearer with his hat and 
 recalling it by eye-memory. " I put the face under 
 the hat, and then I know whose hat it is," he says. I 
 know a hotel clerk who remembers with an accuracy 
 which is literally marvellous every trunk which comes 
 to the hotel. There are in America many hotel-keepers 
 who, like the late Mr, WILLAHD, rival MITHRIDATES in 
 their memory of faces. 
 
 I learn that in the Art School of Boston the prac- 
 tice of drawing with the model removed, as at St. 
 Petersburg, is followed with happy results. I think 
 that, after what I have said on this subject, that no 
 
 one who will carefully examine it can jfcubt thatthe 
 
 ^.SE L1BR^\ 
 
 OF THE \, 
 
 .UNIVERSITY) 
 
208 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 application of eye-memory to free-hand drawing can 
 have anything but happy results. It must be re- 
 membered, however, that it requires patience. The 
 faculty is, so to speak, not only dulled and blunted in 
 us by never having been used, but is changed by having 
 been vigorously developed in other directions. There- 
 fore I trust those who experiment on it will persevere, 
 and not be discouraged because the experiments of a 
 few days do not yield marvellous results. 
 
 There is a faculty so closely allied to eye-memory 
 as to be effectively identical with it. This is quick 
 comprehensiveness, or rapidity of sight with intelli- 
 gence. It is the art of seeing and understanding 
 objects completely, even when in motion, in less time 
 than the great majority of people take in so doing. 
 Educationally its practice would form the next step 
 beyond that of eye-memory. It has also to a degree 
 been applied in object teaching. Eye-memory stores 
 the memory with phenomena ; quick comprehensive- 
 ness gives rapidity of perception and of thought. For 
 merely mechanical rapidity of observation, induced by 
 mechanical methods, will awaken mental activity at 
 last, even in very ^dull minds. I regret to say that 
 almost the only people who appear to thoroughly 
 cultivate this invaluable accomplishment are thieves 
 and detectives. It is usual, in training young sneak 
 thieves, for the preceptor, holding a variety of small 
 objects in one hand, to open and close the hand 
 rapidly, and to require his pupils to ascertain at a 
 glance what he holds. They rapidly attain an amazing 
 cleverness and quickness in such perception. A boy 
 thus trained is sent out ostensibly to beg. He obtains 
 admission to a kitchen ; he may get. a glimpse of a 
 
EYE-MEMORY. 209 
 
 drawing-room, and with that glimpse he takes in 
 everything, remembers everything, and returning re- 
 ports what he has seen. There are other people, not 
 thieves, who develop the same faculty in observing 
 what is none of their business. They pry and peer 
 about here and there, and go home with what they 
 have got to gossip it. This power of unusual quick- 
 ness of perception, seldom acquired by honourable 
 practices, is generally transmitted to children. It 
 becomes hereditary, and may then be honourably 
 applied. I have had much experience of gypsies, and 
 have observed among them a great development of 
 this faculty. Those petty swindlers who go into 
 shops and practice what is called ringing the changes, 
 or cheating in making change, also develop remarkable 
 quickness of perception. Italians are supposed to 
 acquire it by playing morra. Civilisation and ordinary 
 education rather repress this faculty than develop it. 
 It is to be regretted that an accomplishment which 
 is capable of contributing so much to our general in- 
 telligence, and to the exercise of all our intellectual 
 faculties, should really be deliberately cultivated chiefly 
 by the vicious and the mean. 1 
 
 On the other hand, the detectives who hunt these 
 foxes are obliged to become almost as clever. Many 
 years ago Chief Marshal STEVENS, of New York, told 
 
 1 There is a class of criminals in Germany called chcdfen, who steal 
 gold coins while pretending to purchase them. They develop powers 
 of quick perception and of adroit rapid fingering which seem miraculous. 
 One will literally as quick as a wink convey ten napoleons into the 
 palm of his hand by its fingers, almost under the eye of the shopman, 
 or during the second in which his glance is diverted. The power 
 is acquired by practice from childhood. (Die Jiidischen Gauner in 
 Dcutschland, Berlin, 1848, von A. F. Tkidc.) 
 
 O 
 
210 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 me that he wished to ascertain the character of a man 
 who occupied a certain room which was always kept 
 carefully closed against all intruders. One day he 
 knocked, and the door was opened a few inches for 
 an instant. During that instant his keen eye took 
 in all the contents of the room. He saw that it was 
 hung all round with suits of clothes of a very varied 
 description ; he knew at once that they were used for 
 disguise, and observed that some of these disguises 
 were the same as those which had been worn by the 
 man whom he " wanted." One of the most intelligent 
 men whom I have ever known is EGBERT WALKER, 
 Inspector of Police in London. He says that most 
 people, as they walk along a street, look habitually 
 chiefly to the right hand, and that newly enlisted 
 policemen are trained to overcome this habit and look 
 to both sides, so as to become generally observant. 
 
 I have spoken of the fact that children receive and 
 retain visual impressions better than grown people. 
 I certainly should not omit to state that Mr. FRANCIS 
 GALTON has remarked that women are endowed with 
 this faculty to a much greater degree than men. This 
 great observer has remarked, in Nature, that women 
 are not only better gifted than men with what he 
 calls " mental imagery," but that they surpass us in 
 the readiness with which they appreciate the scope 
 and sense of inquiry into it. He says : " I have been 
 astonished to find how superior women usually are to 
 men in the vividness of their mental imagery, and in 
 their powers of introspection. Though I have admirable 
 returns from many men, I have frequently found 
 others, even of the highest general ability, quite unable 
 for some time to take in the meaning of such questions 
 
EYE-MEMORY. 211 
 
 as these : c Think of some definite object, say your 
 breakfast table, as you sat down to it this morning, 
 and consider carefully the picture that rises before 
 your mind's eye. Is the image dim or fairly clear ? 
 Is its brightness comparable to that of the actual 
 scene ? Are the objects sharply defined ? Are the 
 colours quite distinct and natural ? ' &c. On the 
 other hand, I find the attention of women, especially 
 women of ability, to be instantly aroused by these 
 inquiries. They eagerly and carefully address them- 
 selves to consider their modes of thought, they put 
 pertinent questions, they suggest tests, they express 
 themselves in well-weighed language and with happy 
 turns of expression, and they are evidently masters 
 of the art of introspection. I do not find any par- 
 ticular tendency to exaggeration in this matter either 
 among women or men ; the only difference I have ob- 
 served between them is that the former usually show 
 an unexpected amount of intelligence, while many of 
 the latter are as unexpectedly obtuse. The mental 
 difference between the two sexes seems wider in the 
 vividness of their mental imagery and the power of 
 introspecting it than in respect to any other combina- 
 tion of mental faculties of which I can think." 
 
 After such a compliment from such a man it would 
 be indeed ungrateful should the ladies who may meet 
 with these remarks neglect the subject. 
 
 As summary and conclusion, I would remark that 
 the development of eye-memory, to a greater or less 
 extent, is within the power of almost everybody. No 
 accomplishment affords such lasting pleasure, and it 
 costs nothing. It can be exercised at any odd time 
 without any preparation. In acquiring it stick to one 
 
2i2 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 subject until you can recall every detail of its shape 
 and colour. Kemember that with young people the 
 development of quick observation in a merely mechanical 
 manner leads invariably to widely varied intellectual 
 quickness of perception. A quick eye leads to a 
 quick mind, and a quick eye may be developed by 
 training. And I trust that, from what I have said, 
 you will agree with me that eye-memory, though it is 
 as yet little studied, is destined to exert, at no distant 
 day, a great influence on art and on education. 
 
 Since the foregoing lecture was written I have 
 collected many additional instances of eye-memory. 
 Its occurrence is so frequent that I venture to say 
 that by proper investigation it may be found to exist 
 in one of every ten or twelve persons. Many exercise 
 it unconsciously. It is very common among musicians. 
 One lady tells me that she invariably and involuntarily 
 learns her music by eye-memory, which she gradually 
 displaces by a directer and more sympathetic method. 
 Of this I am certain, that the faculty is too common 
 to be regarded as a very exceptional phenomenon. 
 The following extract from a lady who is highly gifted 
 both as an artist and scholarly writer illustrates what 
 I have said : 
 
 " BUSORAH, EL BEAR, ALGIERS, 
 "ijth January 1881. 
 
 "I received your lecture on eye-memory. Mrs. 
 
 has set to work to teach her little boy on your plan, and 
 she thinks he is very quick in learning by it. I believe 
 that all artists must have more or less of the faculty of 
 taking stock of objects at a glance. I remember going in 
 one season to the private view of twelve studios, and as my 
 friends declared it was quite impossible for me to remember 
 distinctly so many pictures, I made afterwards a pen and 
 
EYE-MEMORY. 213 
 
 ink drawing of one picture from each studio. I hunted up 
 those little sketches when I read your paper, and found that, 
 feeble as they were, they brought the whole vividly before 
 me again. Truly half the world never see anything, and if 
 they could be induced to really use their eyes, their lives 
 would become happier as well as more useful." 
 
 I quite agree with my friend that if people could be 
 induced to use their eyes more they would be happier. 
 Occupation is the secret of half our happiness, and in 
 the exercise of eye-memory there is a means of curious 
 occupation ever open to every one without expense. 
 Of its close connection with quickness of perception 
 I need hardly speak, nor how it must draw out and 
 support memory in connection with quickness, or how 
 it would aid art or hand-work. One sense is not more 
 nearly allied to another than are all these elements of 
 education. 
 
 In many relations eye-memory belongs as much to 
 quickness of perception as to the creating memory. I 
 have therefore given it a place by itself. In conclusion, 
 I would beg those who are interested in eye-memory, 
 firstly to read what has been written on the subject 
 by FRANCIS GALTON, and again, whenever opportunity 
 occurs, in a society of cultivated people, to introduce 
 it. The chances are nine to ten that nearly all who 
 are present will recall one or more instances of it. 
 This I have tested many times. 
 
part B. 
 
 ON TAKING AN INTEREST. 
 
 WE have all of us met with many men and more 
 women, who, to explain their ignorance of any branch 
 of culture, or their indifference to it, declare in the 
 most innocent manner that they "take no interest in 
 it." This want of interest, as they intimate and believe, 
 is a barrier put up by Nature between themselves and 
 certain fields of knowledge, which barrier it were waste 
 time to beat down. It cannot be denied that there 
 are thousands, even among those whose education and 
 associations should have given them common-sense, 
 who hold the easy faith that, unless " gifted " with a 
 genius for art, anybody is excusable for not drawing; 
 that without a Pentecostal gift of tongues it is needless 
 to study languages ; and finally, that without an " innate 
 interest" it is sensible and proper enough not to care 
 for anything except dress, domestic details, dissipation, 
 and doing as other people do. For it is to be remarked 
 that these people who are so kind to their own short- 
 comings are all the more exacting within their own 
 sphere of knowledge and accomplishment. I have 
 heard of such a person asking a kindred spirit, "Do 
 you like poetry ? " " Yes." " What kind of poetry ? " 
 "Well, most kinds, except blank verse." "Now, I 
 differ from you. My tastes are more serious. I like 
 
ABSOLUTE INTEREST. 215 
 
 blank verse best, and not the sing-song kinds." With 
 people of such minds to like or not like poetry is quite 
 the same as liking or not liking olives or tomatoes. 
 It is a question de gustibus, and merely an accidental 
 matter of taste. They have a general impression that 
 blank verse is heavier than lyrical poetry in fact, more 
 wearisome or disagreeable; and therefore more allied to 
 " goodness." And as every sect has its extremists, so 
 in Anglo-Saxony, especially in the western branch, 
 there are some whose instincts lead them to feel, if not 
 express, the opinion that absolute interest in its truest 
 sense in anything is not altogether commendable. For 
 it is allied to liking, to pleasure, to the agreeable, and 
 it is well known to them that whatever is nice must 
 be naughty if not nasty. In all this the saints and 
 sinners of Philistia in fact agree. From learning 
 lessons up to saving souls there are to be neither royal 
 roads nor primrose paths. I once heard a preacher of 
 this principle declare that we must " agonise" if we 
 would see God. For there are men who have looked 
 so long upon a cruel past that they give no glance 
 towards a tender future, and have heard per aspera ad 
 astra so often that they cannot think it right to get 
 the stars without the stripes. 
 
 Now if there were but a few people with such pro- 
 clivities it would be of little law to any one. But in 
 fact they are not few they are about us by thousands, 
 they influence the press, they control our schools, and 
 are felt in all our popular culture. They may not 
 recognise themselves in the picture which I have drawn, 
 but their works betray them. They may not be bigots, 
 they may be liberal unto unbelief, but they agree in 
 this, that they live in little limits, that they do not 
 
2I 6 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 regard taking as great an interest as possible in all 
 things as a duty, and that they would stint the whole 
 world if they could to their own range of thought and 
 knowledge. 
 
 Now there is a great truth beginning to dawn on the 
 world, which is, that the easier and pleasanter education 
 is, the more the pupil will learn and become. We have 
 lost out of our language, more's the pity, the Saxon 
 weordan, but what a Latin flood has washed away a 
 German wind may blow back again. There is no boy 
 born who may not become all that is becoming and 
 worth himself into all that is worthy if he can only be 
 taught betimes to take an interest in what is truly 
 interesting. Our whole present system of education 
 bears the traces of bygone barbarism, of asceticism, 
 Pharisaism, and cruelty. SOLOMON may have meant 
 what he said when he declared that to spare the rod 
 would be to spoil the child. It is possible that by sucli 
 means he kept his stupendous harem in order. At the 
 present day no one would take a Mormon, even though 
 he had written a whole Proverbial Philosophy, as an 
 authority in education. It may be remarked by the 
 way that there is no country on earth where the chil- 
 dren are more freely thrashed than in Utah, and none 
 where they are so intolerably insolent, vulgar, and ill- 
 bred. 
 
 If we look into it, we find that there are many 
 teachers and others who no more believe that study 
 can be made attractive than work. They can remember 
 that ADAM was cursed to work ; they do not reflect 
 how much worse his lot would have been had he been 
 cursed to be idle. " Allah ! " exclaims the wealthy 
 Pasha in the Oriental story, " would that I had something 
 
WORK AND PLAY. 217 
 
 to do!" "0 Allah!" exclaims, it is true, at the same 
 time, an overworked slave, " would that I had nothing 
 to do ! " We assume too much that all work must 
 needs be overwork, and much that is in our popular 
 education makes it so. Between extremes, work is to 
 a healthy and clever mind an instinctive desire. It is 
 only when it is compulsory that we dislike it. The 
 reader may have heard of the men who found it very 
 hard to dig potatoes all day, but who did not mind 
 playing at digging a cellar by moonlight. It has been 
 observed by some philosopher that a boy can draw two 
 hundred pounds' weight of other boys farther and faster 
 than he can fifty pounds of coal. The merely sporting 
 man who is simply a case of suspended intellect, or 
 a grown-up boy, will play at coachman every day for 
 months, when to be brought down to the road in earnest 
 would crush him. Now work would lose its most 
 repulsive features if we were not really urged by all 
 authority, especially the social, to regard it as a curse 
 and as vulgar. And it may be cheerfully conceded 
 that while work was merely mechanical or brainless, 
 and possibly performed, as in Aryan India, solely by 
 subordinate races, caste must have arisen. Science and 
 art are little by little identifying all labour with 
 culture, thereby robbing it of the repulsiveness which 
 it was the chief aim of that arch-snob and Philistine 
 Satan to bring about. When this is clearly understood 
 it will also be admitted that education may also be as 
 attractive as it was once terrible. What is common to 
 the reform of both abuses is to teach men and children 
 to take an interest in what they do. He who takes a 
 real interest in his work is never weary ; the boy who 
 loves his book is always at play. 
 
2i 8 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 I must admit that in this question between the curse 
 and the attractiveness of labour, as in that of interest, 
 I have chanced upon a vast problem which I cannot 
 here fully investigate. In both cases it reduces itself 
 to conservatism and progress. Wisdom bids the con- 
 servative advance, and the progressionist to take no 
 rash step forward. But I believe I may assume that 
 it is now generally granted by the wisest and most 
 experienced in education, that it is possible to 
 make school attractive, and that the principle of 
 this is to induce the pupils to take an interest in their 
 studies. 
 
 FOUKIEE, did great harm to the cause of labour by 
 teaching that it could be based on la gaitte frangaise 
 merriment and monkey-play. Mr. LONGFELLOW and 
 many with him have made still more mischief by 
 making its animus a grim and joyless determination to 
 surpass all rivals, even though success should lead to 
 nothing but a miserable solitary death. It is not that 
 the work in itself shall be pleasant or its aims useful, 
 according to the " excelsior " philosophy, but that he who 
 is in it shall surpass all rivals or "go ahead." And 
 there are many among the meaner sort, especially in 
 New England, to whom this phase of vanity strongly 
 appeals. I once knew a young man who was greatly 
 admired among his friends as being very enterprising 
 and ambitious, and who was beyond question very con- 
 ceited. I was talking German with a German in his 
 presence, when he expressed an earnest wish that he 
 could do the same. Whereupon I assured him that 
 with will he could easily learn it, and that I would 
 gladly tell him how to do so. " Oh ! " he replied 
 hastily, as if he feared I thought he meant to pay me a 
 
"EXCELSIOR" PHILOSOPHY. 219 
 
 compliment, "you don't understand me. I wouldn't 
 give a snap to know German. It is only that it always 
 makes me ' mad ' to have anybody know anything that 
 I don't, or to hear one talk what I can't." 
 
 Work can never in the world be mere amusement or 
 pastime. He who works, though he be a child, should 
 feel that there is a purpose in his work. When boys 
 two hundred years ago were made to talk Latin to one 
 another, they realised at once to what it led. When 
 a youth is taught not merely to draw, but to apply that 
 drawing to industrial art, he feels its practical use. 
 Still less can work or study be based on the principle 
 of competition, or that of " excelsior." This is even more 
 injurious than the insane idea of making it " amusing." 
 It induces ten or perhaps twenty per cent, in a college 
 class to study hard, but discourages the rest. Why 
 should it not ? Parents with few exceptions seriously 
 hope or expect their sons to be among the very first, 
 but the sons soon find that there are others cleverer and 
 as resolute as themselves. There are parents who exact 
 of boys of very moderate ability that their remaining 
 at college must depend on being " first honour man," or 
 near it. Among the vulgar whose motto is " excelsior," 
 and who never think of travelling wisely along life's 
 road, but simply of racing on it, more or less cleverness 
 in children goes for nothing. "They have only to 
 work a little harder to beat anybody and everybody." 
 In the little world of school or college the same false 
 ideas prevail, and the same false standard of study is 
 adopted. Caste of a kind is as strong in such com- 
 munities as in India. The studies in themselves are 
 nothing to excel in them is everything. Teachers 
 tell us that whether a youth be "crammed" or not, he 
 
220 PKACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 cannot be " first," unless he has thought, but " coaches " 
 and crammers know far better. 1 
 
 It will be long, however, before professors will advocate 
 the abolition of competition. They have gone on so 
 long in the old way that they cannot easily learn a 
 new one. And it cannot be denied, and I do not mean 
 to deny, that to carry out the principles of improving 
 the memory, developing quickness of perception, and 
 awakening interest in studies, will require clever and 
 earnest teachers. If half the wisdom which is wasted 
 in America or even in England on petty personal 
 politics were resolved into reform of education, it would 
 be better for us in every way. Since the vast majority 
 of men in the United States have at present actually 
 no more to do with appointing their rulers than have 
 the serfs in Eussia, since there are so few voters who 
 have any part in governing beyond paying taxes, why 
 do they not cease to take such an engrossing interest 
 in what their lords and ringmasters or <c bosses " only 
 can control, and apply themselves to advancing culture ? 
 But as the commonalty in England are absorbed in all 
 the life of the aristocracy, into whose charmed circles 
 they cannot venture, so the American is taken up with 
 the interests of the political aristocracy, of professional 
 office-seekers, whom he admires because, being in a 
 minority, they rule him. It is incident to a certain stage 
 of social development to take more real interest in one's 
 
 1 Several articles have appeared of late on university cramming ; 
 notably one in the St. James's Gazette, about October I, 1887, which, if 
 carefully considered, should convince every one of the absurdity of en- 
 deavouring to stimulate study by competition. It is not in rewarding 
 youths for passing crammed examinations that education should consist, 
 but in awakening in them a sincere interest in their studies. Where 
 this is not done, either the teacher or the pupil had better be at some 
 other employment. 
 
AWAKENING 
 
 " betters," or cleverers, or " wealthiers " than in one's 
 own welfare. As yet with most men there is more 
 sympathetic admiration for one who has built himself 
 up at their expense, or even robbed them outright, than 
 for one who has sacrificed life arid fortune for them. 
 This indicates the feudal state of society, and it is 
 incident to all men who are at a certain inferior degree 
 of development, whether they live in a republic or a 
 monarchy. Wherever a minority rules by any other 
 than moral superiority, there is serfdom. And wherever 
 mere competition, personal ambition, and power are the 
 aims of life, and "excelsior" its motto, there will be a 
 want of morality. You cannot make a government 
 with a name. 
 
 Before an apprentice can work well he must have 
 good tools, and be taught how to use them. He cannot 
 work with ease or pleasure until then. This is the fir t 
 step towards interest. I have elsewhere shown, as I 
 hope, that grounding a good memory and developing 
 quickness of perception make labour lighter. With 
 these the practice of eye-memory or visual represen- 
 tation will go far to bring forth latent intellectual power 
 of every kind. Were all this effected properly with a 
 boy of average intelligence, interest, the greatest stimu- 
 lant to study, would almost follow of its own accord. 
 But it is not study of books, or mere memory, or 
 erudition, acquired at the expense of more practical 
 qualities, which would be awakened by such education. 
 With all this should come hand-work or art. All of 
 this lies within the scope of a common-school education, 
 if the teacher be but capable. The average capacity 
 of youth is little understood, and is generally under- 
 rated, because most people set its standard by them- 
 
222 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 selves. They know that as they were educated they 
 did their best, more or less, and are sure that others 
 could have done no more. That their radical mental 
 powers, or the very mind itself, could have been re- 
 created, never occurs to them. No man likes to think 
 that he might have had a far better memory, far 
 greater quickness of perception, the power of visual 
 representation, or more sense, because he feels that he 
 would not then have been himself. Nor would he have 
 been really what he now is, any more than if he had 
 had a different father or mother. It is bitter to reflect 
 on the better " might have been," and therefore we do 
 not think on it. 
 
 Yet it is true beyond all question that there have been 
 teachers who possessed to a wonderful degree the art of 
 developing genius. From their schools great men have 
 gone forth by scores, while in the same country and at 
 the same time those who became distinguished under 
 conceited pedants were few and far between. These 
 teachers who made clever scholars were veritable 
 creators of souls. Their art consisted in inspiring in 
 their pupils an interest not only in their studies, but in 
 all that interested themselves. They awoke ambition, 
 and made it clearer to the scholar what he might do in 
 life, or what become. 
 
 As interest in study or in anything depends greatly 
 on the kind of mind possessed by the teacher, I will set 
 forth several types of such men, as I have heard them 
 described or observed them. 
 
 One was a man advanced in life, who had all the 
 imgeniality and formal vanity which characterised a 
 certain class of New England country clergymen in the 
 last generation. " Turveydrop " was not more continually 
 
AN INDIFFERENT TEACHER. 223 
 
 self-conscious of his deportment than was this venerable 
 but vain man, who, having been unwisely admired for 
 his affected dignity or good looks when younger, could 
 never forge't it. I cannot recall that of the two un- 
 happy years when I was under him I ever saw him 
 smile pleasantly or heard him speak kindly or familiarly 
 to a single boy. Punishment was his only means to 
 secure industry. One boy seemed to be individually 
 as indifferent to him as another ; out of school all were 
 of as little interest to him as so many flies. I never 
 shall forget the manner in which he put me down once 
 when I dared to ask him a question not connected witli 
 my studies. I had been under another schoolmaster 
 who cheerfully conversed with his boys on any subject. 
 I had been but a day or two with the new teacher, 
 when, in consequence of reading SOUTHEY'S poem, I 
 ventured to ask him who was CORNELIUS AGKIPPA. 
 He looked at me as if I had insulted him, and replying 
 in the coldest manner, " a learned man," turned to his 
 papers. With all his pedantry he was a very indifferent 
 teacher, and he certainly possessed to perfection the 
 wretched art of making every association connected 
 with schooling or with himself detestable. 
 
 Another teacher had unfortunately certain defects 
 as an instructor of which no man could be more aware 
 than he was. His early education wanted thoroughness, 
 and he did not like the monotony of school life. His 
 after-experiences as editor and business traveller to the 
 tropics suited him much better. He had been induced 
 to take a large school under representations that he 
 would find it a profitable and pleasant occupation, 
 and he had been disappointed. But he was a man 
 who, with but little improvement, would have made a 
 
224. PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 perfect teacher, for he possessed the art of making his 
 scholars take an interest in things without the range 
 of their studies as well as within them. What we 
 did not understand he explained with pleasure. Out 
 of school he was friendly and familiar. I can well 
 remember how, when we met him at an old book- 
 stand he being, by the way, a great haunter of such 
 places he initiated our first knowledge of Elzevirs 
 and Alduses. It is remarkable that, though he kept 
 school but a few years, many of his pupils became in 
 after-life noted men a fact of which he was very 
 proud. He had in fact so many scholars who turned 
 out " characters," that it was probably due in a great 
 measure to his influence. 
 
 When a teacher has at one time or another awakened 
 more or less interest in fifty subjects in a boy, it may 
 be assumed that as those subjects turn up in life the 
 boy or man will regard them as acquaintances, and 
 therein lies the beginning of knowledge. Interest is 
 that " better acquaintanceship " to which boon com- 
 panions drink when they first meet. Its secret lies in 
 the pride which all feel in knowledge. We may con- 
 verse with a man on any subject, and he may assure 
 you he knows nothing about it, and takes no interest in 
 it. But if we have given him any information on it, 
 and he remembers it, he will be very glad to display it ; 
 and if he does so with success, he will probably carry it 
 further, and end by avowing a great love for it, and 
 intimating that he has a genius for that very thing. In 
 this the boy is the father of the man. A sure way to 
 persuade people, young or old, to take up any art or study 
 with interest is to get just enough of it into their heads 
 to induce them to talk about it, or explain it to the 
 
REWARDS. 225 
 
 more ignorant. To adroitly induce a preliminary 
 acquaintance with a subject or attract the attention is 
 therefore an important element in the art of inducing 
 interest. 
 
 There are a great many people who declare that it is 
 not in them to learn any art or language, or to take any 
 interest in culture, who would however acquire it all 
 without delay if a large fortune awaited their passing 
 an examination on it. A London physician once said 
 to me that a legacy of a hundred thousand pounds 
 would at once cure most of his patients. It is not in 
 the power of the teacher or of society to awaken ambition 
 by such rewards, but the mere admission of the fact 
 that there is in most or all a power to learn which 
 miyht be drawn out is a tower of strength to all who 
 hold the affirmative in this question. Eeward in some 
 form is a great aid to interest not as a premium for 
 competition, but as a 1 condition of learning. I once 
 went to a school in which on Saturdays those who had 
 taken the highest mark during the week for studies 
 were allowed the first choice of certain minerals. This 
 was all very well so far as awakening an interest in 
 mineralogy went, but it was* soon found that the 
 same boys continually took the prizes, so the majority 
 would not even wait to receive their less valuable 
 specimens. 
 
 At another school near Boston, and in an exceptional 
 winter, when the thermometer was very far below zero, 
 the boy who got up first in the morning received an 
 apple. The result was that to contend for the apple 
 was regarded as a reproach, and the majority remained 
 abed much later than they would otherwise have done. 
 The principal of this school was a kind-hearted, easy- 
 
226 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 going old gentleman, who having failed as a merchant, 
 yet having many friends, and being unqualified for 
 anything else, was set up as a schoolmaster on the 
 principle of the inutile ficus of HORACE the bit of 
 timber being fit for nothing else, they made a god of 
 it, " even a graven image." This graven image of whom 
 I speak might have acted wisely had he given apples 
 to all who were down before eight o'clock, but there 
 was in him a feeble or silly vein of eccentricity which 
 inspired him to mismanage his boys morally in many 
 ways. Having altogether nearly a hundred pupils, 
 many of them from sixteen to twenty years of age, he 
 adopted for them all a petty goody-goody system which 
 would have suited an infant school, but which developed 
 no manliness, no vigour, and no interest. There was 
 no cruelty or unkindness whatever in his rule, but 
 there was nothing in his teaching tending to awaken 
 interest or to make scholars, or anything else. He was 
 not learned, and his school was carried on by hired 
 assistants. The studies were conducted in that shift- 
 less, aimless way which too generally characterises the 
 teaching of those who have taken up as a trade a calling 
 for which they have no qualification and have had no 
 training. As a reward for good conduct, or as a favour, 
 the boys were allowed to undertake different kinds of 
 menial, ungentlemanly, or dirty work, a la Squeers, for 
 which they received from two to three cents (half- 
 pence) an hour. As this was in its time perhaps the 
 first school in New England, both as to expense and 
 respectability, it has always seemed to me that this 
 tendency to train boys as if their future life was to 
 be that of under-servants was as great a mistake as 
 fagging in England. It withdrew their minds from 
 
PRIVATE SCHOOLS. 227 
 
 interest both in books and healthful play. As regards 
 the latter, or physical culture in any form, it was con- 
 sidered as a great indulgence of a necessary evil. To 
 prevent it as much as possible, all boys having bad 
 marks were prohibited from play or exercise of any kind 
 or even taking a walk, it being usual to send offenders 
 to bed in the day-time, during play-hours. But at the 
 time of which I speak the idea that physical exercise 
 was a duty had no more entered the heads of parents or 
 teachers than that play was not in some way wicked, or 
 that study could be anything but disagreeable. 
 
 I am confident that examination of the subject can- 
 not fail to convince the reader of the great disadvantage 
 of the private school when conducted in an irresponsible 
 manner and as a mere business. When the teacher 
 regards his calling as something worse than what he 
 might have had or would have, he is to be respected as 
 the Western preacher was who always thought it would 
 have paid better if he had gone into the clock business. 
 There is no profession in which a man can exert so 
 much influence for good as in teaching and training, 
 and he whose heart is not in it should leave it at once. 
 If we were awake to our duties, the teacher would be 
 regarded as far more valuable to the community than 
 the military man or politician. It is a melancholy 
 sight in reviewing the lives of American professional 
 politicians to read that so many of them have " risen " 
 from keeping school to being lawyers, and from law to 
 the Legislature! This ascent seems like that of the 
 dough of Paulding's Dutch baker, which rose down- 
 ward. 
 
 I retain vivid and very numerous feelings and 
 memories of my school-days. Owing to certain causes 
 
228 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 and influences which I can accurately recall and explain, 
 I became at a very early age a great reader. One of 
 my teachers l was in the habit of reading passages from 
 SPENSER'S Faerie Queene to the boys, and of describing 
 scenes which he did not read. So before I was ten 
 years old I borrowed the book and read it all. I can 
 remember that looking out the hard words in the 
 glossary was rather a pleasure. I think that some of 
 the other boys did the same. What I remember very 
 distinctly and apropos of this reading, which was in 
 extent and character far beyond my age, as such reading 
 is generally rated, was that once when I was compli- 
 mented on it, I reflected that most of my companions 
 could and would have done as much or more if they had 
 only been directed that way, and that I myself could 
 have exerted that influence. I think that BENJAMIN 
 WEST said in his Life, that when his boyish efforts in 
 art first began to attract attention in his rural circle, 
 many other boys began to draw and paint also, and 
 that some of them were cleverer than himself. 
 Now the teacher of whom I spoke, though he had 
 several great disqualifications, at least knew how to 
 make his pupils take a remarkable interest in all such 
 books as interested himself. Of the four of whom I 
 have given descriptions, two evidently had no gift or 
 inclination whatever to inspire any interest in their 
 scholars in anything ; the other two inspired it uninten- 
 tionally as regarded miscellaneous and curious culture, 
 poetry, and the beginning of what in later days led to 
 philosophical and aesthetic studies. And in all these 
 cases there was of course a direct and very perceptible 
 
 1 This was T. B. ALCOTT, whose singular school is mentioned by Miss 
 MAKTINBAU in her autobiography. 
 
HARSH TREATMENT. 229 
 
 result on the pupils. Be it specially remarked that 
 the two who thus awoke an interest in their pupils for 
 general reading and a wider range of thought, though 
 they had not one-third of the number of pupils of the 
 other two, had three or four times as many who dis- 
 tinguished themselves when grown up. The one who 
 was by far the most learned and the most severe had 
 almost no pupils who have ever since been heard of in 
 the world " for any good." He punished boys for very 
 trifling offences by " keeping them in " all day from 
 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. without food, I can well recollect, 
 when this happened to me, how terribly hungry and 
 irritable I became in the afternoon, and how I often 
 chewed pine-wood sticks and paper to alleviate my 
 sufferings. But how the intellect or the morals can be 
 mended by such treatment is difficult to understand. 
 A single piece of bread would have done much more to 
 enable me to study my lessons. 
 
 There is a class of critics whom one may call ex- 
 tremists or exag^erators, whose method is to immediately 
 assume the last stretch of possibility or probability as 
 the legitimate scope of an argument, and who defend 
 themselves on the ground that logical deduction de- 
 mands perfection. These men should read that great 
 and good work, the Baital Pachisi, or "Vikram and 
 the Vampire," from which they may learn that the last 
 lesson of wisdom is not to be too wise, nor to expect 
 the last grain of perfection from anybody. Such men 
 oppose a small objection to a great reform. They are 
 like the Arab who, when starving to death, declined a 
 cucumber because it was crooked. They do much 
 harm in the world, and little good. As critics they 
 depress and destroy, and they help little in developing. 
 
23 o PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Many of this kind inquire where the teachers are to be 
 found who can inspire interest in the youth in anything, 
 still more awaken the faculty of inducing self to en- 
 deavour to be interested in all things. They say we 
 must wait till the world is more advanced ; that we must 
 laissez faire, or let things work themselves. They are 
 prompt to carp captiously because vanity is far more 
 easy to gratify by fault-finding than by appreciation. 
 Now it is unfortunately true that in the whole range of 
 effort to aid man there is not one in which so much 
 unkind and petty criticism is exerted as on any reform 
 in education. Such changes as are here suggested do 
 most certainly involve more thought and study from 
 both parents and teachers than they have previously 
 given to such subjects. All of this will involve trouble, 
 and nobody likes to take trouble. So when Boss 
 BROU^E suggested to YUSEF in Syria that a great idle 
 Arab who lay lounging before him could in America 
 earn a dollar a day, his guide replied, " But to do that 
 would he not have to work ? " And that ended the 
 question. Truly both parents and schoolmasters will 
 have to work not a little before their children and 
 pupils can be properly taught. That is not to be denied. 
 Among all teachers those are rarest who endeavour to 
 interest their pupils in school or studies, and yet such 
 experiments, wisely planned, rarely fail. There was a 
 master whose pupils persisted in coming late to school. 
 He made it a matter of reward or privilege that some 
 should be allowed to attend an hour before the regular 
 time, during which extra-time he conversed with them 
 or aided them in their lessons. The result was that 
 before long they all came early. To this schoolmasters 
 may object that they are not so well paid or so highly 
 
BOARDING-SCHOOLS. 231 
 
 esteemed that they should give so much time and pains 
 to work, and they are quite right. At present teachers 
 .are not as a rule able to do what they should, nor 
 would they be properly paid if they could. The city 
 of Philadelphia, which expects to pay fifteen millions 
 of dollars for its Public Buildings, which will be, when 
 finished, the most misplaced architectural monstrosity 
 in Christendom, does not pay its public teachers one- 
 half what they should in decency receive. The fault 
 is not with its School Board, who perform their duties 
 most honourably and intelligently under great diffi- 
 culties, but with the many who complain of school 
 taxation, as if every dollar which wenc for such purposes 
 were a dead waste. In which this city differs little 
 from any other, since that in which the school tax is 
 not the one most grumbled at is indeed a rarity. 
 
 The keepers of boarding-schools and parents all have 
 it in their power to do much to awaken in children an 
 interest either in their studies or in that which will tend 
 as much as study to improve their minds. I shall have 
 written to no purpose if the suggestions which I have 
 given in this work cannot aid in this direction. I can 
 M r ell remember that at a boarding-school where I passed 
 a portion of my boyhood there was time enough and 
 readiness and cleverness enough among the boys to 
 have easily become apt at hand-work had there been 
 anybody to teach it. Such work would open many 
 doors of interest in many a branch of culture. 
 
 When the habit of making the will arouse the 
 memory shall have been induced until the scholar finds 
 no difficulty in learning, and this faculty in turn is 
 balanced by increased quickness of perception, it will 
 not be difficult to awaken interest in anything. These 
 
232 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 are sure steps to the highest culture. The last and 
 highest is that of teaching the pupil that he can will 
 himself to take an interest in whatever he pleases. 
 Many great scholars never discover that they have such 
 a power. And yet the whole history and tendency of 
 civilisation lead to it. Happy is the man who can read 
 every or any book and find something in it. There is 
 no such thing as a dull book written by any one whom 
 Time has approved as a genius. Dulness as regards it 
 is in the reader. But the last thing which I would 
 urge is that on this ground there should be much read- 
 ing of inferior books. Minds, when not of the very 
 strongest nature, can be hopelessly enfeebled by much 
 reading of second-class novels ; most people lose them- 
 selves in far lower grades of worthless fiction. Genius 
 is so effective that many books which contain much that 
 is bad really do no harm in proportion to the good which 
 they inspire, for true ability is, as I have said, like a 
 running stream which washes itself clean the stronger 
 it runs, the sooner it is purified. Those who doubt this 
 may mark w r ith a pencil in a Bible all the passages 
 which they would not like their children to notice. I 
 never knew a commonplace youth, however prurient his 
 tastes might be, who ever succeeded in reading more 
 that a few chapters in " EABELAIS ; " I never knew a 
 clever one who was in the least injured by the great 
 humorist. This is beyond my subject, but I mean to 
 say that even schoolboys may be wisely encouraged in 
 the faith that they are capable of being interested in 
 what they will. For appetite comes with reading as 
 with eating, and he who has learned A can master B. 
 
 As a recapitulation, I may remind the reader that a 
 great development of the power of simply memorising 
 
RECAPITULATION. 233 
 
 may be attained by practising the young in perfect 
 lessoning. This is to be balanced and aided by training 
 quickness of perception, the two being greatly aided 
 by hand-work and the development of eye-memory. 
 When all of these faculties or accomplishments shall 
 have been educated out of or into the pupil, the teacher 
 or parent will find that it is no difficult matter to 
 awaken interest in anything that can be studied or 
 performed. All the processes are mutually helpful, 
 mutually strengthening. Every one makes the others 
 easier. The possibility of each has been proved by 
 experiment. What I suggest is their combination. 
 
 There is a principle which underlies all mental effort. 
 It is attention. On this MAUDSLEY has written wisely 
 and well. The art of awakening attention depends on 
 the sympathetic or magnetic power of the teacher. He 
 who can induce a pupil to attend to anything, that is, 
 to really remark it, has gone half way in awakening an 
 interest in it. There are very few who cannot do 
 the former if they will, and when this is done all can 
 develop the latter. The art of attracting the attention 
 is one with that of awakening quickness of perception. 
 
CONCLUSION, 
 
 THERE is a disposition among many critics to point 
 out as defects in a system of education the neglect to 
 specify details which in practice must really depend 
 upon the teacher or on circumstances. On the other 
 hand, the author of a scheme, if he attempts to previse 
 and provide for every contingency, is sure to overwhelm 
 his readers with an excess of matter which few can 
 master, and very few will read. I have already said that 
 if I had in my experience begun by advocating an entire 
 reform in industrial training, including a preparation 
 for agricultural, commercial, or industrial pursuits with 
 housekeeping, I should have been still in the position 
 of a mere theorist, and could never have got a school. 
 I preferred to prove by experiment simply a portion of 
 my principles, and now that it is proved, I can see no 
 reason why the rest may not be admitted. It cannot 
 be harder to make a farmer or shopman of a boy than an 
 artist ; in fact it has hitherto been universally assumed 
 that it is much less difficult. 
 
 But there is a more serious objection which may 
 properly be urged, should I rest here, and that is that 
 while I have given tolerably full and practical detail of 
 industrial art, I have merely sketched in outline the 
 rudiments of teaching the other branches. This is true, 
 because the obvious methods of teaching them seem 
 so simple that one is inclined to leave them to the 
 
CONCLUSION. 235 
 
 (< practical" people who assume to understand how every- 
 thing should be done so much better than the " mere 
 theorist," and who will not fail to appear in swarms as 
 soon as the method shall have been universally recog- 
 nised. They are always to be depended on, as surely 
 as the wake follows the vessel. Another and far more 
 serious objection may be found in the fact that I have 
 not arranged and carefully co-ordinated the different 
 branches of a reformed education; that I have not 
 shown how, for instance, memorising and quickness of 
 perception are to be adopted to the course for a farmer 
 or shopman ; and finally, that all my system as set forth 
 is limited to children under fourteen years of age. 
 
 In the hands of any man fit to be a teacher the hints 
 which I have given should abundantly suffice to enable 
 him to practically develop an entire system to its fullest 
 extent. But, as I have said, while teaching children 
 continues to be a half-paid, inferior profession, clever 
 men, if they happen to be in it, will not exert them- 
 selves to the utmost to excel. Therefore it will be 
 necessary for those who may think there is something 
 in what I have said to consider seriously how and in 
 what manner industry may be made a branch of all 
 education, that is to say, of the education of every 
 child, with reference to some special career if possible, 
 if not to teach such general principles as may in any 
 case be applicable to every calling. There are countless 
 instances in which circumstances change intentions: 
 it will often happen that the boy who meant to be a 
 farmer turns to a merchant. Now it will accordingly 
 be an object to educate these children in such a way 
 that even if changes occur they will be ready for them, 
 and not have lost time. And this can be done. 
 
 ^^l^^ 
 
 (UNIVERSITY) 
 
236 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 We will assume that a boy having left the Kinder- 
 garten or infant school, begins by being trained to 
 merely memorise, and then to exercise the memory 
 until it is perfect. In the East this stage of education 
 begins at the age of from six to eight. This should not 
 form a branch : it should be for a long time the only 
 study. When the memory begins to manifest great 
 strength, then exercises in quickness of perception may 
 be introduced. Now I would call attention to this, 
 that if these two faculties are really developed by careful 
 teaching, they will give great power to learn and under- 
 stand anything, and improve or create intellect. If they 
 do not, then there will be nothing in it all. Fortunately 
 they do not require genius to teach them : only a clear 
 comprehension of the method and patience. For it 
 must be distinctly understood that although a child 
 under fourteen can be so trained as to make a living 
 when that age is reached, this should not be the object 
 of its education, unless dire need and manifest poverty 
 are before it. In other more favourable cases the edu- 
 cation should be such as to prepare it for the factory, 
 or farm, or counting-house, or family, so that it will be 
 perfectly at home in them on entering. There is a war 
 being waged at present between those who wish to have 
 every child so schooled that the parents need pay out 
 no more money for it after it is fourteen years old, and 
 those who doubt whether childhood should really be 
 turned into a kind of factory-mill life. There is a 
 certain truth to be ever borne in mind. Childhood is 
 Y ideal or unreal : it is a season for play in animals as 
 with mankind. Take away its idealising, its play, its 
 romancing you can do it if you will and the result 
 is a hard and selfish, if not cruel and wicked manhood. 
 
CONCLUSION. 237 
 
 One can see such children every day among the lower 
 classes : children in whose miserable little faces greed 
 and sin and shrewdness, vulgarity and harshness, have 
 fset the sign of evil thoughts. Yet these children 
 who have been trained to make their way in life will 
 nev6r lead lives such as any human being ought to 
 experience. It is very true that among vulgar Ameri- 
 cans or Britons, as among those of many other 
 races, there is a melancholy majority of people 
 who would be charmed to have sons who would 
 " succeed in life " at any cost, independently of prin- 
 ciples or poetry, culture or humanity, according to the 
 wisdom of "business first, pleasure afterwards/' But 
 I assume that childhood, like womanhood, is, or ought 
 to be, instinctively fond of the ideal or imaginative, 
 and that instead of repressing this tendency we should 
 employ it to practical purpose in its time. 
 
 Now the boy who has got a general idea of design, 
 and sees the possibility of mastering all the minor arts, 
 does not feel, on acquiring this power, as a man of thirty 
 would. He is still in fairyland : it is droll or wonderful 
 that he, a boy, should be an artist. Play is still a part 
 of his soul : it is his nature, as it ought to be. Take it 
 out of him, and you will take the humanity out of his 
 after-life. When lessons are given to children simply 
 as work devoid of the ideal, they may learn them, but 
 not with love. Present these same lessons, not precisely 
 as sports, but as employment which gives them a con- 
 sciousness of being beyond what they are, of playing 
 a part in life or of acting, and they will master them with 
 great facility. It is as if one were to offer any ordinary 
 man a fortune as soon as he could speak any given modern 
 language. He will be sure to learn it. 
 
238 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 I do not wish to be understood here as advocating 
 the ridiculous French socialist theory that work can or 
 ought to be turned into play. I do urge, however, that 
 play may be turned into or made to tend towards work 
 without losing any of its charm, Now a boy told that 
 he is to be a farmer, and talked to and treated as if 
 farming were quite an art, and familiarised with its 
 simple details by means of a manual, or perhaps seeing 
 a farm and such extra information as every teacher 
 should be able to impart, would, I am sure, advance 
 in proportion, in his interest in and knowledge of 
 farming, just as my pupils advanced in minor arts. In 
 every village these pupils, as they get on, could be made 
 more and more practically familiar with farms. There 
 would be no want of advice from farmers. If memo- 
 rising has succeeded at all, it will show itself with 
 quickness of perception in agriculture. The pupil 
 having learned the DESIGN that is, that industry is a 
 part of education, and that his first act in it is 
 agriculture will, with memory and quick grasp of 
 details, progress rapidly. And the idealising tendency 
 peculiar to youth will, when allied to these powers, 
 produce genius that is, the power to awaken and apply 
 the will. 
 
 If my theory is worth a rush, when this genius is 
 once awakened, it will master the details of any calling 
 very rapidly. If a boy is to be in business, the idea of 
 industry must be set before him in a handbook of 
 trade, to be followed by the course of a commercial 
 college. For this, as for farming or art, there is the 
 period before fourteen years of age, which should be 
 rather preparatory practical than purely practical, and 
 that after it, which should be serious. As yet men 
 
CONCLUSION. 239 
 
 have not learned to distinguish between preparing for 
 a career and beginning to prepare for it. They do not 
 draw the line between learning the alphabet and 
 learning to read. In early youth the preparation 
 should not be too extensive or too difficult. Boys are 
 not taught in my industrial school as yet to sculpture 
 statues, but simply to carve flat panels. It will be 
 enough if, while boys, their attention is attracted 
 towards farming and commerce and art, and that 
 they shall be practically just so much instructed 
 therein as to feel at home in them, though only as 
 apprentices. 
 
 - Everybody will not grasp in all its fulness what I 
 mean by the ideal or unreal nature in children, but 
 those who do will agree with me, that far from 
 extinguishing it, as men have generally sought to do, 
 it should be cultivated, for in it lies the germ of 
 generosity, nobility, honour, and poetry, as well as more 
 practical qualities. I am quite sure that all my 
 cleverest pupils have the keenest sense that there is 
 a kind of fun in their being artists, able to do such 
 work as is popularly associated with the efforts of 
 grown people, and " geniuses" at that. They feel as if 
 they were on a stage playing a part. And when visitors 
 come in and exclaim, " How wonderful ! " " What 
 talent!" and the boy or girl hears it, and knows very 
 well that there is nothing so Remarkable in it after all, 
 since all in the school can do as much, it is not strange 
 that he or she feels that it is only applause for a part 
 well played. It is difficult to make a child (and some 
 grown up people) believe that life is worth living for 
 unless it is "acted." Now the task is to train this 
 tendency to play to practical ends. If it be allied 
 
2 4 o PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 to great memory and a highly cultivated quickness of 
 perception this instinct will literally work wonders. 
 
 It would be impossible to keep a boy so trained from 
 being an excellent arithmetician, for quickness of per- 
 ception is almost in itself quickness in numbers, which 
 are only the relations of things. Bookkeeping is the 
 record or memory of numbers applied to things-. Arith- 
 metic is to bookkeeping, mensuration, navigation, and 
 technology what design is to art. It can be readily 
 understood that after fourteen years of age a career will 
 be easily found for a boy who lias been trained to a 
 beginning. As for further education, there is the indus- 
 trial school proper, the technological institute, and the 
 higher art schools. It must be admitted that these 
 require much reform, but it will come. Perhaps after 
 all is shaped, last and least, the universities and 
 colleges will awake from their slumbers and also begin 
 to prepare pupils for a practical life. As the magazine 
 which sets forth the views of one of them has within a 
 very few years passed through the stages of declaring 
 that "Darwin is atheistic" " Darwin is doubtful" 
 " Darwin may be reconciled with true Christianity " 
 so it will perhaps say that these views are Utopian and 
 irreligious they are possible they are practical. Non 
 possumus depends on circumstances. 
 
 If children can be educated in the way I have 
 indicated before the fourteenth year, if the public try 
 the experiment, and it should succeed, there need be 
 little inquiry as to how it i& to be carried on through 
 the succeeding years. That it will succeed is rendered 
 certain by a few facts. 
 
 I. During centuries before the invention of printing, 
 memory was millions of times developed to a degree 
 
CONCLUSION. 241 
 
 which at the present day would suffice to silence all 
 complaint as to over-cramming with too many studies. 
 
 II. Quickness of perception has also been shown to 
 be susceptible of development in children by culture. 
 It has been declared to be a fact, and it is one. 
 
 III. Industrial art is also within the reach of all 
 children. Thousands are now practising it in America 
 and South Germany, and going to school at the same 
 time. All of these exist as wild plants. The question 
 is, Can they be cultivated ? If I have done or written 
 aught which induces the reader to believe this, my end 
 is attained. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 i. 
 
 KARL WERNER ON THE AMERICAN SYSTEM 
 OF ART EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS. 
 
 THE following review of the pamphlet, "Industrial Art in 
 Schools," by Karl Werner, Government Inspector of Schools 
 at Salzburg, appeared in the Literarische Beilage der Montags 
 Revue, Vienna, April 23, 1883. 
 
 The opinions held at different stages as to the object and 
 aim of public schools made or followed the currents of the 
 stream of Time. One of these currents runs deeply at the 
 present day, and the practical interest which influences society 
 is making itself felt in education. 
 
 While people were contented at an earlier period with 
 giving in schools only such branches of knowledge as 
 might form the basis of a more extended culture, the re- 
 quirements of life demanded practical training for the people 
 and industrial education. The child should, in addition to 
 reading, writing, and arithmetic, also learn those things 
 which exercise a determining influence on life, and know- 
 ledge derived from natural science, geography, and history 
 should give the future citizen broader views to qualify him 
 the better to fulfil his mission. 
 
 But the teachers did not rest here. It was desired to 
 introduce work itself to the school, and this is what is 
 treated of in a pamphlet by CHARLES GODFREY LELAND, 
 Director of an Industrial School in Philadelphia, who seems 
 
244 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 to have practically solved a problem for which Europe is 
 yet hardly prepared. This document, which is warmly 
 commended by the Commissioner of Education in Wash- 
 ington, General JOHN EATON, has three divisions the intro- 
 duction, the practical portion, and general remarks, which we 
 will briefly sketch before commenting on the whole. 
 
 According to the precept that flowers precede fruit, the 
 writer is of the opinion that during the childhood of an 
 individual as well as of a race, the production of ornament 
 precedes that of the merely useful. And on this truth the 
 education of children should be founded. Schools have 
 hitherto certainly given what is popularly called culture, and 
 yet youth left them quite as unfit for practical life on the last 
 day as the first. For it is practical preparation which children 
 require ; not indeed that public schools shall become mere 
 trade schools, since that is unreasonable for children under 
 fourteen years of age, but that the pupils should be at first 
 accustomed to agreeable or ornamental work, or the exercise 
 of the minor arts. What these are will be described in 
 another place. Suffice it to say that by their practice the 
 regular studies, far from being disturbed or interrupted, will 
 be directly aided, since by exercise of the hands and eyes 
 quickness of perception is awakened. If a child can learn 
 in the Kindergarten of FROEBEL to sew, sing, braid, draw, and 
 model, it can in a more advanced school study more advanced 
 branches, and all the more so, because the whole system 
 does not depend on learning different branches, but because 
 the necessity of design and modelling is the same for every 
 art study, be it in wood, clay, sheet brass, paper, or even 
 embroidery. In fact the establishment of schools where 
 such arts are taught must be regarded as absolutely necessary, 
 since it naturally fills the time between the infant school 
 or Kindergarten and the learning a trade. And there is no 
 real difficulty as regards establishing such public schools if 
 the teacher can only draw a little, since what remains can 
 be easily learned from good practical manuals. 
 
 That which is most important for such schools is draw- 
 ing, and that free-hand, which, however, is not the kind 
 mechanically taught by copying, but in such a manner that 
 from the first lesson in which the children are shown how to 
 throw lines freely and accurately, they are made to exercise 
 
OF THE 
 
 APPENDIX SIT3 
 
 their inventive faculties, or to design 
 system the child too frequently wearies of drawing, by this 
 it is step by step made familiar with variations upon given 
 motives or patterns, so that it can in a few weeks or months 
 develop entirely original patterns. 
 
 If painting is to follow design, it is not begun according 
 to the old method, with many colours and the favourite 
 flower-painting, but merely with monochrome. The author 
 has tested both methods, and found the latter alone prac- 
 ticable. Drawing, as has been fully established, is very 
 important even for girls who are to learn any trade : it is 
 much more so for children who model in clay. Of course 
 all designs should be on a large scale, and must neither 
 descend to pettiness nor be lost in mere imitation. 
 
 The practical part is devoted to details. We are told 
 what materials are required for drawing, in doing which 
 the author declares that drawing-boards are useless when 
 flat table surface of sufficient breadth can be had. As for 
 drawing, it is required for almost every trade, and it bears to 
 modelling almost the same relation which the latter bears to 
 all the minor arts which require taste. Drawing is decidedly l 
 the key to all arts, but it must not consist of petty detail, 
 but every effort should be made to acquire the art of making 
 every line and curve at a single sweep, and to attain a 
 certain freedom in the motion of the hands and arms. For 
 most beginners fail especially in paying too little attention 
 to this command of the pencil. And as the painter TURNER 
 worked without a maul-stick, so should every pupil attain 
 perfectly free-hand. Pupils too should never be allowed to 
 draw with short pencils, as they, oddly enough, are fond of 
 doing, so that they often cut whole pencils in two. The 
 paper must be of good quality, smooth, thin, and hard, 
 which, however, entails no great expense. 
 
 There is no literal copying. What copies are given to the 
 children are simply intended to serve as motives to be varied. 
 This awakens invention, and better designs for wall-papers 
 and carpets are called forth than those manufactured by the 
 old processes, in which the same ideas are continually 
 repeated. The whole secret of design consists in this, to 
 begin with the simplest and easiest patterns, and to con- 
 tinually advance; but for this no "gift" or " talent" is 
 
24 6 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 required but constant industry, and it cannot be too 
 frequently or too clearly declared that the object of the 
 school is not to make works of art, but to learn Itow to 
 make them. 
 
 MODELLING is the next branch of industrial art. Any 
 teacher who can draw can with the aid of a manual teach 
 modelling in clay, since it is for children really easier than 
 drawing. Clay and the tools for modelling are very cheap, 
 the fingers being in fact the chief aids. Cylindrical vessels 
 can be shaped on a tube of pasteboard, and baskets, vases, 
 and the like made of beautiful form, and then baked at the 
 pottery. 
 
 As the practical result of this union of drawing and 
 modelling, LELAND indicates the practice of eyes and fingers, 
 by which pupils are prepared for every practical occupation, 
 and the direct qualification of such pupils for branches of 
 industry where there is a constant demand for employes 
 who have been thus trained. On the other hand we are 
 told of a reformer whose name is known to every newspaper 
 reader, and who professed a great interest in art, who wished 
 to know the " market value " of the children's work ; and 
 of another who asked if all the pupils did could not be 
 more cheaply manufactured by machinery. It is evident 
 enough that such remarks, in spite of their extreme " practi- 
 cability," are simply idle, since they do not grasp the real 
 object of the school. It is as irrational as if one should 
 require that reading and writing should directly " pay." 
 
 As a third branch especially for girls' schools em- 
 broidery is commended, and in this patterns after original 
 designs are of extraordinary value. These three branches 
 can be introduced to any common school. In many places, 
 as, for example, in England, wood-carving is preferred by 
 parents to modelling. It may be added as a fourth study to 
 the three already described. For this, wood and a few 
 tools are all that is required. It is also important that the 
 children shall not be set at difficult or advanced work. 
 
 If these four things are provided for, the school is fitted 
 for work, and the pupils may in time be properly prepared 
 for advanced industries. And such a provision for work 
 may be made in every country school. 
 
 To this beginning our author adds the designing and 
 
APPENDIX. 247 
 
 cutting out of stencils for ornamenting rooms, an art as 
 yet little practised, yet by which thousands might make a 
 living. The expense which it entails for cardboard, brushes, 
 pencils, colours, and varnish is trifling. To this succeeds 
 papier-mache, which has much in common with modelling in 
 cl,ay, and offers a wide field to inventiveness and industry. 
 With these are included leather work, by which very beau- 
 tiful and attractive objects are produced. 
 
 Less directly related to such work is ceramics, with the 
 allied painting, which is, however, not of great importance 
 for elementary schools ; and then repousse or hammered sheet 
 brass work, which requires a good knowledge of drawing and 
 great dexterity in the use of tools ; and finally painting, which 
 is the most popular branch with children, but which, in pro- 
 portion to its expense and trouble, is of the least practical 
 value. It is not therefore to be introduced to common schools 
 without consideration, though it naturally is included among 
 the studies of those of a higher class. 
 
 Now since all that pertains to establishing and carrying 
 on such branches may be readily obtained everywhere, and 
 as by their practice a sense of the artistic and beautiful is 
 awakened in children, it is but rational that they should 
 form a part of school studies. The teacher too, learning while 
 teaching, and deeply interested in his work, will exercise 
 withal a decided influence on national culture and industry, 
 and find in it all a relief from his severer duties. 
 
 The introduction of this practical apparatus to schools will 
 of course arouse opposition, but if those who oppose it can 
 be induced to visit the classes and see the children at work, 
 with the room ornamented with its results, they will soon 
 change their opinion, and be the more easily persuaded to 
 permit the expense. Moreover, their outlay need not be 
 very great. Care must be taken to supply good models, and 
 this can be done by publishing illustrations of the treasures 
 of the museums of different countries. These can of course 
 be adapted with variations to any of the arts above described, 
 and it follows that the work will vary in different places 
 according to the expense or difficulty of obtaining certain 
 materials. It must be established as a principle that teacher 
 and pupils, in whatever they work, be it stone, clay, leather, 
 or aught else, shall take pains to make the result truly good 
 
248 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 and tasteful, and not such trasli as is generally seen at fairs 
 (Jalirmarktsplunder). For wherr' sale or money-making is 
 not definitely the aim of the school, excellent work may 
 still be produced, and the permanence of the institution still 
 further guaranteed. By further applications of these arts, 
 such as painting on stone, artistic rag-carpets, mosaic, &c., 
 a \vhole house may be cheaply furnished. The furniture 
 may be simply and solidly shaped, the floor laid with 
 mosaic, the windows hung with tapestry, anjd walls, ceiling, 
 or doors bedecked with papier-mache* and repousse brass. 
 All of these may be made in the house or in a school. 
 
 We shall hear, of course, that it is useless to adorn houses 
 in this way for people who do not understand it, and there 
 will also be wailings that maidens learned in minor arts will 
 make bad wives for workmen. As for the first indictment, 
 one may plead that everybody is not a bush-whacking back- 
 woodsman, and that half the world spends money on 
 machinery-made trash, when they could get something 
 better for less money ; while, as to the second, young 
 mechanics, like other people, always choose the best educated 
 girls when they can get them. As the aristocracy of old 
 cried out against reading and writing for the people as the 
 ruin of all social order, so to-day we hear the protestation 
 against teaching industrial art to the people. 
 
 This education is not to take the place of trades, but by 
 educating pupils in minor arts to train them to mechanical 
 dexterity, and it is by means of such schools that a desire to 
 learn trades is to be awakened. LELAND boasts that he was 
 one of the first to declare the fact that the overthrow of our 
 whole present decayed system of teaching must lead in its 
 fall to industrial training in schools. In earlier times the 
 apprentice system had a far greater significance, since then 
 by it the child learned a whole trade, while by the present 
 subdivision of labour a modern workman makes only the 
 sixtieth part of a shoe, and is only the serf of a capitalist. 
 And it is by the tendency to true art by teaching it in 
 schools, and by t]>e reaction of true taste against machinery 
 manufactures, that a remedy will be found against the error 
 of the age. Here ends the practical part of the pamphlet. 
 
 In the general remarks which follow, the writer remarks 
 that boys and girls show equal capacity in design and 
 
APPENDIX. 249 
 
 modelling, but that in brass-work and wood-carving the 
 males are masters. One of the greatest impediments which 
 tasteful industry meets is the extravagant and be-puffed 
 work popularly called art. Every one at this word thinks 
 of statues and pictures, and even eminent men believe that 
 artists are gifted with special inspiration, and that education 
 must begin with a refined appreciation of great works. Yet 
 true art for home decoration need be a mystery for none. 
 The aesthetes preach how desirable it would be to bring 
 the renown of RAPHAEL and of MICHAEL ANGELO down to 
 the people, but they do nothing at all to make them under- 
 stood. Now these artists were children of their time 
 a time when every object was a work of art. And when 
 this shall be the case with us, we too shall have again a 
 KAPHAEL. 
 
 Art training is conducive to morality. Boys trained in 
 schools of which they love the work, and where they learn 
 to get a living, will be kept from much idleness and mischief. 
 Even men may learn, instead of talking petty politics or 
 mere loafing, to converse on more sensible subjects. Young 
 girls will be even more benefited by such occupation, by 
 more readily obtaining places in factories or shops, or similar 
 industries, or else as married women finding occupation for 
 their leisure. 
 
 In such an education there is also an economical factor, 
 since by it every one can assure self-independence. This 
 is the more accurate, since it is shown by the small cost 
 of teaching design and modelling in the smallest schools. 
 There can be no regular rule or system established for the 
 sale of work, but nothing should be offered for sale which is 
 not good, and the delight of pupils over their first produc- 
 tions should be checked, to prevent an overestimate of what 
 is worthless. 
 
 But the most striking remarks made by LELAND are to be 
 found in the last paragraphs of his pamphlet, and it must be 
 admitted that what he says is as applicable to old -Europe 
 as to young America. It is by introducing hand-work into 
 schools that the popular prejudice against the " vulgarity " 
 of "work" can be most effectually destroyed. Hitherto one 
 has been regarded as a gentleman who had soft hands, and 
 it was considered a sign of social superiority when a man. 
 
250 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 r 
 
 declared he had never done a day's work in all his life. 
 Millions are still influenced by this idiocy. And this is so, 
 because hand- work is really not as yet inspired or guided by 
 culture and education. But by the application to it of art, 
 and by its union with school studies, work will become 
 honourable. The minor arts as practised are most intimately 
 allied to the highest art, and to all that pertains to the most 
 refined culture. Those who know them will also know the 
 names of BENVENUTO CELLINI, of ALBERT DURER in a 
 word, of all the great men who won the greatest fame in the 
 most glorious of ages. Moreover, the practical knowledge of 
 art which children thus acquire has this result, that they visit 
 museums and collections with greater intelligence, and under- 
 stand the bearings of the subject better than any amateur. 
 LELAND made this experiment in person. He had read all 
 that he could find in books on wood-engraving, but two days' 
 work over a block taught him more than a library had done. 
 " For of all learning since books were invented there was 
 never aught like experience, and of all experience there is 
 none like one's own." 
 
 The introduction of these arts into schools is truly a 
 question of the time, yet clubs and societies should every- 
 where be founded, and even ladies' clubs formed in the 
 smallest villages, to advance culture and become a source of 
 profit. Last, not least, it must be admitted that the work is 
 agreeable and easy to a degree which none would suppose 
 who had not tried it ; and the author answered, when asked, 
 as President of a Ladies' Art Club, what was the most re- 
 markable in it, "The love of the students for their work." 
 
 It is before all especially satisfactory to us to be able to 
 prove that the idea propagated by the American LELAND 
 of introducing work to public schools is of German origin. 
 Apart from the views of AMOS COMENIUS and RATICH, 
 PESTALOZZI was the first who made the experiment in his 
 pauper-school at Neuhof in 1775, to busy children in summer 
 with garden and field work, and in winter with spinning, 
 weaving, and similar occupation. He was followed by 
 FELLENBERG, SALZMANN, WEHRLI, and many more. Schools 
 for poor and orphan children, above all for girls, were espe- 
 cially established, as for example in Belgium, in the Saxon 
 Erzgebirge, in Wiirtemberg, in Schleswig-Holstein, in which 
 
APPENDIX. 251 
 
 latter country care was taken by means of the KLEUTER 
 schools to train boys to a trade. Yet these "were all rather 
 tentative experiments than well organised and complete 
 establishments. 
 
 Since that time an abundant literature has been developed 
 on this subject, unions have been established which devote all 
 their energy to " instruction in manual dexterity and domestic 
 economy," and whoever will read through the interesting 
 proceedings of the Congress, held in Leipzig in June I882, 1 
 will clearly see that much work and many sacrifices must 
 yet be required ere the full and proper results can be 
 obtained. 
 
 Among those men who in recent times took a leading part 
 in making work a part of education we class Professor 
 BIEDERMANN of Leipzig, whose important work appeared 
 under the pseudonym of "KARL FRIEDRICH " in 1852. To 
 this may be added the important aid in Austria of Dr. 
 GEORGENS, who set forth his ideas in a newspaper in 1856, 
 and Dr. ERASMUS SCHWAB, who published in 1873 an< l J ^74 
 his views as to work schools and school workshops. 
 
 As regards BIEDERMANN FRIEDRICH, he requires that his 
 method shall be entirely attached to the domestic home, 
 " since an education without parental co-operation is irra- 
 tional." The school itself is accordingly rather a support 
 than independent. In the first year there is only manual 
 work instead of study, and the abstract " pursuits of reading 
 and writing are followed until the eye and hand are made 
 accurate by practice." But practical instruction should be 
 balanced with theoretical branches of knowledge. So there 
 should be a garden with every school, wfyich the children 
 are to cultivate, while they receive lessons in natural history 
 and philosophy, chemistry, &c. The older pupils shall 
 subsequently aid in work to be supplied by the local 
 municipal government. As for housekeeping, the Kinder- 
 garten is to be simply continued and extended, those things 
 to be especially made which are of direct use in domestic 
 economy or in the school. In its result, through this prac- 
 tical education of children, the system is very intimately 
 connected with the social life of the community. 
 
 1 Verhandlungen des Congresses fur Handfertigskeitunterricht und 
 Hausfleiss von Dr. W. GOTZE, GERA, ISSLEIB, imd RIETSCHEL, 1882. 
 
252 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 GEORGENS would establish the school on a similar basis. 
 The problem is with him on a far greater scale than with 
 FRIEDRICH, but differs as to the co-operation of the family 
 in education, knowing very well that in general home gives 
 but little aid to the school. 
 
 SCHWAB has in common with both the principle of re- 
 garding work as an element in the course of public schools, 
 but he sets it forth in a much clearer if far narrower and 
 pettier manner than his predecessors, thereby showing him- 
 self as a real and practical schoolmaster. Work is for him 
 the main motive in moral development, and the " mother of 
 moral force in thought and deed," which ennobles the soul 
 and matures as the best fruit independence and serene self- 
 confidence. In the school there is to be that well-regulated 
 work in common which tends to familiarise children with 
 the social virtues. When this work in common is at 
 present applied in the Kindergarten, with the best result, it 
 ceases however in the seventh year, arid is not resumed till 
 the fourteenth. Yet this is the age when all energies are in 
 most active operation, tjiough they are not exercised, with 
 the exception of the instruction of girls in sewing and 
 similar pursuits. This is done with the purely practical 
 intent that they shall help in the house, yet in the right 
 hands it may be made a means of far higher training, since 
 it need not be limited to theoretical knowledge of materials, 
 implements, and the like, but may also lead to a love of work 
 and habits of industry. Attention and patience, order, neat- 
 ness, and economy may thus be obtained, and much frivolity 
 and folly worked out of the mind. 
 
 In like manner SCHWAB would establish a division of 
 practical teaching for boys, or a school garden and a school 
 workshop. In the latter the "minor arts'' are to be taught, 
 such as LELAND requires for his industrial school. 
 
 And here we return to the American and his system. It 
 must before all be regarded as a great deficiency in his 
 system of education that he pays no attention to the rural- 
 industrial (landwirthscliaftliclie) or agricultural needs in 
 education, 1 and so provides practically only preparation for 
 
 1 Professor KARL WERNER is quite right, as regards so much of my 
 system as I have as yet published. But as originally conceived, and 
 as it has been set forth in this book it will be seen that it must neces- 
 
APPENDIX. 253 
 
 trades. And yet if we consider that there are more country 
 than town schools, the employment of children in gardens 
 becomes of almost paramount importance. One is not, how- 
 ever, to suppose that the school garden is of one whit less 
 importance for city children than for those living in the 
 country, 1 since it is exactly for them and for their unnatural 
 
 sarily have been based on an entire and comprehensive theory not only 
 of all industries, but of a far deeper reform. Had I begun in so prac- 
 tical a country as America with preaching so much, I should never have 
 succeeded in teaching ever so little. I have had in common with my 
 friends of the School Board trouble enough to persuade people that there 
 is any sense iir showing children how to prepare for trades : if I had 
 offered to include agriculture, commerce, and housekeeping, it would 
 have been entirely too much. It was not by writing books, but by 
 putting my hand to the work, and practically teaching boys and girls 
 in person, and showing the results, that I made that teaching known. 
 When I first proposed to offer my system to be put in practice in the 
 city of Philadelphia, a gentleman who had for many years been a leader 
 in education and in the Board said to me, "There is no use in your 
 preaching any theory of reform. It will all depend on your own per- 
 sonal skill as a designer, a worker in brass, a wood-carver, and so on. 
 Get up a lot of specimens of your work to show people. It is only as 
 a man who can do these things practically and better than anybody 
 else that you will be judged." This was effectively the same as if a 
 man preaching a new religion had been required to prove its truth 
 by sweeping out the church or taking up collections. But my friend 
 was in the right, and it was by such work and personal teaching only 
 that I succeeded in establishing the school. Fortunately aid came to 
 me, "wie berufin," or as if invoked by the spell of need. Yet it was 
 difficult, for it is a hard thing to theorise and prove by practice at the 
 same time. C. G. L. 
 
 1 The bringing up of children in the country is destined to become 
 a question of national importance when the nation shall pay as much 
 attention to education as to the petty schemes of politicians. The 
 old French nobility was probably preserved from utter deterioration 
 by the keeping its children on farms under peasant foster-mothers 
 until they were seven or eight years of age. The New York Tribune 
 has of late years made a noble beginning in this reform by sending 
 thousands of poor children to pass the summer in the country. The 
 testimony which Mr. JAMES GREENWOOD has borne to the beneficial 
 results of the "hopping season" on London children which I can 
 confirm from personal observation, having known many London hop- 
 gatherers is in this regard of great value. It is hardly possible to 
 exaggerate the importance of this subject, since one-fourth, perhaps 
 more, of all the deaths in New York city are of children under four 
 years of age, and this could be reduced to a minimum by keeping the 
 young out of the slums. How it is to be done is as yet among the 
 problems, but it is simply a problem of life and death. Nearly allied 
 
254 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 physical education that rural occupations are of the utmost 
 importance. It is only during the pleasant part of the year 
 that work can be carried on in the school garden ; in winter 
 instruction may be given in the minor arts. 
 
 And here it is to be advanced as of the greatest importance 
 (als das Wiclitigste hervorzuheben) that LELAND lays far more 
 stress on design and drawing than is to be found in the 
 German and Austrian programmes. Not that drawing is 
 really neglected here, but with the American the further 
 development of the children is based exclusively on this, 
 which in the European schools referred to is not to any 
 such extent the case. In the latter it is only the means to 
 an end, while with the former it plays an independent part, 
 and is meant not only to develop freedom of hand and eye, 
 but to lead to invention and to art itself. And in this we 
 must decidedly give the preference to this system. Drawing 
 thus enters into the ideal efforts of the school, as into the 
 rest of its system or discipline, and so through this idealising 
 tendency in all tlie branches of education the formation of 
 fche children's character to which so much importance is 
 universally attached is alone made possible. And as the 
 practical realisation (Praxis] which the public school requires 
 receives through this ideal the right beginning and the proper 
 turn, and is thereby prevented from sinking to mere mate- 
 rialism, which is for a child's heart utterly depressing. 1 
 
 From such a beginning a limitation of merely practical 
 work results as a matter of course, and the saying that in 
 school the pupil is not to learn to make works of art, but 
 
 to it is the question as to whether it is a municipal duty to exterminate 
 pestilential slums and rookeries, in which poverty forces weakness into 
 vice. The coming generation will find much to amuse it in comparing 
 the philanthropy of this age and much of its expenditures with the 
 hideous truths of our neglect of the simplest and most apparent home 
 duties. C. G. L. 
 
 1 Whatever power a boy above fourteen may have to grapple with 
 the stern realities of life, it is absolutely impossible to train mere chil- 
 dren to their full capacity without allowing play for the ideal or the 
 imaginative. Teach a child that agriculture, commerce, housekeeping, 
 or art is a whole a great and marvellous thing, yet really within his 
 grasp and he will grasp it. It is as if he were told that he could be 
 a doctor or a farmer almost in play, and yet in earnest truth. I can 
 stimulate pupils to their utmost effort by gravely addressing them as 
 if they were skilful adult artisans. C. G. L. 
 
APPENDIX. 255 
 
 how they should be made, becomes a truth. The school 
 workshop is here no mere shop, and the industrial develop- 
 ments are far from mere trades. In fact no mere trade 
 would be taught at all, but simply the mechanical faculties 
 exercised and developed, and the soil, so to speak, prepared 
 for work. The impulse to some practical occupation, whicli 
 is innate in every man, and which in the FROEBEL Kinder- 
 garten is awakened in tender years, must and shall be 
 satisfied, but taste at the same time must be developed and 
 the intellect ennobled. 
 
 And on this very ground we should consider the question 
 so often put by "people of quality:" "Why need our 
 children learn design and modelling, wood-carving and 
 stencilling, and all these arts 1 They will never earn their 
 bread by these or by any hand-work, for they are meant for 
 higher studies." Now it is precisely because they will not: 
 have the opportunity later in life of developing this instinc- 
 tive impulse that their taste and touch should be trained in 
 childhood, and therefore they ought to learn betimes. 
 
 A much more natural objection to the whole system is to 
 be found in the obvious question, " Well, if this education 
 to work is really so extremely necessary, why was it not 
 long ago practised." One cannot escape by saying that we 
 now for the first time see into its importance, since teachers 
 have now for nearly a century studied the subject. In fact 
 we have long had schools for teaching feminine arts to girls. 
 
 But there are many reasons why we were not so ready to 
 introduce innovations of such a deeply searching nature to 
 public schools. Firstly, we do not as yet see clearly into 
 the object and scope of all that is to be taught, or how far 
 we can carry out the theoretical pursuits indicated, because 
 the time and local circumstances must be studied or deter- 
 mined. It was soon and easily discovered how to prepare 
 and equip schools for girls' work. The scope of what is 
 necessary or useful for future life is here far more limited. 
 It is much harder to make a choice as to what work shall be 
 taught in boys' schools, for there are a thousand directions 
 in which men labour. Here there is no equal uniformity as 
 with girls, for the field for masculine labour has indeed 
 almost infinite sub-divisions. Now we cannot precisely 
 determine the future calling or trade, but we can teach 
 
256 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 general practical principles, and these in such a manner that 
 the teacher cannot miss nor the pupil misunderstand them. 
 Therefore we cannot lay down an exact course for every 
 school, because the teaching of the minor arts depends on 
 the materials to be obtained in certain places, or on the 
 tastes or occupations of the people around, and on a hun- 
 dred other conditions. Yet where the codification is diffi- 
 cult or almost impossible, the deliberate German who likes 
 to advance securely, and does not plunge headlong into new 
 experiments, is not so easy to initiate. 
 
 And again, it may be asked, where does school training 
 cease and family training begin? How far can or must 
 the home be made to prepare for the school ? And, in 
 further consequence, how far shall the municipal authority 
 take part in establishing and supporting schools for teaching 
 trades to boys, since thus far there is so little general and 
 primary occupation for them. Would it not be better to 
 leave it entirely to the parents to prepare for the future 
 calling, and leave the special training to the school. 1 
 
 1 Apropos of choosing a calling, I had a pupil familiarly called SAM 
 who distinguished himself by good behaviour and cleverness. He 
 soon learned to design so well that I sold some of his patterns. He also 
 worked in brass. I did not fail to impress it on his mind that he had 
 become in fact a practical workman, since he could produce something 
 by which he could live. When he was fourteen years old he left 
 school, and a few days after his father asked him what he intended to 
 do for a living. " I intend," said SAM, " to be an apothecary. I have 
 thought it over, and it is a good business." "I don't know about 
 that," replied his father ; " I am afraid that I cannot afford the expense." 
 ''It is too late to consider that, father," replied SAM. "You know 
 that I had saved up forty-five dollars to buy a watch. Well, I took 
 my watch-money and paid the matriculation fees, and have entered 
 myself for a course of chemistry. To-morrow I am going to try to 
 find some druggist who will take me in his store for practical educa- 
 tion." Now it was not because SAM had learned to draw or beat brass 
 that he developed so much young American independence, but I am 
 sure that the consciousness that he could take care of himself as a 
 practical artisan had been partially brought out by work. This was the 
 view which his father took of it. He said I had given SAM confidence 
 that he could take care of himself. The industrial school does to a cer- 
 tain degree make boys and girls think of themselves as possible future 
 independent workers. Girls who would not have thought much in 
 the ordinary school about an occupation often hazard the conjecture 
 or form the determination to become teachers of art. I have observed 
 numerous instances of this. C. G. L. 
 
APPENDIX. 257 
 
 That this is not the method to be adopted is sufficiently 
 shown by what has been said, but the difficulties refer in 
 the main to the establishment of such industrial schools, 
 and it may be definitely said that thus far in Europe we 
 have only made experiments with such institutions. 
 
 Wherever we look, be it to Sweden or Denmark, to 
 Switzerland or Germany, we find different arrangements and 
 different views as to the kinds of work and the order in 
 which they are to be taught. Thus, for example, in the 
 Gorlitzer School of Ready Practice (Handfertiykeitsschule), 
 which consists of a course of one year, there are united 
 pupils from the most different schools, and of the most 
 different ages. BEUST in Zurich teaches by groups, while 
 GOTZE in Leipzig advocates teaching work in classes. 
 
 As for Austria, such institutions are as yet unknown to 
 her, but every day there is more discussion of the subject 
 of industrial teaching, and whoever has read DUMREICHER'S 
 brilliant pamphlet " On the Problems of the Policy of 
 Education in the Industrial Towns of Austria," and paid 
 attention to the latest message of the Minister of Culture 
 and Education on schools for training to callings and trades, 
 must admit that we can no longer put aside the " education 
 to work," but that we must soon organise it. But we are 
 taking a roundabout way to our work. Here we are 
 establishing " great trade centres of education, in which the 
 progressive school system (Foribildungscliulwesen) of each 
 province may find its intellectual point of support." From 
 this basis of operation the minor institutions for teaching 
 industries may be organised. With regard to our present 
 condition, this seems to be the best way, " since all educa- 
 tional institutions which are open to voluntary pupils are 
 formed by the natural development of culture in the people, 
 and therefore they grow like all other forms of social life." 
 
 That is accordingly the present predominating practical 
 principle which will tend to spread the material of culture 
 into wider and wider circles, and which aims at a substantial 
 calling as well as a substantial social condition corresponding 
 to it. This has, however, less to do with the actual school 
 basis, as it is especially shown in the public schools, at most 
 only so far as there is also " an education of the industrial 
 classes." The problem of the popular^schools Consists how- 
 
 /<&& LlB^lw 
 
 f OF THE n ~ \ 
 
 (UNIVERSITY) 
 V />,,* .,,4. s 
 
258 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 ever in the education of all, not merely of the working 
 classes, and it may, according to what must be called 
 "educating to work," be formed at the same time with the 
 organisation of industries, since the dexterity acquired in 
 the lowest classes will be of avail in the upper. There will 
 be indeed a vacancy filled in our public education, for as 
 SCHENKENDORFF of Gorlitz correctly remarks, " the present 
 generation is beyond all things being intellectually educated, 
 while all that could lead men to action is left aside. Hands 
 and eyes remain untrained, so that we find everywhere want 
 of tact or dexterity and of practical common sense ; yes, 
 even as regards simple sanitary relations, there is fault to be 
 found, since, as HARTWICH says in his monograph, " What 
 we suffer in," " If we overload the brain in the years of 
 growth, and thereby chain the body to the bench in the 
 schoolroom, the natural result will be intellectual smattering 
 and bodily weakness." 
 
 But the greatest difficulty which we shall encounter for 
 such work in the public schools is the want of properly 
 prepared teachers. It seems therefore a little sanguine when 
 LELAND simply requires from the teacher that he shall -be 
 able to draw a little, 1 because he can then with the help 
 
 1 It is enough that the teacher shall be able to draw a little, if he 
 has the ability to learn, and that rapidly. An intelligent class of 
 adults with a good handbook, or manual, and copies, may even dis- 
 pense with a teacher. It is not generally advisable, but it may be 
 done. It was precisely because I was confronted by the difficulty 
 which suggested itself to Inspector WERNER, that I said this, to en- 
 courage the vast majority of people who, especially in the United 
 States (it is less the case in Germany), ignorantly believe that to draw 
 at all, much more to design, requires either innate "genius" or extra- 
 ordinary labour. It is hard at present to find teachers for industrial 
 schools, but it is not hard for those who are fit to teach at all to form 
 elementary art classes and teach and learn together even drawing. 
 It is hardly worth saying that for the higher and better endowed 
 schools the teachers should of course be able to draw not a little, but 
 well. Experience has however taught me that by the system which I 
 follow, and which has been briefly explained in the preceding pages, a 
 mere child who has drawn very little indeed often makes as rapid 
 progress in design as a grown-up teacher who has passed through all the 
 years of a regular course in a first-class art school. And it is design, 
 not simply very good drawing, which is required for proficiency in the 
 minor arts. If it be true, as I have asserted, that decorative design 
 and these arts are easily learned by mere children and all the East and 
 the Tyrol and Spain prove it is it not reasonable that tfiey can be as 
 
APPENDIX. 259 
 
 of good manuals easily master the other branches. We 
 believe that the teacher must not only be able to draw very 
 well, but that he should know exactly in teaching drawing 
 what method to adopt, and what the results are to be. For 
 he must take an active and practical part in the minor arts 
 which he is to teach. He must be a master of the material 
 with which he is to deal, and all this is not to be done in a 
 hurry, or without previous preparation. 
 
 On this account care has been taken here and there to 
 practically educate teachers. At Naas in Sweden, at Emden, 
 where Kittmeister CLAUSON VON KAAS teaches, in Dresden, 
 and even in Gorlitz, there are such courses for teachers, since 
 it has been understood that only real teachers can take boys 
 in hand, and that there is not much use in setting even 
 an experienced workman to teach, though he should do it 
 under the eye of the master. 1 In Austria such a course for 
 teachers could be established at small expense in our 
 admirably organised and generally well furnished normal 
 schools. And this the pupil could further develop in the 
 public school. 
 
 Of course the establishment of work-rooms in the public 
 schools would entail expenses which would fall on the corn- 
 easily mastered by a teacher, who, though he may be but a little in 
 advance of his pupils, can still lead them. If I had begun by telling 
 the world that no classes or elementary schools could be carried on 
 without teachers who could "draw very well indeed," it would have 
 been many a year ere the hundreds of schools and classes which " Cir- 
 cular No. 4, 1882," called into existence would have been established. 
 Such a system, however, works more promptly in a country where the 
 people act for themselves. What effectively settles the question is the 
 fact that hundreds of classes have been formed and successfully con- 
 ducted by ladies and gentlemen who had a slight or amateur knowledge 
 of drawing with the aid of my Manual of Design and Drawing. It is 
 intended that a greatly enlarged and very much simplified and improved 
 version of this Manual shall appear with this work on Practical Edu- 
 cation. It will be arranged in series of easy consecutive lessons. 
 C. G. L. 
 
 1 This does not agree with my experience. But be it observed that 
 in the two hundred schools or classes of the Home Arts Association in 
 England, the teachers, and able ones at that, have always been found 
 when they were wanted. This has been fully proved by the remark- 
 able excellence and great variety of the work shown in the annual 
 exhibitions held in London of the work executed in classes in all parts 
 of Great Britain. C. G. L. 
 
2 6o PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 munity. But when we read the list which LELAND gives of 
 objects required for equipment and study, or the demands 
 made by SCHWAB in this matter, it is evident that the 
 expenses are by no means so great but that an intelligent 
 municipal government, or where this is too poor, societies or 
 private benefactors, may aid in the need. 1 It is not im- 
 possible that these schools can be self-supporting, since such 
 work as is worth anything can be sold, and the profit 
 appropriated to the school fund. Certain communes can 
 adopt the system and try the experiment, and from these 
 roots branches may extend in every direction. 
 
 We miss one thing in LELAND'S programme, as well as in 
 that of Germany and Austria. How, for instance, the art 
 schools are to be brought into accordance with the public 
 schools, as they have hitherto existed ; how much time 
 should be given to each theoretical or practical branch ; and 
 how many pupils can be taught in a single class, &c. 2 
 
 This union of the industrial with the public school as it 
 has been is, however, the head and cardinal question of 
 
 1 It has been found in the hundreds of schools and classes for 
 industrial art work established in England and America that societies or 
 private benefactors have always come forward to aid the work, and 
 that so generally that this aid may be always confidently relied on. 
 Very recently the Home Arts Association received an anonymous gift 
 of ^650. I avail myself of this opportunity to thank the giver in the 
 name of the Association. C. G. L. 
 
 2 I have stated in the pamphlet under review that my classes accord 
 with the public school in this way : the pupils are excused from two hours 
 every week of the regular course of study in order to attend my school. 
 They make up this lesson at home. I have also stated that about one 
 hundred hours is the minimum in which pupils can attain sufficient 
 knowledge of design for practical purposes, and also become familiar, 
 e.g., with modelling or wood-carving. I do not mean by this that 
 the boys and girls become artists at all, but that they do in this time 
 learn to produce designs fit to work out, and panels or ornaments 
 which will compare with common work and sell, may be seen by any 
 one who will visit the schools, or examine the engravings after photo- 
 graphs of our school work which were published in The Century. I 
 have received a great many orders for designs for brass work, and 
 these have been in every instance executed to the perfect satisfaction 
 of the purchaser by pupils from thirteen to fifteen years of age. For 
 these designs they have received from 50 cents to $2 each. As for 
 the number of pupils which can be taught in a single class, it depends 
 on capacity, circumstance, and age, to say nothing of the teacher. 
 C. G. L. ' 
 
APPENDIX. 261 
 
 the whole affair, if it is to be represented as capable of existing. 
 The entire overthrow of the present system and a complete 
 renewal will provoke absolute opposition among the public, 
 which is with difficulty brought to understand anything 
 new. As it is, especially in one or two-class country schools, 
 difficult in the limited time allowed for teaching to get 
 through the appointed studies, or do anything in addition to 
 the regular reading, writing, and arithmetic how much 
 more impossible does it seem to add to these other branches, 
 or, as they may be called, "practical hours of practice." 
 Where the children live near the school it may be done, but 
 in the country, where the children often go four or five miles 
 over a bad road to school, say in mountain land, where the 
 days in winter are still dim at eight in the morning, and are 
 dark at four in the evening, there can be no increase of 
 school hours. Nor is it much better in summer, when the 
 days are long, for the school garden, since then the parents 
 need the elder born to aid in thrifty home work or afield. 
 
 It is in this that the greatest difficulty lies how to prac- 
 tically carry out the idea of the industrial school. Yet this 
 "time question" is after all only a question of time, and 
 presents no difficulties that will not be overcome. Work 
 will be introduced to schools, and children become familiarised 
 with it, for whoever has learned to love it in youth in any 
 form will never in later life yield to idleness, be his rank 
 or station what it may. And then the moral and aesthetic 
 gain of the individual in the strife of life will show itself 
 in the progress of the whole. 
 
 CARL WERNER 
 
262 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 II. 
 
 EEPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF EDUCA- 
 TION IN THE UNITED STATES ON THE 
 LELAND SCHOOL IN PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 From the Report of the Commissioner of Education 
 (General JOHN EATON) for the United States for 
 the year ending 1883. 
 
 THE PUBLIC INDUSTRIAL ART SCHOOL OF THE CITY OF 
 PHILADELPHIA. 1 
 
 This school was established under the direction of CHARLES 
 G. LELAND, and opened on the first Tuesday in May 1881. 
 It was maintained by an appropriation from the funds of 
 the School Board, under control of the art committee, Messrs. 
 WILLIAM GULAGER, WRIGHT, SHEDDON, and COOPER. This 
 appropriation for the first two years was $1500, but only 
 half the sum was spent by the school, the rest being devoted 
 to teaching drawing in other schools, to an exhibition, &c. 2 
 
 The school began with 150 pupils of from twelve to fifteen 
 years of age, all sent from the public grammar schools, each 
 teacher of which was allowed to select a limited number of 
 applicants. Nine-tenths, if not more, of these were from 
 thirteen to fifteen years old. They were divided into two 
 classes of about seventy-five each one attending on Tuesdays 
 from three to five P.M. ; the other on Thursdays, at the same 
 hours. A class in brass repousse was held on Saturday 
 afternoons from two to five. 
 
 All the pupils were obliged to begin with lessons in design, 
 
 1 In America the word industrial is always used in its literal and 
 correct sense, and does not suggest the reformatory or penitentiary. 
 
 2 Subsequently increased to $?ooo, when the number of pupils was 
 raised to 200. Of this appropriation only about two-thirds was taken 
 by the school. Apart from rent and warming the rooms the expense 
 for each scholar did not much exceed at any time $5 (or l] annually. 
 Out of this all the teachers, except myself, were paid salaries after the 
 first year, and all expenses for materials, &c., defrayed. 
 
APPENDIX. 263 
 
 according to Mr. LELAND'S method of simple outline decora- 
 tive work in curves. As soon as a boy or girl could make a 
 design fit to be " put in hand " he or she was allowed to take 
 up any branch of work taught in the school 
 
 These other branches were embroidery, modelling in clay, 
 with colour and glaze (or barbotine), and rudimentary 
 decorative water and oil painting subsequently increased 
 by carpenter's work, turning, inlaying in wood or marquetry, 
 fret-sawing and cabinetmaking, mosaic-setting, and sheet- 
 leather work (for covering furniture). There is no definite 
 limit, however, as to the branches taught, the principle tested 
 being this, that any pupil who can design and has learned to 
 model in clay can turn his or her hand almost at once to any 
 kind of decorative art. This has been fully tested, as there is 
 no pupil in the second year who cannot turn his or her hand 
 successfully to anything taught in the school. The seeing 
 others work, the being in an atelier where many kinds of 
 work are going on, teaches them to regard them all as one. 
 
 The business of the school (i.e., purchasing art-materials, 
 paying all bills, keeping the accounts, calling the roll, and 
 looking after the children) was in the hands of Miss 
 ELIZABETH KOBINS, who was also treasurer of the Ladies' 
 Art Club. 1 
 
 The general direction of all branches of study, except design, 
 which was taught by Mr. LELAND, was under the charge of 
 Mr. J. LIBERTY TADD. 
 
 The teacher of brass repousse was THEODORE HEUSTIS ; 
 that of wood-carving, BERNARD UHLE ; of embroidery, Miss 
 L. Moss, who also gave her labour gratis for more than a 
 year. Being obliged to leave on account of ill-health, her 
 place was filled by Miss ANNIE K. SPRINGER. Mr. LIBERTY 
 TADD teaches modelling, painting, mosaic, and practical 
 pottery, a throwing or potter's wheel, or apparatus for 
 making vases, &c., having been provided. Carpentry, scroll- 
 sawing, cabinetmaking, and inlaying or marquetry are taught 
 by EUGENE BOWMAN (coloured). 
 
 1 Another institution, consisting of 200 ladies, who pursued the same 
 branches as those taught in the school, with the addition of oil and 
 china painting as usually practised, sketching from nature, and repousse* 
 on pitch. There is such a club in most American cities and towns. 
 Miss E. ROBINS is now Mrs. JOSEPH FENNELL. 
 
264 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 The school was from the beginning, an experiment to fully 
 ascertain what children could do, and not simply an insti- 
 tute to teach art. A want of appreciation of this fact on 
 the part of the public has been the source of the only 
 troubles which the school has experienced. The general 
 outcry has been, "Teach boys while at school a practical 
 trade by which they can get a living." The LELAND experi- 
 ment was made solely to find out what boys and girls are 
 capable of learning. The result has been to prove beyond 
 doubt that all children taking one or two lessons of two 
 hours each in a week in an atelier, can in two years' time 
 learn not one but several arts so well that they can obtain 
 paid situations at almost any kind of employment. 1 On one 
 occasion the head of a factory offered to take forty of the 
 designing class at once into paid employment. 
 
 No effort was made to sell the work of the pupils, but 
 much valuable and beautiful glazed and coloured pottery 
 was made, which had a high market value. The panels pro- 
 duced by the wood-carvers, owing to the ability of the 
 teacher, Professor B. UHLE, are decidedly superior to the 
 average work seen in cabinetmaking or furniture. There 
 are thirty boys and girls in this class (three coloured), and 
 there is not one who could not earn by carving $9 
 (;i, 1 6s.) a week. 2 All of the pupils in this class can 
 design a piece of work, model it in clay, and then carve it. 
 All the wood-carvers are encouraged to make their work up 
 in the carpenter's shop. 
 
 Orders are sometimes received and executed. These are 
 for designs, repousse, &c. It has been fully proved that if 
 the rooms or building could be provided with an outfit, the 
 school could be made to pay its expenses, as is the case 
 with the MIDHAT PACHA School in Damascus. This would 
 
 1 The quickness of perception or intelligence awakened by industrial 
 art work has an immense advantage over a single trade or merely 
 mechanical work, in this, that it enlarges " the capacities " to such an 
 extent that the learner easily masters any kind of calling or occupation. 
 This truth is one very little appreciated by the public. 
 
 2 One of the pupils, a coloured boy, obtained a paid situation as 
 carver in a factory while he was still working in the class. The 
 carving executed by these pupils was of a much higher character and 
 very far superior to any work of the kind by children in the London 
 Health Exhibition of 1884. 
 
APPENDIX. 265 
 
 require a special out-of-door agent to solicit orders and sell 
 goods. 
 
 A close study of the pupils individually, and many 
 inquiries by the director, developed these facts. 
 
 (i.) That one or two afternoon's work in the week at the 
 art school, fcr from interfering with the regular school 
 studies, aids them materially. This is the opinion of the 
 teachers in the grammar schools. 1 
 
 (2.) That the pupils in the art school began to take a 
 greater interest in reading, and that in visiting exhibitions, 
 or when seeing art work or tasteful manufactures, they 
 criticise what is before them with more ability than grown 
 persons display who have not been trained to understand 
 design and its applications. 
 
 (3.) That the children all regard the art work as being 
 attractive as an amusement ; and as the drawing is not 
 mere copying, but original design, they regard it also as 
 agreeable employment. If the bell did not ring to summon 
 them to cease, the pupils would apparently never leave off 
 designing, modelling, mosaic-setting, wood-carving, &c. In 
 one school of 87 pupils every one entered his or her name 
 for a place in the industrial school. 2 
 
 From the same Report. 
 PREPARATION FOR INDUSTRIAL ARTS. 
 
 Two circulars of information were issued by this office 
 in 1882 in response to this popular feeling and demand. 
 One prepared by CHARLES GODFREY LELAXD of Philadelphia 
 discussed the subject of industrial art in schools from a 
 practical standpoint. The experience of the author enabled 
 him to speak clearly on the topics presented, and to engage 
 the attention of readers to unusual interest. About 50,000 
 
 1 The intermediate relaxation and change to hand -work is a relief 
 and a healthy mental tonic. One needs to be personally employed in 
 such a school for years, closely studying meanwhile the results, to 
 realise the truth of this and of other statements in this work. 
 
 2 In every one of these cases the parents preferred requests that 
 the children should be allowed to enter the industrial art school. This 
 was after some understanding of its real nature had spread in tha 
 community. 
 
2 66 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 copies have been distributed to correspondents and appli- 
 cants, and have produced marked results. The circular has 
 been reviewed and warmly commended by educators in 
 foreign countries. Thus KARL WERNER, Government In- 
 spector of Schools at Salzburg, presented a review of Mr. 
 LELAND'S circular and an outline of industrial efforts in 
 European schools in the Liter arisclie Beilage der Montags 
 Revue, Vienna, April 23, 1883, in which he remarks that 
 " it was desired to introduce work itself to the school, and this 
 is what is treated of in a pamphlet by CHARLES GODFREY 
 LELAND, director of an industrial school in Philadelphia, 
 who seems to have practically solved a problem for which 
 Europe is yet hardly prepared." 
 
 III. 
 
 THE BRITISH HOME ARTS AND INDUSTRIES 
 ASSOCIATION. 
 
 In the year 1880 I published a little work, entitled "The 
 Minor Arts" (London, MACMILLAN & Co.), setting forth 
 the methods for self-instruction in leather work, wood- 
 carving, repousse, mosaic-setting, designing, and other 
 branches of industry. The preface contained the following 
 suggestion : 
 
 "It is greatly to be desired that in every village, or in 
 every district of the larger towns, ladies or gentlemen, able 
 to draw, and who are interested in providing employment 
 or in advancing culture among the poor, would found little 
 societies or schools for teaching the arts set forth in this 
 book, or similar ones. It would not be an expensive under- 
 taking. A room with tables and chairs, a supply of cheap 
 leather and leather waste, old newspapers, wood, sheet-brass, 
 paste, glue, and tools would be easily provided, and the 
 school, if properly managed, soon pay its expenses, and pre- 
 pare and qualify with taste applicants for many trades and 
 callings. Such schools would supply both amusement and 
 instruction for old and young, and effectually promote an 
 elementary and general knowledge of art. Drawing alone 
 
APPENDIX. 267 
 
 is not sufficiently attractive for the ignorant and uneducated, 
 but there are few \vlio will not practise one or more minor 
 arts. It would be well if circles, clubs, or societies could be 
 formed among young people of every class for the same pur- 
 pose, and for mutual instruction. I venture to assert that 
 with the instructions given, and a little knowledge of the 
 simplest elements of drawing, the majority of pupils would 
 in a few weeks attain a practical mastery of all of which it 
 treats. I shall only be too happy to communicate by letter 
 with any one forming such schools, classes, or circles, and give 
 any advice in my power as to their organisation or minor 
 details." 
 
 It was in accordance with this suggestion that Mrs. JEBB, 
 of Ellesmere, Shropshire, established, firstly, a class in art in 
 her own village, and then others by the aid of friends. All 
 of these formed a league or union for mutual aid and sup- 
 port. In time ladies and gentlemen in all parts of Great 
 Britain joined in the undertaking, and in November 1884 
 it finally took the form of the Home Arts and Industries 
 Association. This society at present has two hundred 
 classes in different villages arid towns, and the number is 
 rapidty increasing. The association consists of honorary 
 members who contribute each a guinea and upwards annually, 
 working members paying only half-a-crown. 
 
 Training classes for voluntary class-holders and other 
 members are now being held at the rooms of the association, 
 i Langham Chambers, Langham Place, London, "\V. In 
 these classes instruction is given in the various minor arts. 
 Eeaders are invited to visit them. Any one wishing to join 
 them can do so by paying one pound a month for instruction 
 in two branches, or on other terms by arrangement. 
 
 Independent art classes, wherever they exist, are invited to 
 join, or correspond with the association. Those who wish 
 to establish new ones of any kind may do the same very 
 much to their advantage. They will receive advice, be 
 supplied with the leaflets or brief manuals of instruction, and 
 with designs and models for teaching, either gratis or at cost 
 price, and they will also have the right of exhibiting the 
 work done in their classes at the Annual London Exhibition, 
 the first of which was held in July 1885, at 3 Carlton House 
 Terrace. ' 
 
268 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Ladies or gentlemen who will form clubs of five full paying 
 subscribers will be admitted as working members, and em- 
 powered to act as associates to establish classes, and receive 
 all aid needed. All members will be cordially received at 
 the weekly meetings of the association. 
 
 There have been held three annual exhibitions of the 
 work furnished by the classes from all parts of Great Britain. 
 They contained specimens of carved wood-work, embracing 
 much furniture of a superior description, a great variety of 
 very beautiful pottery, embroidery, repousse* metal work, 
 spinning, weaving, carpenter's work, admirable specimens of 
 mosaic made from broken china ware (an art first practised 
 in the H. A. and I. Association), and of many other arts. It 
 is strictly true that all of this work was such as to do credit 
 to good artisans, and not of that fancy amateur kind 
 generally seen of old in ladies' fairs. It may be here 
 mentioned that through the teachers of the H. A. and I. A. 
 the minor arts were extended to the People's Palace, the East 
 of London working-men's clubs, and to many similar institu- 
 tions in many places. 
 
 I add to the foregoing a list of the officers of the Home 
 Arts and Industries Association, with some extracts from its 
 circular. It is by far too modest, in the fact that it gives no 
 idea of what it has done since its classes (now nearly two 
 hundred and fifty in number) were established. I venture 
 to say with the utmost confidence that there is not an associa- 
 tion or society, charitable or otherwise, in Great Britain which 
 has, in proportion to its means, done so much practical good 
 during the same time, i.e., during the three years which have 
 elapsed since its establishment. 
 
 President. 
 The Earl BEOWNLOW. 
 
 Vice- Presidents. 
 
 iq. 
 Iford. 
 
 Maurice Adams, ESI 
 The Lady Marian A: 
 The Lady Ardilaun. 
 Mrs. Richard Bagwell. 
 Eustace Balfour, Esq. 
 Hon. Mrs. Richard Boyle. 
 The Countess Brownlow. 
 
 J. Comyns Carr, Esq. 
 Mrs. H. T. Clements. 
 Lady Colthurst. 
 Sidney Colvin, Esq. 
 The Countess Cowper. 
 The Lady Elizabeth Gust. 
 The Archbishop of Dublin. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 269 
 
 Albert Fleming, Esq. 
 
 The Lady Hampden. 
 
 The Lady Fitz Hardinge. 
 
 Miss Holford. 
 
 T. C. Horsfall, Esq. 
 
 R. C. Jebb, Esq. 
 
 The Countess of Kenmare. 
 
 Sir Frederick Leigh ton, P.R.A. 
 
 The Lady Louisa Hillingdou. 
 
 The Lord Monteagle. 
 
 The Lady Georgina Drummond 
 
 Moray. 
 
 Lady Musgrave. 
 The Lady Dorothy Nevill. 
 The Countess of Pembroke. 
 J. Hungerford Pollen. Esq. 
 E. J. Poynter, Esq., R.A. 
 Val Prinsep, Esq. 
 
 W. B. Richmond, Esq. 
 Lady Sit well. 
 The Lady Sarah Spencer. 
 Lady Stanley of Alderley. 
 Rev. F. Sutton. 
 Hon. Mrs. Alfred Talbot. 
 The Viscountess de Vesci. 
 The Marchioness of Water foril. 
 Louisa, Marchioness of Water- 
 ford. 
 
 G. F. Watts, Esq., R.A. 
 The Countess of Warwick. 
 The Lady Wentworth. 
 The Duchess of Westminster. 
 The Countess of Wharncliffe. 
 The Countess of Wicklow. 
 Hon. Mrs. Percy Wyndham. 
 The Dean of York. 
 
 Council. 
 
 *T. R. Ablett, Esq. 
 
 Eustace Balfour, Esq. 
 *W. A. S. Benson, Esq. 
 ^Bernard Bosanquet, Esq. 
 *The Countess Brownlow. 
 
 Richard Bourke, Esq. 
 
 Miss Fanny L. Calder. 
 *Rev. J. O. Coles. 
 *Albert Fleming, Esq. 
 
 Alfred Harris, Esq. 
 
 T. C. Horsfall, Esq. 
 
 Mrs. A. T. Jebb. 
 
 E. Hay Murray, Esq. 
 *Miss Louisa Jebb. 
 
 *Charles G. Leland, Esq. 
 *Mrs. Kellie M'Callum. 
 
 Miss E. Herbert Noyes. 
 *The Countess of Pembroke. 
 
 Hon. Emmeline Plunkett. 
 *Gilbert R. Redgrave, Esq. 
 
 Mrs. W. Le Fleming Robinson. 
 
 Miss Rowe. 
 
 Claude Vincent, Esq. 
 
 Mrs. G. F. Watts. 
 *The Lady Wentworth. 
 
 Miss Anna Hogg. 
 
 W. Bliss Sanders, Esq. 
 
 * Members of Sub-Committees. 
 
 Hon. Treasurer. 
 WALTER BESANT, Esq. 
 
 Secretary. 
 Miss DYMES. 
 
 Office and Studios of the Association. 
 i LANGHAM CHAMBERS, LANGHAM PLACE, W. 
 
 The object of the association is to spread a knowledge of 
 artistic hand-work among the people, the instruction to be 
 given in a manner which shall develop the perceptive 
 faculties and manual skill of the pupils, and prepare them 
 
2 7 o PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 for entrance into trades, whilst also increasing their resources 
 and enjoyments. The methods employed by the associa- 
 tion are: i. The organisation of classes in Great Britain 
 and Ireland, in which attendance is entirely, and teaching 
 almost entirely, voluntary. 2. The distribution to these 
 classes of selected designs and casts, and leaflets of informa- 
 tion. 3. The employment of Honorary Local Secretaries to 
 carry out the work in country districts. 4. The maintenance 
 of a Central Office and Studios in London, where both volun- 
 tary and paid teachers can be trained. 5. The publication 
 of a yearly report, in which successful experiments in class- 
 holding will be described. 6. The holding of a yearly 
 exhibition and sale in London, where the work done in 
 the various classes may be compared and criticised, and 
 certificates of merit, bronze, silver, and gold crosses awarded 
 for progressive attainment amongst the pupils. 
 
 The association differs from any other in its power of 
 assisting isolated workers in remote and poor districts, where 
 neither pupils nor teachers could conform to the regulations 
 enforced by existing agencies. 
 
 It is hoped that local classes, when self-supporting, will 
 become the germ of revived village industries. It has already 
 effected much in this respect. The following minor arts 
 are at present being taught in the local classes : Drawing 
 and Design, Modelling, Casting, Joinery. Carving in Wood, 
 Chalk and Stone, Kepousse Work in Brass and Copper, 
 Hand Spinning and Weaving, Embroidery, Pottery, and 
 Tile Painting, Embossed Leather Work, Mosaic Setting, and 
 Basketmaking. Others are practised to a smaller extent. 
 Owing to the continued and rapid development of the work, 
 and the consequent increase of expenditure, funds are greatly 
 needed at the Central Office. 
 
 The conditions of membership are that members contri- 
 bute ;i, is. and upwards per annum, while working 
 members, that is. all who hold classes, or otherwise in any 
 way give their services to the association, contribute 53. 
 and upwards. This entitles working members holding 
 classes to receive designs, leaflets, models, &c., in any one 
 subject. Working members who conduct classes in several 
 localities in the same subject may be called upon to pay a 
 separate subscription for each class. As working members* 
 
APPENDIX. 271 
 
 fees do not cover the cost of the office, studios, printing, 
 and supply of models and designs, the association is de- 
 pendent on donations and subscriptions from other members. 
 When desirable the Council appoints Local Secretaries, who 
 organise the classes in their districts. Rules are supplied 
 to them. Local Secretaries sending subscriptions to the 
 General Fund to the amount of ^9, 93. per annum can 
 nominate a student who will receive instruction gratis in 
 five branches during one session. 
 
 Classes are of two kinds : ist. Training classes held at 
 the studios, Or under paid teachers in any part of the country, 
 for the purpose of instructing amateurs who intend to assist 
 in the ordinary classes. To defray the cost of such a course of 
 lessons other amateurs are allowed to join unconditionally. 
 2nd. Ordinary classes in which amateurs give voluntary in- 
 struction to boys, girls, and sometimes adult working people, 
 and thus carry out the scheme of the association. 
 
 The question whether pupils in ordinary classes are 
 required to pay for their lessons or not must be decided by 
 local considerations, but the classes are eventually rendered 
 self-supporting by means of a percentage charged on the 
 work sold. The first outlay is met by local subscriptions. 
 Ordinary classes can be held in clubs, or in any available 
 public or private room or workshop. 
 
 Students are admitted to central training classes at a fee 
 of 2S. 6d. per lesson, and are allowed to work in the studios 
 between their lessons when there is room. A list and time- 
 table of training classes is issued at the studios, classes being 
 formed for the various arts according to the number of 
 students applying for instruction. All communications to 
 be addressed to the Secretary, Home Arts and Industries 
 Association, i Langham Chambers, Langham Place, W. 
 
272 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 IV. 
 
 A LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS ON 
 TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 As there are unavoidably defects in such a collection 
 as the following, the author will be obliged to any of 
 his readers who will kindly supply the omissions for an- 
 other edition. Address to the care of the publishers, 
 MESSRS. WHITTAKER & Co. 
 
 Ackermann. In welchem Sinne soil und darf der Unterricht 
 praktisch sein 1 (3 Bericht der Karolinenschule und desLelirennnen- 
 seminars zu Eisenach. 1881.) 
 
 Arthur Mac Arthur. Education in its Relation to Manual 
 Industry, by Arthur MacArtliur. New York : D. APPLETON 
 & Co. 1886. 
 
 A work deserving special commendation, as it is the best on its subject 
 known to me. In addition to much admirable original matter, it contains 
 a clear and comprehensive account of Industrial and Art Education in 
 the United States. C. G. L. 
 
 Artisan's General Technical Schools and Apprenticeship 
 Schools. Second Report of British Royal Commissioners. Also 
 Nature and Extent of Technical Training afforded English Schools 
 and Colleges. Second Report, do., vol. i. pp. 393-504. Also 
 Conclusions and Recommendations of the British Royal Commis- 
 sioners, do., vol. i. pp. 505-540. 
 
 Ayrton. The Improvements which Science can Effect in our 
 Trades and the Condition of our Working-men. Pamphlet. 
 
 Baines, E. and Curzon. Yorkshire Union of Mechanics' 
 Institutes. Pp. 31-50. Vol. iii. Second Report of the Royal 
 Commissioners of Technical Instruction. London. 1884. 
 
 Barnard, H. Special Instruction in Great Britain. Pp. 21- 
 250. Vol. vi. The American Journal of Education. Hartford. 
 1871. (By the same.) Scientific Schools in France : The Poly- 
 technic School at Paris. Pp. 130. (By the same.) Scientific and 
 Industrial Education in Europe. Special Report to the Com- 
 missioner of Education. Pp.784. Washington. 1870. 
 
 Barth und Niederley. Des Deutschen Knaben Handwerks- 
 buch. 4te Auflage. 1879. (By ^ ie same.) Des Kindes erstes 
 Beschaftigungsbuch. 2te Auflage. Leipzig. 1880. (By the same.) 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 Die Schulwerkstatt. Ein Leitfaden zur Einfiihrung der tech- 
 nischen Arbeiten in der Schule. Mit 103 erlauternden Abbil- 
 dungen. Leipzig. 1882. 
 
 Bartley, G. 0. T. The Schools for the People. Pp. 582. - 
 London. 1871. 
 
 Bauer, Max. Zur Frage des gewerblichen Lehrlingswesen 
 in der Gegenwart. 1877. 
 
 Belfield, H. H. Inaugural Address by the Director of the 
 Chicago Manual Training School. P. 
 
 Bell, J. L. The Training of Employes, or Superior Managers, 
 Foremen, Artisans in the Manufacture of Iron. Pp. 19-30. 
 Vol. iii. Second Report of the Royal Commissioners on Technical 
 Instruction. London. 1884. 
 
 Bender. Ueber das Arbeiten der Knaben in der Werkstatt. 
 Programm der Benderschen Anstalt zu Weinheim von 1846. 
 
 Beust. Die Grundgedanken von PESTALOZZI und FROBEL in 
 ihrer Anwendung auf Elementar- und Sekundarschulstufe. 
 Zurich. 1881. (By the same.) Das Relief in der Schule. Zurich. 
 1 88 1. (By the same.) Der wirkliche Anschauungsunterricht auf 
 der untersten Stufe der Grossenlehre. Zurich. 1865. 
 
 "Works worthy the attention of all who are interested in Practical 
 Education. C. G. L. 
 
 Blasche. Grundsatze der Jugendbildung zur Industrie, als 
 Gegenstand der allgemeinen Menschenbildung. Schnepfenthal. 
 1804. (By the same.) Der Technologische Jugendfreund. 5ter 
 Theil. Frankfurt. 1804. (By the same.) Sammlung neuer 
 Muster von Papparbeiten. Schnepfenthal. 1809. (By the same.( 
 "Wie konnen Handarbeiten bildend sein ? SchnepfenthaL 1811. 
 (By the same.) Die Papparbeiter. 4te Auflage. Schnepfenthal. 
 1811. (By the same.) Naturbildung. Leipzig. 1815. (By the 
 same.) Der Papierformer. Leipzig. 1819. (By the same.) Hand- 
 buch zu zweckmassigen Nebenbeschaftigungen der Kinder. 
 1819. (By the same.) Werkstatte der Kinder. 4. Theile, iter 
 Theil. Gotha. 1800. 2ter und 3ter Theil. Schnepfenthal. 1801. 
 4ter Theil. Gotha. 1802. 
 
 Boumann. Het onderwiss in handenarbeit en Denemark en 
 Zweden. (Instruction in Manual Work in Denmark and Sweden.) 
 Horn. 1879. 
 
 Bucher, B. Geschichte der technischen Kunste. Stuttgart, 
 1878. 
 
 Bucher, K. Die gewerbliche Bildungsfrage und der indu- 
 strielle Riickgang. Pp. 66. Padagogische Studien von W. REIN. 
 Vol. ii. Wien und Leipzig. 1877. 
 
274 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Carter, C. M. Industrial Drawing. Plan for a first year's 
 work. In the 47th Massachusetts Report. Boston. 
 
 Chapters on Labour as an Education, Education and the 
 Industrial Arts, and Education and Invention. Pp. 135-156. 
 
 Clark, J. S. Industrial Education. Address to the American 
 Institute of Instruction. 1882. 
 
 Clauson-Kaas. Ueber Arbeitsschulen und Forderung des 
 Hausfleisses. lies Heft. Bremen. 1881. (By the same.) Die 
 Arbeitsschule neben der Lernschule und der hausliche Gewerbe- 
 fleiss. (Separat-Abdruckausdem"Arbeiterfreund") Berlin. 1876. 
 
 Cousin, Victor. Education in Holland as regards Schools 
 for the Working-classes and the Poor. (Translation.) Pp. 299. 
 London. 1878. 
 
 Curtmann. Reform der Volksschule. Frankfurt a. M. 1851. 
 
 Cuyper, C. de. L'Enseignement technique superieur dans 
 TEmpire d ; Allemagne. Pp. 348. Liege. 1875. 
 
 Der Technische Unterricht in Preussen. Sammlung amt- 
 licher Actenstiicke. Pp. 313. Berlin. 1879. 
 
 Deseilligny, A. P. De Hnfluence de TEducation sur la 
 Moralite et le Bien-etre des Classes laboureures. Paris. 1868. 
 Ouvrage couronne par 1' Academic. 
 
 Deutsche Spiel- und Beschaftigungszeitung. Herausgege- 
 ben von J. H. ELM. Stralsund. 
 
 Eckardt. Die Arbeit als Erziehungsmittel. Wien. 1875. 
 , Edgeworth, M. Practical Education. 
 
 Eelshorn, Gustav. Die Clauson-Kaaschen Bestrebun^en be- 
 ziiglich des Hausfleisses und der Emender Handarbeitskursus. 
 (Separatabzug aus Schmollers Jahrbuch ftir Gesetzgebung, Ver- 
 waltung und Volkswirthschaft im deutschen Reiche. N. F. 5terr 
 Jahrgang. 2-3 Heft.) Leipzig. 
 
 Emsmann und Dammer. Der junge Techniker. Leipzig. 
 1876. 
 
 Enque*te sur 1'Enseignement professional. 2 vols. Pp. 440 
 (1864), 806 (1865). Commission de 1'Enseignement technique. 
 Pp. 1 86. Paris. 1865. 
 
 Erster Jahresbericht des Vereins fur Handfertigkeits- 
 unterricht in Gorlitz. 1882. 
 
 Garrett, P. C. Progress of Industrial Education. Philadel- 
 phia. 1883. 
 
 Gelbe, J. Handfertigkeitsunterricht. Pp. 112. Dresden. 
 1885. 
 
APPENDIX. 275 
 
 Genauck, C. Die gewerbliche Erziehung durch Schulen, 
 Lehrwerkstatten, Mus6en und Vereine im Konigreich Wurtem- 
 berg. Pp. 213. Keichenberg. 1882. 
 
 Georgens, Dr. Der Arbeiter auf dem praktischen Erziehungs- 
 felde der Gegenwart ; eine Zeitschrift. 1856. 
 
 Goddard, George. A volume on Mechanics' Institutes, en- 
 titled "George Birbeck, the Pioneer of Popular Education." 
 London. 1884. 
 
 Gb'tze. Die Erganzung des Schulunterrichts durch prak- 
 tische Beschaftigung. Leipzig. 1880. 
 
 Greard, M. L'Enseignement professional. (By the same.} 
 L'Enseignement primaire a Paris et dans le De'partement de 
 la Seine. Paris. 1878. 
 
 Greenwood, J. G. On Some Relations of Culture to Practical " 
 Life. Pp. 1-19. In Essays and Addresses. Owen's College. 
 London. 1874. 
 
 Grunow, H. Die gewerbliche Fortbildungs-Mittelschule. 
 Pp. 45. Preisschrift. Leipzig. 1872. 
 
 Guthsmuths. Mechanische Nebenbeschaftigungen fur Jung- 
 linge und Manner. Altenburg. 1801. 
 
 Gutsmuths. Mechanische Nebenbeschaftigungen oder prak- 
 tische Anweisung zur Kunst des Drehens, Metallarbeitens und 
 Schleifens optischer Glaser zur Selbstbelehrung. 2te Auflage. 
 Leipzig. 1817. 
 
 Ham, Chas. Manual Training. New York. 1886. 
 
 Hanschmann. Die Haridarbeit in der Knabenschule. G. H. 
 WIGAND. Kassel. 1876. 
 
 Herse. Der Handfertigkeitsunterricht fiir Knaben (Bran- 
 denburgisches Provinzialblatt, No. 21 and 22). Landsberg a. W. 
 1882. 
 
 Herzfeld. Handarbeit und Hausfleiss (als Manuscript ge- 
 clruckt). Hannover. 1881. 
 
 Heusinger, J. H. G. Ueber die Benutzungdes bei Kindern so 
 thatigen Triebes, beschaftigt zu sein. 1797. (By the same.) Die 
 Familie "Werthheim. 1798. 
 
 Hill, A. Our Industrial Schools. Contemporary Review. 
 January. 1882. 
 
 Hutzelmann, C. Lehr- und Uebungsbuch fiir den gewerblichen 
 Fortbildungsunterricht, mit einem Anhang. Pp. 196. Nurem- 
 berg. 1 880. 
 
 Huxley, T. Technical Education in Science and Culture, &c. ^ 
 London. 1882. 
 
27 6 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Illing. Wesen und Werk der Schulwerkstatte. Munchen. 
 1880. 
 
 Industrial Education in the United States. A Special 
 Report. U. S. Bureau' of Education, Washington. 
 
 Jarvis, E. Value of Common School Education to Common 
 Labour. Washington Bureau of Education. Circular No. 3. 
 
 i879- 
 
 Jende, P. Schule und Volkswirthschaft. Zeit und Streit- 
 fragen. Heft 773. 1886. 
 
 Jenkins, H. M. Report on Agricultural Education in North 
 Germany, France, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, and the United 
 Kingdom. Pp. 442. Vol. ii. Second Report of the Royal Com- 
 missioners on Technical Instruction. London. 1884. 
 
 Johnson. Education by Doing. New York. 
 
 Karl, Friedrich. Erziehung zur Arbeit, eine Forderung des 
 Lebens an die Schule. Leipzig. 1852. 
 A work which has had a great influence in Technical Education. 
 
 Kay, D. Memory : What it is, and how to Improve it. By 
 David Kay, F.R.G.S. London. 1888. 
 
 This work is, as regards theory in general, and many minor particulars 
 of expression, so identical with what is set forth in "Practical Educa- 
 tion," as to form a striking curiosity of coincidence. The authors, Messrs. 
 Kay and Leland, were, however, not aware of their mutual labours, and 
 the two books were in print together. Both have the same view, Mr. 
 Kay supporting it by exhaustive research and a thorough knowledge of 
 the modern school of physiologists, while Mr. Leland, though guided by 
 them, draws his conclusions chiefly from practical experience and personal 
 tests. They form, in fact, counterparts, and every person desirous of 
 exhausting the subject should read both. 
 
 Kehr, 0. Geschichte der Methodik. 3terBand. Gotha. 1881. 
 
 Kellner. Das Erziehungssystem Fr. Frobels. Stralsuntl. 
 1882. 
 
 Kirchmann. Geschichte der Arbeit und Kultur. Leipzig. 
 Gustav Meyer. 1858. (By the same.) Naturtbrderungen an 
 Erziehung und Unterricht. Eutin 1851. 
 
 Koller. Handarbeit in der Schule. (Die Praxis der Schwei- 
 zerischen Volks- und Mittelschulen.) Zurich. 1881. 
 
 Krause, F. W. D. Die Geschichte des Unterrichtes in den 
 weiblichen Handarbeiten. Pp. 89-136. 
 
 Lammers. Handbildung und Hausfleiss. Berlin. 1881. 
 
 Lannhardt. Les Ecoles techniques superieures de rAllemagne. 
 Revue de I'Enseignement. Paris. 1885. 
 
APPENDIX. 277 
 
 Legeorgie, J. Der Handarbeitsunterricht als Classen-Unter- 
 richt. Pp. 183. Cassel. 1878. 
 
 Leland, Charles G. Album of Repousse Work. Thirty-six 
 designs full size for work. Folio. New York. The Art Inter- 
 change Company. 1883. (By the same.) Twelve Manuals of Art 
 Industries. New York Art Interchange Company. 1881. (By 
 the same.) Industrial Education in Schools. Bureau of Education. 
 Washington. Circular No. 2, 1882. Sixtieth Thousand. (By the 
 same.) The Minor Arts. London : MACMILLAN & Co. 1880. 
 2s. 6d. Containing numerous illustrations, with practical instruc- 
 tions in design, wood-carving, and many other branches of art and 
 industry. (By the same.) On Industrial Art Education, a paper 
 read before the Social Science Congress held at Birmingham in 
 1885 ; also an address on " Design and Drawing in Schools," de- 
 livered at the Educational Conference in Manchester. (By the 
 same.) A New Series of Handbooks of Art and Industry, 
 carefully prepared for the use of classes in schools. London : 
 WHITTAKER & Co. 1888. (By the same.) A Lecture on General 
 Education, delivered before the Royal Society of Literature, in 
 June 1887. (By the same.) Practical Education (the present 
 volume.) London: WHITTAKER & Co. 1888. (By the same.) 
 A Lecture on Industrial Art Education, read before the Society 
 of Arts. London. 1885. 
 
 MacLaren, Walter S. B. Report to the Worshipful Clothes- 1 ' 
 workers' Company of London on the Weaving and other Tech- 
 nical Schools of the Continent. Pp. 1 1 8. London. 1877. 
 
 Magnus, P. Technical Instruction in Elementary and Inter- 
 mediate Schools. London. 1883. (By the same.) Introduc- 
 tory Address at the Opening of Finsbury Technical College. 
 1883. (By the same.) Education by Work, chiefly from the 
 Kindergarten view. 
 
 Marenholz-Bulow, Von (Frau). Die Arbeit und die neue 
 Erziehung nach Frobels Methode. 1866. 
 
 Mather, W. Report on Technical Education in the United 
 States and Canada. Pp. 1-84 (1-857, the Commissioners). Vol. ii. 
 Second Report of the Royal Commissioners on Technical Instruc- 
 tion. London. 1884. (By the same.) Notes on Technical In- 
 struction in Russia. Pp. 3-27. Vol. iii. Second Report of the 
 Royal Commissioners on Technical Industry. London. 1884. 
 
 Maurice, F. D. Representation and Education of the People. 
 Chapters from English History. Crown 8vo paper. London. 
 (By the same.) Learning and Working. Six Chapters on the 
 Foundation of Colleges for Working-men. i2mo. London. 
 1885. 
 
 Mayer. Der Handfertigkeitsunterricht und die Schule. 
 Berlin. 1881. 
 
27 8 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Michelsen. Die Arbeitsschulen in Landgemeiden in ihrem 
 vollberechtigten Zusammenwirken mit den Lernschulen. Eutin. 
 1851. 
 
 Nordisk Husflids-tidende. (The Northern Journal of Domestic 
 or Household Industry.) Kopenhagen. 1877. 
 
 Northrop, B. G. Education Abroad. 1873. 
 
 Pestalozzi. Lienhard und Gertrud. 1781. 
 
 Putzsch, A- Die Reorganisation der Gewerbeschule und der 
 von ihr erwartende Nutzen. Ein Beitrag zur Losung dieser Frage. 
 Berlin. 1879. 
 
 Raydt. Arbeitsschulen und Hausfleissvereine. Liu gen a. d. 
 Ems. 1879. 
 
 Reinhardt, Heinrich Pick. Die darstellenden Arbeiten in der 
 Volksschule. ( Eeferate vom Oesterr. Lehrtage. " FbtocMe.") Wien. 
 1879- 
 
 Reports, Catalogues, &c., in reference to Technical ^ Educa- 
 tion. Vide those of Cornell and Vanderbilt Universities ; the 
 Stevens Institute at Hoboken, New York ; the Eensselaer 
 Polytechnic Institute ; the Institute of Technology ; the Lawrence 
 and Sheffield Scientific Schools ; Cooper Union ; Auchmuty Trade 
 Schools ; Case School of Applied Sciences ; Hampton Institute ; 
 Lehigh University ; Colleges of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts ; 
 the Philadelphia School of Industrial Art, and of the Worcester 
 Free Institute. See also papers by E. E. WHITE, C. 0. THOMPSON, 
 J. D. RUNKLE, J. M. ORDWAY, C. G. LELAND, C. M. WOODWARD, 
 and many others in the proceedings of the Department of Super- 
 intendents and elsewhere. (Hints toward a Select and Descriptive 
 Bibliography of Education, by G. STANLEY HALL and JOHN M. 
 MANSFIELD. Boston. D. C/ HEATH & Co. 1886.) 
 
 Rissmann. Geschichte des Arbeiterunterrichtes in Deutsch- 
 land. Gotha. 1882. (By the same.) Die Bedeutung der 
 Arbeitsschule filr Schulerziehung (Oesterreicheischer Schulbote). 
 Wien. 1 88 1. 
 
 Robins, E. C. Technical School and College Building. Being 
 a Treatise on the Design and Construction of Applied Science 
 and Art Buildings, and their suitable Fittings and Sanitation, 
 with a Chapter on Technical Education. Demy 4to. with 25 
 Double and 70 Single Plates. London. 1887. 
 
 An indispensable work of reference to architects, builders, and managers 
 of technical schools. 
 
 Rockstroh. Anweisun g zur Modellirung aus Papier. Weimar. 
 1802. (By the same.) Belustigungen fur die Jugend beiderlei 
 Geschlechts, durch Selbstanfertigung mannigfacher technischer 
 Klinsteleien und Spielwerke. Berlin. 1836. 
 
APPENDIX. 279 
 
 Roscoe, H. E. Technical Education in France. Pp. 63. 
 Circular No. 6. 1882. Bureau of Education. Washington. 
 (By the same.) Examination of Witnesses in respect to Technical 
 Instruction. Vol. iii. Second Keport of the Uoyal Commis- 
 sioners on Technical Instruction. London. 1884. (By the same.) 
 Evidence in Respect to the Working of Calico-Printing. Pp. 1-19. 
 Vol. iii. Second Report of the Royal Commissioners on Techni- 
 cal Instruction. 
 
 Rossel, E. Leitfaden fur den Unterricht in den weiblicheu 
 Handarbeiten zum Gebrauch fur Schule und Haus. Pp. 59. 
 Berlin. 1881. 
 
 Runkle, J. D. Report of Industrial Education. Boston. (No 
 date.) 
 
 Russel, J. S. Systematic Technical Education for English 
 People. 8vo. London. 
 
 Salicis, G. Enseignement primaire et Apprentissage. Paris. 
 1878. 
 
 Salomon. Arbeitsschule und Volksschule. (Translated from 
 the Swedish.) Wittenberg. 1881. 
 
 Schallenfeld. Der Handarbeitsunterricht. Frankfurt. 1861. 
 
 Scheilder. Die Lebensfrage der Europaischen Civilisation 
 und die Bedeutung der Fellenbergischen Bildungsanstalten zu 
 Hofwyl. Jena. 1 839. 
 
 Schenkendorf, Von. Der praktische Unterricht, eine For- 
 derung des Lebens an die Schule. Breslau. 1880. 
 
 Schb'nberg, D. G. Handbuch der politischen Oekonomie. Pp. 
 890-904. Tubingen. 1882. 
 
 A work abounding in practical information on the subject of industrial 
 education. It is specially commended by Messrs. HALL and MANSFIELD 
 (Hints towards a Bibliography of Education). C. G. L. 
 
 Schultze, F. G. Die Arbeitsfrage. Jena. 1849. 
 
 Schwab, E. Dr. Die Arbeitsschule als Organ- Bestandtheil 
 der Volksschule. 1873. (-By the same.) Ueber Schulwerkstatten. 
 (Der Praktische Schulmann. Leipzig. 1874.) 
 
 Second Report of the Royal Commissioners on Technical 
 Instruction. London. 1884. For a condensed Review of 
 this Report by the late C. 0. THOMPSON, vide Circular of the 
 Bureau of Education, Washington, No. 3. 1885. 
 
 Siemens, C. W. Evidence in Respect to the Various Systems 
 of Education in the World in Relation to Technical Instruction. 
 Pp. 125-143. Vol. iii. The Report of the Royal Commissioner 
 on Technical Instruction. London. 1884. 
 
2 8o PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Slagg, J. Technical Teaching. Address to Working-men. 
 Manchester. 1884. 
 
 Stetson, Charles B. Technical Instruction, What it is, and 
 what American Public Schools should Teach. Pp. 284. Boston. 
 1874- 
 
 Stobbe, U. Lehrbuch fur den Handarbeitunterricht. Pp. 
 84. Leipzig. 1882. . 
 
 Sullivan, W. K. Technical Instruction in Ireland. Pp. 107- 
 1 19. Vol. iii. Second Report of the Commissioners on Technical 
 Instruction. London. 1884. 
 
 Technical Teaching. Subsidiary Aids to Instruction. Thrift 
 in Schools. Pp. 648. Sec. B. Vol. xiv. Vide International 
 Health Exhibition. London. 1884. 
 
 Thompson, C. 0. The Modern Polytechnic School, Inau- 
 gural Address delivered at the Opening pf the Rose Polytechnic 
 Institute, March 7, 1883. Pp. 27. Terre-Haute, U.S.A. 
 
 Twining. Technical Training. London. 1874. 
 Urban. Der Hausfleiss in Danemark und seine Verpflanzung 
 in die Schlesischen Notstandsdistrikte. Oppeln. 1882. 
 
 Wardle, J. Report on the Silk Industry. Pp. 29-106. Vol. iii. 
 Second Report of the Royal Commissioners on Technical Instruc- 
 tion. London. 1884. 
 
 Warren, S. E. Notes on Polytechnic or Scientific Schools 
 in the United States, their Nature, Position, Aims, and Wants. 
 New York. 
 
 Weinhold. Vorschule der Experimentalphysik. Leipzig. 
 1872. 
 
 White, A. D., President. Industrial and Scientific Education 
 in the United States. New York. 1874. 
 
 Wichern. Ueber Erziehung zur Arbeit insbesondere in An- 
 stalten. Hamburg. 1857. 
 
 Wolf. Ueber Handfertigkeitsunterricht und Hausfleiss. 
 Wiirzburg, 1881. 
 
 Woodward, 0. M. Fruits of Manual Training. Popular 
 Science Monthly. July 1884. See also a short notice of the 
 City and Guilds of London Institute. London. 1884. 
 
 Ziller, Dr. Grundlegung zur Lehre vom erziehenden Unter- 
 richt. 1865. 
 
 Zwitzer, A. E. PESTALOZZIS Stellung zur Handarbeit. 
 Ostfriesisc/ies Monatsblatt, viii. 9. 
 
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