art-education, either adding faculties of fine arts to existing institutions or establishing independent schools of art.

The most costly building for education now being erected in England is a technical school near Birmingham, for the study of every branch of industrial art, and which, when completed and endowed, will have cost the donor, who is a princely manfuacturer, about a million of money, sterling.

Owens College, at Manchester, a modern industrial university, is a similar institution, devoted more especially to science, and but recently professorships of fine art have been established in the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and London, while the complete plan of the government-establishment at South Kensington includes schools of architecture, sculpture and painting, navigation, music, mining and engineering, natural history, the science of food, and other educational agencies which may be described as technical; comprising together a National Industrial University, which may be called both an expression and satisfaction of the wants of modern society, as Oxford and Cambridge were of medieval society.

This change, which is so plainly developing in the education of adults, cannot exist here or elsewhere without having its reflex in the public schools in the elementary education of children.

People have to be prepared for industrial rather than contemplative lives; and the great division of labor which is now the rule in almost every occupation, makes it necessary for each of us to know some one thing very well indeed.

If we consider how large a proportion of occupations depend upon habits of accuracy and powers of observation, we shall see from this stand-point that all education tending to develop these characteristics will be most valuable in practical life, whether the individual be directly employed in constructive industry or not. In the formation of these habits no other agencies are more influential than the seeing eye and the cunning hand used in concert, the one in perception, the other in expression, both being indicative of the mental ability to perceive the truth. At the same time that the exercise of the senses of sight and touch reflects mental perception, it not unfrequently creates the power to perceive.

Over the door of every school of art or drawing-class-room I would have inscribed, in the words of the psalmist, "Thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things;" for the criticism which our right hand makes upon our knowledge, when attempting to draw for the first time something we thought we knew quite well, is apt to be a very terrible thing indeed.

And to any one who doubts this statement, and is a novice at drawing, let me suggest that he take a pencil and paper and sit down and draw a portrait from nature of the loveliest person he knows and admires. When done, submit it to the examination of his subject, and I prophesy that not only his hand but his eyes and his ears will teach him some very terrible things, generally relating to his own utter want of perception of the first notion of the beautiful—a lamentable condition, of which he had perhaps been unconscious until his right hand had made it known to him.

If drawing were of no use when acquired, it would still be worth all the time spent in acquiring it, because of itsi nfluence on the faculty of observation and its cultivation of the habit of accuracy. Allowing that drawing may be as remotely connected with a man's daily occupation as half the subjects he studied at school, that it is only a species of mental or manual gymnastics, yet the training he gets while learning to draw would make him a more reliable witness in the witness-box, more faithful in testimony and clearer in his evidence than if he knew nothing of form or had learned but superficially through his eyes, without his right hand having taught him the terrible things we all ought to know. There is, therefore, an educational as well as a commercial aspect of this question of industrial drawing, and it is difficult to realize which is the more important.

It has been the custom in Europe to speak of scientific and artistic education as secondary education; something to be undertaken when general or primary education

is either very far advanced or completed; as though a human being could be broken in by a certain set of exercises, and then hitched like a horse to a wagon, able to pull any load behind it.

I doubt whether this is as wise a method of procedure as mixing a little secondary instruction with primary from the first stages. Object-lessons, which are of so universal interest to children, are really elementary-art and science-instruction, and the best preparation for that advanced work in either which would come under the description of secondary education.

It must be taken for granted, then, that the arrangement of elementary education is undergoing a change, partly arising from the changes already made in the education of adults and partly from the increased value of skilled labor.

The change may be of two kinds: First, new ways of teaching old subjects; secondly, new subjects to be taught. My subject comes under the second heading.

Concerning this it may be said that perhaps no other subject has been so generally adopted in so short a time, by all nations of civilized men, as this subject of industrial drawing.

WHAT INDUSTRIAL DRAWING IS.

A painting has been defined as "something between a thought and a thing," the material expression of a thought.

A working or industrial drawing is something necessarily existing between a thought and a thing, between the idea and the fact, between conception and execution.

Only the rudest objects created by savages have been made without this medium of the drawing; and what the object shall be when completed must be a matter of accident, unless the idea be first permanently expressed by a design or drawing, and the same be regarded as a standard by which the work is to be judged.

The quality of this design or drawing governs the quality of the work, for the manufactured article is but an echo of the original design. And the value of the manufactured article in the market depends very largely on the skill displayed in the design; so that we have, by direct relationship, the value of many manufactures depending in a straight line on industrial drawing.

The two great arguments for studying the subject, therefore, are its necessity and its value, commercially and educationally.

Practical industrial drawing may be said to have two departments: First, mechanical or instrumental drawing; secondly, free-hand drawing and design; and by means of these two the constructive industry of the world is carried on.

By mechanical drawing accuracy of work is secured; by free-hand drawing and design, originality and beauty of workmanship are attained. Each is of more importance than the other in some departments of industry. Thus, in designing houses, buildings, bridges, machinery, mechanism, making surveys, &c., mechanical or instrumental drawing is of more importance than free-hand work; while in drawing designs for fabrics, such as carpets, calicoes, laces, stuffs, or for the ornamentation of paperhangings, oil-cloths, or designing for pottery, glass, metal-work, and furniture, generally, free-hand design is of more importance than mechanical drawing.

Yet each of these departments necessitates a certain amount of knowledge of the other, if great success is to be achieved, for the mechanical draughtsman and designer will sometimes find himself compelled to rely on his hand and eye when instruments fail, because they cannot think; and the ornamentist without a considerable knowledge of mechanical drawing cannot be a practical designer.

In all industrial design, therefore, the two factors of value are, first, accuracy of workmanship and, secondly, knowledge and skill in design, in varying proportions, according to the use for which the object is designed.

To secure the first, accuracy of workmanship, the workman must learn the use of the implements by which alone it is attainable, and study geometrical drawing to enable him to apply his skill. In default of this, uneducated workmen have to rely on rule of thumb and on methods and specifics picked up in workshops or copied from others, the

reasons for which are not understood, and which, therefore, in any emergency or new condition of the work, would be inapplicable and useless. To attain proficiency in the second, viz, knowledge and skill in design, is a longer process than acquiring mechanical skill. Here the eye must be trained to see the beautiful, the mind instructed by the study of good historic examples of pure ornament, the creative powers developed and those of observation strengthened by constant exercise. A long course of practical drawing, from examples, from objects, and from natural forms, in which the pupil learns, first, to see, and, secondly, to express, and, during which intelligent instruction is given to him, and the exercises are made to illustrate the principles and characteristics of good design; this alone can produce in the pupil both knowledge of drawing and skill in design.

The precise value resulting from skill in drawing is not difficult to define, for it is reflected on all sides, the workman, his employer, and the customer who purchases the work sharing in the possession of an increase of value in the object when completed. This leads to industrial wealth, in which all are benefited-the producer, the merchant, and the consumer.

CAN DRAWING BE TAUGHT IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS?

The question now arises, is it practicable to give instruction in this subject, or in the elements of this subject, in the public schools?

My reply to such a query is, that not only is it possible to give such instruction in them, but if you neglect to begin it there you put it almost beyond your power to give the instruction elsewhere. In other words, the public school is the only place where it is possible to teach industrial drawing satisfactorily, and the time to begin teaching it is that when the most elementary subjects are begun, during the first week which the pupil spends in a primary school.

So much of drawing is imitative and so much a matter of memory, that it is impossible to begin teaching the subject too early, when children are in the first stages of the merely imitative period and when impressions made and repeated on the memory are likely to last.

The subject and its several elements must of course be graded to the capacities of the pupils, and I think that has been done by the very elementary exercises with which children in primary schools begin to learn.

FALSE THEORIES.

Before speaking on the subject of how drawing should be taught in the schools, I will refer to the question of what is not industrial drawing.

Although it may have been conceded in past times that ability to draw was of some commercial value in several occupations and apparently necessary in many branches of industry, it used to be believed that to be able to draw well was a rare endowment, something for which its possessor had not worked-a gift, it was usually called-and people who were unable to draw never ceased wondering how those who could had come by this mysterious gift. Artemus Ward would have treated it as a conundrum, and have "given it up."

When people failed to find an explanation why some persons had this gift and others lacked it, they sometimes came to the conclusion that art-power ran in families, as some one else remarked that wooden legs ran in some families. Both observations were equally profound.

This false theory was at the root of all the wrong deductions and all the mystery. The gift being assumed, people were put to begin in the middle or at the end of the subject, and, when failure was the result, then the inference drawn (for people who could draw nothing else could draw inferences) was that the gift was not possessed.

Apply this reasoning to any other subject, say reading and composition. Assume reading to be a gift, not acquired by patient toiling through the alphabet and words of one and two syllables. Let the child arrive at 10, 15, or 20 years of age without

instruction, and then give him a play of Shakespeare to read or a leading article for a newspaper to compose. When he is found unequal to such preliminary exercises, conclude that reading and composition are divine gifts, which have been withheld from that pupil.

We should hardly have patience to listen to such unreasonable conclusions, and yet, be it said with all respect to inexperience, this is precisely what has been done and said and thought about the subject of drawing and design, and the confused reasoning of many about the subject even to this day and this hour.

The explanation why this has been and is so is that few teachers of the first order have been able to draw or brought into contact with drawing, so as to analyze it and grade it as other subjects have been studied and arranged for educational purposes. On the other hand, artists and draughtsmen have not been teachers, and they have, therefore, made no contribution to the elucidation of the matter.

So we have had the power to teach without the power to draw possessed by teachers and the power to draw without the power to teach in possession of the artists; that is, the teaching power and drawing power held by two different individuals, like the two detached halves of one bank-note, which it was impossible to unite, and which, therefore, remained waste paper to the end of the chapter. The drawing which used to be taught assumed this gift, and pupils were put to make drawings of subjects they could not understand, and, as a rule, generally failed. The subjects were usually pictures of some sort. It was supposed that when people had imitated the pictures made by others long enough and closely enough then they would be able to make some for themselves, original and satisfactory.

The precise relationship of these pictures to either industrial art or fine art was never exactly understood, but it was thought that in the artistic fabric they occupied a place somewhere in the foundation, and so they were thrown into the educational trenches and piled up as chance decided.

DRAWING WORTHLESS AS AN ACCOMPLISHMENT.

The young lady who took drawing as one of the accomplishments was visited by the special teacher, and, having chosen her subject, was put through it somehow. If her gift was for faces, she might choose a lithograph-copy of one of Raffaelle's Madonnas; if for landscapes, one of Turner's pictures, such as the Dream of Carthage; if Providence had bestowed the love of animals upon her, one of Landseer's monarchs of the glen might be her choice to draw.

The only way of describing the accomplishment of that drawing is that she was put through it. Completed, it would be carried home in triumph when the holidays came, to startle her parents and astonish her friends, and the work would be equal to the task, for, like its reputed author, that drawing had been fearfully and wonderfully made. That sort of drawing treated as an accomplishment or pursued as an amusement was absolutely worthless. It never taught anybody anything. Ask a young lady, whose choice pictures adorned the ancestral walls, to draw you anything you wanted, and you might be sure she would reply that that was not her style. She had been taught to draw some one thing, as a parrot is taught to say one thing, and her skill had the same relationship to drawing as the parrot's would have to language.

This was not industrial drawing. It was trickery, not education; and in considering this subject we may be sure that such quackery and specifics as that must be disearded, root and branch, before we begin to understand it at all.

We must clear the decks of all the "gift" and "genius" cargo, and throw overboard all beliefs in specifics and all disbelief in the equal ability of all to do the work required from each, and then lay over on a new tack altogether, which is to be a rational course leading us somewhere worth going.

HOW IS INDUSTRIAL DRAWING TO BE TAUGHT IN THE SCHOOLS ?

The question of how industrial drawing is to be taught in the schools may be divided into two phases: (1) By whom is it to be taught? (2) What are the subjects to be taught?

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From experience here and elsewhere it would appear that the only way in which the whole of the school and classes can be reached is by the regular school-teachers undertaking the work of teaching drawing. The employment of special teachers to give instruction in elementary drawing to the pupils of public schools, because the teacher is incompetent to do it, is both a reflection on the ability of the teacher and a magnifying of the difficulty of learning to draw in the eyes of the pupil.

The most satisfactory method of introducing drawing into the schools is for the school-committee to employ a good teacher of drawing to give normal lessons to the teachers of the public schools, taking them over the course of work adopted for the schools and which they will have to teach. Then the special teacher may act as supervisor of the work carried on by the regular teachers in the schools, and also give instruction in more advanced subjects to pupils in the high schools. By such an arrangement the responsibility of the regular school-teacher is not decreased, nor her influence over her pupils weakened, as would inevitably be so if a special teacher took her class out of her hands because she was unable to teach it.

Suppose that the teachers have had no instruction, then they should be taught a few lessons before beginning to teach the subject, and this will enable them to keep well ahead of their pupils. It is always to be remembered that drawing is so much a matter of the understanding, so much a question of arithmetic and geometry, that teachers are more than half educated to draw before they draw a line; and, therefore, it is not unreasonable to say they are competent to teach it before they have had much personal instruction.

I have observed a general agreement among experienced educators that the only practical means by which this subject can be generally introduced is by the employment of the regular teachers to teach it. I may add, also, from a careful scrutiny of the results following both experiments-first, the teaching by special teachers, and, secondly, the teaching by the regular teachers-that the best results follow the teaching by the regular teachers, and, therefore, on all accounts, it is the best arrangement to make.

THE SUBJECTS TO BE TAUGHT.

It will be seen, from the description already given of what industrial drawing is, that the two broad divisions of the subject are (1) mechanical, geometrical, or instrumental, and (2) free-hand drawing and design, &c.

What is required in the workshop we must teach in the schools, or, rather, we must make the foundation for workshop-skill and practice by the education given in the school-room. That is really the great revolution in teaching the subject which is now going on. Instead of teaching the child to produce pretty sketches, of no use or value to anyone, we have to teach him accuracy of work and originality.

The basis of all industrial art is geometrical drawing, and, therefore, it forms the most important element in industrial drawing.

Every child should be taught the use of the ruler, square, and compass, as soon as he begins to draw, to a degree suitable to his comprehension. The use of these implements, by which a high standard of accuracy can be attained even by a child, will fix a standard of accuracy in the child's mind that will influence all his work, whether done by the free hand or mechanically. This mental standard of accuracy constitutes one-half, at least, of the power to draw, for it creates the knowledge of good and evil. Hand-skill comes as a necessity of this knowledge of right and wrong; comes by practice, as inevitably as that a hungry child finds the way to its mouth.

Visible expression is a reflex of the mental image. The first thing for us to do, then, is to insure a correct image or idea in the brain. If you want a child to have a correct idea of the difference between a square and an oblong, let him construct both figures with the ruler and compass, mechanically accurate, the work of his own hand, and forever afterward, when he has to draw these forms by the free hand, he will have the true form in his mind and eye, haunting him like his conscience, and a critical power behind his hand which will be content with nothing less than truth.