Forms are either regular or irregular, the first being comparatively simple of comprehension, the second more difficult to understand and interpret. It is by a knowledge of the regular we can estimate the character of the irregular, its irregularity. The obvious progress, therefore, is to become acquainted, first, with the simpler geometrical forms, and then to go on to the more complex shapes, either of curvature or of perspective effects.

How the subjects should be arranged in the natural order of progression, I will now endeavor to describe, taking the schools in the order of

(1) Primary;

(2) Grammar; and

(3) High schools.

PRIMARY SCHOOLS.

In primary schools, for scholars between the ages of 5 and 8 or 5 and 9, the following subjects of elementary drawing may be taught: (1) Geometrical definitions, forms, ruled or struck; (2) free-hand outline-drawing, from copies on blackboard or from cards on slates; (3) original design, elementary; (4) drawing from dictation; and (5) drawing from memory.

This may seem a formidable list of studies for babies between the ages of 5 and 9 years. It is, however, formidable only at first sight. For, if we look closely into it no one of the subjects alone is difficult if the exercises are kept simple, as they should be. And, if no one is difficult, it becomes the question whether any one should be alone tanght, or all five.

You will observe that they are all only variations of the same exercise, and not altogether different subjects. Thus, if under the head of No. 1, geometrical definitions, a square of two inches side be drawn, and under the head of No. 2, drawing from the blackboard, the same square be drawn free-hand, and under No. 3, original design, the square be filled with lines or little circles or crosses, and under No. 4, drawing from dictation, the square be drawn, step by step, from the teacher's description, without a copy, and under No. 5, drawing from memory, the square and the design already made be drawn from memory, without either description or copy, then, you would have five different modes of teaching the same subject, which, by their variety, I claim, will teach it to the child more interestingly and more efficiently than if only one were adopted. In the regularly alternated lessons, more variety of subjects should be actually resorted to by the teacher, for, the less monotonous the lessons, the better the children will draw. It has been questioned whether children so young as those between 6 and 12 years of age should be allowed to handle ruler and compasses; whether it is possible for them to learn the use of these implements so young.

As to the possibility, I may say that in the English national schools the children are annually examined by the government-inspectors in three subjects of drawing, viz, geometrical drawing, object-drawing, and free-hand outline-drawing. The limit of age of the pupils in this grade of examinations is from 6 to 12 years. Having prepared many thousands of such children for these examinations and seen many thousands pass them, for a period of nearly twenty years, I, for one, am prepared to believe in its possibility.

And if any objector raises the argument that American children are less intelligent than Europeans, I am prepared, from my own observation, to deny so ridiculous a state

ment.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.

It is of some advantage to a teacher to be the parent of a crowd of small children upon whom he has the right to experiment. That is how I am situated, and their occasional presence in my studio, as subjects of experiment, is some compensation for other trials which cannot be imagined by the childless and need not be described by parents. Between the ages of 3 months and 12 years I have had nine children to experiment on, and so I can catch one at almost any age, limited to 12, and test any theory upon him

without undue cruelty to the offspring of my neighbors or employers. Of the age of 4 I have a little girl who enjoys the rudest health and a power of destructibility which in itself is a sufficient evidence of original sin. She has been recently introduced by me to two sets of instruments: the first, a knife and fork; the second, a pair of compasses. The use of the compasses she acquired in about five minutes, and her circles have the merit of being round. She soon discovered which point of the compasses would stick into anything and which point made a black mark, and can be trusted to amuse herself with the instrument without imminent danger to anything in particular. But about the use of the knife and fork, the tale is not so satisfactory. Suicide was imminent when she brandished her new weapons and bodily danger to all within a certain radius of her experiments. She eats now with a spoon.

You know the story of the three men who went to sea in a bowl. It concludes:

Had the bowl been stronger
My song had been longer.

Had little Winifred's life been less precious she might yet be struggling with a knife and fork.

With this experience I am prepared to maintain that a child can be taught the use of a pair of compasses before it can handle a knife and fork, though from my observation I believe the time will come when she will be able to handle a knife and fork also. Concerning drawing from the blackboard perhaps I need say nothing, because it is generally conceded that children may be taught to draw by use of blackboard-illustration better than by other methods alone. Drawing from dictation, in which the teacher describes the size, position, and shape of simple forms, without illustrating on the board or allowing the children to have any copy before them, and the children have to draw from the mental image created by the teacher's verbal description, is a most invaluable exercise, both in drawing and in its influence on other studies. It creates close attention on the pupil's part and enables the teacher to find out whether the terms used in teaching are understood by the pupil; if not, the drawing clearly shows the extent and nature of the misunderstanding. The exercise keeps the teacher alive to the value of clearly-given instruction, concisely expressed, and the practice of lessons so given is as interesting to the children as solving a puzzle, for they are unconscious of how the drawing will turn out, and their curiosity is aroused as each line is added and the form of the pattern or object begins to develop.

Drawing from memory is as important and as necessary as drawing itself. We draw that we may learn, not learn to draw for the sake of drawing. It is as easy to remember anything we have drawn as to remember how to spell the common words, and will eventually be as easy to reproduce any design we have ever made as an act of the memory, as it is to remember the names of the States or of foreign countries. That is a valuable power, to be as certainly obtained as the ability to draw in the first place. Perhaps the one subject in the list of studies for primary schools about which people express the most surprise is that of

ORIGINAL DESIGN.

To understand it we must remember that design consists in re-arranging old materials, as well as in inventing new forms. A cipher or unit of design, which may have been in use for ages and in all countries, may be so disposed as to its arrangement as to make an invention or design, and in teaching the subject this is the form which the exercise takes. A leaf drawn from the blackboard, taken as the subject, and some condition as to its use being given, such as that it shall be repeated round a center, to to fill a square or circle, or repeated in a horizontal direction, to make a border, any child who can draw at all will be able to exercise his ingenuity and skill in arranging such material. Or, even if a natural form be considered too difficult, a series of arbitrary signs or forms may be used, such as three sizes of circles, or thick and thiu lines, or curved lines only, or a contrast of curved and straight lines, to be so used by the child as to produce a pleasing arrangement.

This is not done so much for the achievement which comes of it as that the child shall feel the necessity of arranging something, feel master of his lesson, and do it well or badly as he can, but do it somehow.

I have seen a room full of children in a primary school absorbed in designing, so completely absorbed as hardly to notice the presence of visitors, and out of a class of forty children I have picked the designs of nearly twenty as being not only original but tasteful.

If I am asked whether it is well to thus tax little children, I should say that drawing is much less of a tax than even the elements of arithmetic, for in the one there is present enjoyment and in the other the labor of remembering tables. Moreover, it has been wisely said by a lady who made mankind her study, "Man is a designing animal;" and, if so, the faculty of design may as well be gently exercised from the first, and in a useful direction, as to let it run to seed or impel its owner into mischief and trouble as a vent for this creative faculty.

But the work of children in primary schools must necessarily be very imperfect. It would be a dreadful catastrophe to find a child in a primary school who could either draw well or do anything else well, except look happy and have a good time. The seeds, however, should be planted early, if they are to grow strong, and every idea which a child fairly lays hold of before the age of 10 is going to influence all the afterlife.

GRAMMAR-SCHOOLS.

In the grammar-school-period, extending from 8 or 9 to 15, we have an average of six years, the time when the great mass of the people receive their education. From the grammar-school the boy goes into the workshop, or office, or store, and his opportunities of improvement afterward are only such as he can find in his leisure time, if he has any. It is here, therefore, where the actual education of the mechanic is given, for, though the professional man passes through the high school, and university, and the technical school before he is supposed to be fit for professional work, the mechanic leaves the grammar-school for the practical duties of life. With the experience already gained in the primary school, the drawing in the grammar-schools may be made thoroughly serviceable to the future mechanic; and before he leaves school, at 15 years of age, he may become a practical draughtsman, wanting only the knowledge of specialties to be able to apply his skill to any industrial process requiring delicacy of hand and nicety of workmanship.

In the grammar-school the pupil should be taught the three subjects of (1) plane geometrical drawing, (2) model- and object-drawing, and (3) original design, occasional lessons only being given in dictation- and memory-drawing.

Concerning the time which should be given to drawing, remembering its importance as a subject of practical education, two hours per week could profitably be devoted to the subject; that is, if strong results are to be expected; and if this be distributed over three subjects, giving 40 minutes to a lesson, a material progress may be made each year.

We have been at work for too short a time on this methodical instruction in drawing to see the results which other countries have already secured. But we have seen enough to prove that it depends on whether we teach drawing sensibly or not at all, which will settle the question as to whether America shall become an artistic country, with her art-wealth created by her own citizens, and not imported in foreign ships. The question of whether drawing can be well taught by the regular teachers and whether designing can be taught in the grammar-schools has been fairly tried and finally settled by our experience in Boston, and settled triumphantly in the affirmative. Many years ago that most sagacious of educators, the superintendent, Mr. Philbrick, not only decided the matter in the affirmative, but created the examples by which it could be commenced. Our more recent experience has only carried his plans a step further, not altered or changed them; but a more generous confidence in the

value of this branch of education has enabled us to develop his ideas into practical, educational results.

The annual exhibitions of the public schools of Boston, when every class displays exercises in every subject taught in it, so far as drawing is concerned, have placed beyond all question or cavil the fact that children can be taught to draw and taught to design. And in the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., where the subject has been introduced into the schools less than two years, I have seen designs for cotton-prints, for wallpapers, for encaustic tiles, and also elementary exercises from each class of the grammar-schools, which were quite remarkable for originality and purity of taste.

All that remains for us to consider is whether the results attained have that practical value in education which has been claimed; the possibility of attaining them is placed beyond discussion.

In the grammar-schools, the elements of building, construction, and planning have been sometimes taught, with much interest to the pupils, and a boy who is set the task of planning a house will soon learn more about houses than he ever cared to know before.

HIGH SCHOOLS.

I look forward to the time when our high schools shall not only educate refined men and women, as they do now, but by the thoroughness of their education in art produce men and women as well fitted to become artists and designers as school-teachers. There is a place in high-school-education for the study of art.

Some time should be allowed for studying the beauties of nature and art. The Greek poets produced no better work than Greek sculptors, and the study of form, color, and industrial design is at least as important to the human being living in the nineteenth century as ancient history or the geography of Japan.

In our Boston high schools, applied design takes the place of elementary design as practiced in the grammar-schools and I have during the past month examined (1) designs for lace-collars and lace-curtains, (2) designs for porcelain tea-cups and saucers, (3) designs for oil-cloths, (4) designs for cotton-prints for dresses, (5) designs for encaustic tiles, and (6) designs for paper-hangings, carpets, hearth-rugs. Moreover, if these designs do not show the skill of the greatest masters, I am prepared to say that they do show an absence of wrong principles and bad design. The pupils have been taught enough to know what is suitable to the fabrics or objects they are designing; and, though their work is not so refined, chaste, and beautiful as we could wish, it is infinitely better than the noisy vulgarity in design made by people whose sole object is to create a sensation, and to be purchased by those who must be loud, if alive.

We are prospecting, seeing the lay of the land, and can only at present make a provisional report; but, so far as we have seen the promised land of the future, there will come a time when industrial education must, from its very interest and its adaptability to the wants of the young, form a very important part in the education given in the public schools.

The average amount of time spent in schools by children is nearly 10 years. Those years are responsible for something. Life and its duties are serious matters, and school prepares us for all, either well or ill.

There is much talk and discussion in these latter days about the high pressure we are putting on children. Sage committeemen examine the handwriting of a class, and, finding only one flourish in the tail of a g or h, come to the conclusion that we are piling up the educational agony, and must drop all the fancy subjects and stick to reading, writing, and arithmetic.

"We must give up singing and drawing," said a school-committeeman to me a short time ago, "and give more time to geography and spelling; it's not done as well now as when I was at school, when we had none of these new-fangled notions to bother us. The children are crowded up. Why, only a few days ago my neighbor's daughter came into my parlor to examine the design for our new carpet, and spent her evening in sketching it, and instead of that she ought to have been having a good time or been

at a lecture. What's the good of singing? What's the good of drawing patterns for carpets? And then it makes the rising generation upstarts. Only last Sunday I overheard a boy at the Sunday-school say my flowered satin waistcoat was an instance of bad design, for it would take three Mr. Browns to show the whole pattern, and happily there was only one. We must stop this high pressure; it's agoing to kill off our boys and girls."

I confess that I sympathized with this gentleman, and asked him how many of his children it had killed off on an average. He replied it didn't matter to him so much, because he hadn't any children of his own, but his neighbor Dobbs had, and it was very hard upon Dobbs. To him I observed that I had the advantage or disadvantage, as it might be variously considered, over him, for I had a whole lot of children of my own, and could study from nature the effect of the high pressure of singing and drawing on average children, and I observed that, when my children were particularly happy, they sang the pretty songs they were taught in school, of their own free will and because they loved to sing; and when they were confined at home by a wet or frosty day they came crowding me out of my study to show them how to make their design for next day or the day after, and took as much comfort out of it as they would in emptying the sawdust out of a doll which had been in a railway-accident.

I said, addressing this same committeeman, "and, therefore, allow me to say to you, whose children are those of the spirit, that when you undertake in your wisdom to legislate for my children of the flesh and indulge in your fantastical and ridiculous ignorance of childhood-nature, and suppose spelling and geography are better for them than singing and drawing, I am going, as a father and a teacher, to stand right in front of your theories and impeach you as being guilty of cruelty to animals, and as one who, knowing nothing of children, are experimenting on an offspring of the brain, a bodiless child, a myth of your sterile conception, and we, who have to wrestle with childhood's sorrows, difficulties, and troubles, have to pay the penalties of your crotchets, mistakes, and unwisdom. Get out."

And so we agreed to disagree. And I claim that, if music lightens the load which human beings have to carry and if drawing helps them to an occupation in the industrial epoch we are now entering, we ought to give the one and teach the other, as valnable helps in different ways to the average child.

There is another phase of the question, not altogether unimportant. It is, that, of all the subjects of education taught in the public schools, the power to draw well by an ordinary child is worth more in the open labor-market of to-day than any other subject taught in the public schools.

Good writing, good arithmetic, good general knowledge, are all worth something. Let the boys or girls who stand at the head of their classes in these subjects apply for employment where their attainments can be utilized, and let a boy or girl standing equally high in the subject of drawing apply for employment in a lithographer's shop or draughtsman's office, and I say, with some knowledge of the subject, that the boy who can draw is worth twice as much as the boy who can write, and can earn twice the wages for his skill. In conclusion, the results arrived at by our experience up to the present time may be thus stated:

(1) This country in its educational provisions has not comprehended the subject of industrial drawing. As a consequence, the skilled labor which results from its study is not generally obtainable from native mechanics. The industrial products of a people lacking taste are less valuable than those in which taste is displayed.

(2) Industrial drawing can only be efficiently taught in the public schools by the regular teachers, and therefore its introduction into any system of education need not be costly, and the extra expense at first incurred is limited to the temporary employment of a special teacher.

(3) It has been demonstrated by actual experience that every sane and physically sound child can be taught to draw well; that, in the large majority of the occupations which children of the public schools will eventually be called to fill, skill in drawing