city. This view of the matter would seem to justify some expenditure for this purpose from the annual appropriation. The teaching of drawing and music in our schools and the expenditure for music and decorations as a feature of graduation exercises must be justified largely on the same grounds. In view of the general interest shown by our teachers and pupils in maintaining a good record of attendance, I believe that a small appropriation for desirable pictures to be distributed to the schools and schoolrooms making the best attendance records for each month or for the entire year would be one of the best possible educational investments of the small amount required. [From Taunton, Mass., School Report for 1895, pages 35-36.] There should be in every room, to relieve the too staring blankness of the walls, something to please the eye, to cultivate the taste, to stimulate and to satisfy the mind's many and many-sided needs. There could be typical examples of natural animal, vegetable, and mineral products-specimens of manufactured articles. There could be portraits of the men who have made our history, men distinguished in every field of usefulness. There could be photographs of wonderful natural features and phenomena; of historic places and buildings; of masterpieces in architecture, painting, and sculpture, and of the mighty achievements of mechanical skill and engineering. There could be drawings to show the elements of beauty in form, and to illustrate harmony in color combination. With such, the whole atmosphere of the schoolroom would be changed. Stimulated by such, the pupil would breathe in more easily the spirit of patriotism, would the better understand himself and his environment. Becoming more familiar with the good, the beautiful, and the true in man and in nature, he would unconsciously imitate. There would be awakened within him truer and higher standards of life and living, and he would thereby be the better enabled to judge between the true and the false in circumstance, between the right and the wrong in conduct. The foundation of error has for its corner stone ignorance. Error easily becomes criminal through unenlightened will. Such surroundings as these would awaken and cultivate admiration-admiration for that which is worthy of it. "It is by admiration only of what is beautiful and sublime that we mount up a few steps toward the likeness of what we admire." [From Report of Board of Education of Omaha, Nebr., Public Schools, 1895, page 12.] I wish particularly to commend the efforts of teachers and principals who have made their rooms and buildings attractive by means of handsome classic pictures and pieces of statuary. The effect on the children must be elevating and refining. The introduction of cheap chromos and pictures of a poor, indifferent character is to be condemned. They should have no place in the schools. The education of the mind by articles of grace and beauty kept constantly in view is quite as useful and helpful as the education derived from books. RUSKIN ON THE DECORATION OF SCHOOLROOMS. Before this question had been agitated by Mr. Perkins and Professor Philbrick, John Ruskin had written as follows on the subject: Hitherto, as far as I know, it has either been so difficult to give all the education we wanted to our lads that we have been obliged to do it with cheap furniture in bare walls, or else we have considered that cheap furniture and bare walls are a proper part of the means of education, and supposed that boys learned best when they sat on hard forms and had nothing but blank plaster about and above them whereupon to employ their spare attention; also that it was as well they should be accustomed to rough and ugly conditions of things, partly by way of preparing them for the hardships of life and partly that there might be the least possible damage done to floors and forms in the event of their becoming during the master's absence the fields or instruments of battle. All this is so far well and necessary as it relates to the training of country lads and the first training of boys in general. But there certainly comes a period in the life of a well-educated youth in which one of the principal elements of his education is, or ought to be, to give him refinement of habits; and not only to teach him the strong exercises of which his frame is capable, but also to increase his bodily sensibility and refinement and show him such small matters as the way of handling things properly and treating them considerately. Not only so, but I believe the notion of fixing the attention by keeping the room empty is a wholly mistaken one. I think it is just in the emptiest room that the mind wanders most; for it gets restless like a bird for want of a perch, and casts about for any possible means for getting out and away. And even if it be fixed, by an effort, on the business in hand, that business becomes itself repulsive, more than it need be, by the vileness of its associations; and many a study appears dull or painful to a boy when it is pursued on a blotted deal desk under a wall with nothing on it but scratches and pegs which would have been pursued pleasantly enough in a curtained corner of his father's library or at the latticed window of his cottage. Nay, my own belief is that the best study of all is the most beautiful, and that a quiet glade of a forest, or the nook of a lake shore, is worth all the schoolrooms in Christendom when once you are past the multiplication table; but be that as it may, there is no question at all but that a time ought to come in the life of a well-trained youth when he can sit at a writing table without wanting to throw the inkstand at his neighbor, and when also he will feel more capable of certain efforts of mind with beautiful and refined forms about him than with ugly ones. When that time comes, he ought to be advanced into the decorated schools, and this advance ought to be one of the important and honorable epochs of his life. I have not time, however, to insist on the mere serviceableness to our youth of refined architectural decorations as such; for I want you to consider the profitable influence of the particular kind of decoration which I want you to get for them, namely, historical painting. You know we have hitherto been in the habit of conveying all our historical knowledge, such as it is, by the ear only, never by the eye; all our notions of things being ostensibly derived from verbal description, not from sight. Now, I have no doubt that as we grow gradually wiser-and we are doing so every day--we shall discover at last that the eye is a nobler organ than the ear; and that through the eye we must in reality obtain or put into form nearly all the useful information we have about this world. Even as the matter stands, you will find that the knowledge which a boy is supposed to receive from verbal description is only available to him so far as in any underhand way he gets a sight of the thing you are talking about. I remember well that for many years of my life the only notion I had of the look of a Greek knight was complicated between recollection of a small engraving in my pocket Pope's Homer and a reverent study of the Horse Guards. And though I believe that most boys collect their ideas from more varied sources, and arrange them more carefully than I did, still, whatever sources they seek must always be ocular. If they are clever boys, they will go and look at the Greek vases and sculptures in the British Museum and at the weapons in our armories; they will see what real armor is like in luster and what Greek armor was like in form, and so put a fairly true image together, but still not, in ordinary cases, a very living or interesting one. Now, the use of our decorative painting would be, in myriads of ways, to animate their history for them, and to put the living aspect of past things before their eyes as faithfully as intelligent invention can, so that the master shall have nothing to do but once to point to the school room walls, and forever afterwards the meaning of the word would be fixed in the boy's mind in the best possible way. It is a question of classical dress-what a tunic was like, or a chlamys, or a peplus. At this day you have to point to some vile woodcut in the middle of a dictionary page, representing the thing hung upon a stick; but then you would point to a hundred figures, wearing the actual dress, in its fiery colors, in all actions of various stateliness or strength; you would understand at once how it fell around the people's limbs as they stood, how it drifted from their shoulders as they went, how it veiled their faces as they wept, and how it covered their heads in the day of battle. Now if you want to see what a weapon is like, you refer, in like manner, to a numbered page, in which there are spearheads in rows, and sword hilts in symmetrical groups; and gradually the boy gets a dim mathematical notion how one scimiter is hung to the right and another to the left, and one javelin has a knob to it and another none, while one glance at your good picture would show him, and the first rainy afternoon in the schoolroom would forever fix in his mind the look of the sword and spear as they fell or flew, and how they pierced, or bent, or shattered-how men wielded them and how men died by them. But far more than all this is it a question not of clothes or weapons, but of men? How can we sufficiently estimate the effect on the mind of a noble youth, at the time when the world opens to him, of having faithful and touching representations put before him of the acts and presences of great men? How many a resolution which would alter and exalt the whole course of his inner life might be formed when, in some dreamy twilight, he met, through his own tears, the fixed eyes of those shadows of the great dead, unescapable and calm, piercing to his soul, or fancied that their lips moved in dread reproof or soundless exhortation. And if for but one out of many this were true; if yet in a few you could be sure that such influence had indeed changed their thoughts and destinies, and turned the eager and reckless youth, who would have cast away his energies on the race horse or the gaming table, to that noble life race, that holy life hazard, which should win all glory to himself and all good to his country, would not that, to some purpose, be political economy of art?' WORK OF THE MANCHESTER ART MUSEUM. At a session of the International Conference on Education held in London in August, 1884, a paper on this subject was read by Mr. T. C. Horsfall, from which extracts are presented herewith. This address confirms the observations already made by teachers, that in many cases the children of the poorer classes in cities, who live in small and cramped tenements, or in narrow, filthy streets, have no conception of the common everyday scenes and events of the life of the country child. This ignorance is confined to no one city or country. Thus, Mr. Horsfall illustrates his plea for pictures by saying that in English cities some of the children scarcely know what a flower is like or have ever seen a primrose or a violet; some thought a squirrel was a bird; others that the berries of the mountain ash were roses; others that a dragon fly was a bird or a serpent; and some did not know what a lamb was like. Mr. Horsfall says: "I believe that the right use of works of art in elementary schools will effect an improvement in the taste of English work people and employers, which all persons conversant with English manufactures know to be very desirable; that it will reveal to many children who live in the crowded parts of large towns some of the highest qualities of their own nature and that of their fellow-creatures, of the existence of which most such children, and many also of those who live in pleasanter places, are not aware; that it will soon make the homes of many work people more attractive than work people's homes generally are now, and will do much toward creating a fuller and happier family life amongst the work people of towns, by opening to them many pleasant occupations and amusements which parents and children can enjoy together, and which will therefore create between parents and children the bonds of common interests and pleasures; that it will make schools more attractive for children, and add to the brighter side of the culture of teachers, and, while making their work pleasanter, increase their influence over their pupils. "Two conditions are needed for the development of good taste in a person who has the qualities needed for its acquisition. One of these conditions is that from childhood onward he shall habitually see beautiful things; and the second condition is that in childhood and youth people whose opinions he respects shall make him notice the difference between beautiful and ugly things, and make him feel that they regard beauty as a thing of great value. "It is impossible to insist too strongly on the dependence of good taste on the existence of these two conditions. The coexistence of both is quite necessary. The second can not, of course, exist, unless the first does also; but the first exists for many persons without the second, and then exists for most of them in vain, so far, at least, as development of taste is concerned. All children in the country habitually see beautiful natural forms and colors, but this does not suffice to make most of them even perceive the difference between good and bad form and color. # * * It is only in schools that we can hope that most children can be enabled at present to habitually see beautiful things and feel the influence of persons respected by them, who, perceiving the difference between beautiful and ugly things, can lead the children to feel that beauty is a thing of great importance. Pictures are amongst the beautiful things needed for this purpose in schools. * * 營 "As the committee of the Manchester Art Museum have lately been taking the course which seems to me to be that needed for gaining all the advantages obtainable by the use of pictures in schools, I will describe their system. First, I must speak of the system of their central collection, that of the art museum, to which as many references as possible are made in labels attached to the pictures lent to schools. The art museum which was opened last month by Mr. Mundella, contains as many pictures as we can find room for of beautiful scenery and interesting places in the neighborhood of Manchester. Some of these pictures are in oil colors, some are water color of drawings, etchings, engravings, photographs. * * * There is a collection of pictures of common wild and garden flowers; one of pictures of common wild birds; one of pictures of other animals; one of pictures of well-known places in different parts of the world; one of beautiful landscapes; one of seascapes; one of war scenes; one of religious subjects; one of portraits; one of copies of works by Turner, chiefly illustrating English scenery. In some of these groups of pictures, representations of the same subject by different kinds of art-etchings, engravings, water-color drawings-are placed side by side, in order to facilitate careful comparison of the effects obtained by different processes. "Many of the pictures-the plates of the Liber Studiorum and those of the Harbours of England, for instance-have full descriptions and criticisms hung by them. Each of the other pictures has, or will have, a label containing a short explanation of the subject and a statement as to whether it is an engraving or etching, or whatever it may be. One set of pictures illustrates the development of architecture and sculpture; one that of Italian painting. In cases there are sets of the tools, etc., used in the various art-reproducing processes, plates etched and prepared for etching, engraved plates with impressions from the plates, wood blocks for wood engraving, the stones used for lithography, the blocks used for color printing, and a brief explanation of each of the processes. Short lectures on the processes and on many other subjects will be given. A band of explainers is being formed. There are also cases of examples of well-shaped, pleasantly colored pottery and glass, metal work, and textile fabrics, many of them of the commonest kinds, fitted for common use. There is, too, a model small house, fitted up with the well-shaped, well-made things by Mr. W. Morris and Mr. W. A. S. Benson, and there are some casts of Greek sculpture, shown to advantage by having richly colored stuffs hung behind and on each side of them. * * * "It is intended that each of the collections lent to schools shall eventually contain a few examples of beautiful textile fabrics, beautiful common pottery and glass, and casts from sculpture, but at present they consist of pictures only. We lend pictures of beautiful scenery and interesting buildings near Manchesterthese pictures are chiefly photographs-chromolithographs and engravings of other beautiful landscapes and sea scenes, pictures of scenes in the Holy Land and Egypt, of historical scenes, of beautiful wild and garden flowers, of trees, of common birds and butterflies, of fairy tales-good examples, in short, of almost every kind of picture. Many of the pictures are-all are to be-provided with labels to tell what the subject is and of what process the picture is a product; if it is cheap, what its price is and that of its frame. The labels also make as many references as possible to the Art Museum, to books, to our local botanical gardens, and other pleasant places open to work people. Thus one of the labels to a picture of a swallow gives a little information about the habits of the bird; another tells that the picture is a lithograph, colored by hand, that an explanation of lithography and the things used in it can be seen in the Art Museum; that pleasant information about and good pictures of birds are found in White's Selborne, a copy of which can be bought for sixpence, and in John's English Birds in their Haunts, which costs 6s. 3d. The label to a frame containing pictures of garden flowers tells that the pictures are chromolithographs, speaks of the imperfections of this process of representation, and recommends that the pictures be compared with water-color drawings of the same flowers in the Art Museum. It tells also that some of the flowers will grow in houses in Manchester, and that they are to be seen in the botanical gardens and in some of the public parks. The label to a set of photographs of Greek sculpture tells that casts of the sculpture are in the Art Museum and praises their beauty. * * * "After what I have already said, I hardly need add that we do not expect that pictures of beautiful places and things can at first have much meaning for those children who know nothing, or almost nothing, about the things represented. The child for whom real buttercups and daisies, the flight of swallows, and the song of larks have no happy associations, who has never felt gladness in fields or on hills, will see very little in pictures of flowers and birds, fields and hills. But still pictures of these things will be of great value even for such children. Some natural beauty is within reach of almost every child; most children have some of it sometimes before their eyes. Ignorance of it is so common, partly because their eyes have not gained from heart and mind the power to see these things, partly because what the eye never sees the heart never longs for,' and opportunities of seeing natural beauty at a little distance from home, and of bringing it into homes, are not used or sought for. "The words now so often quoted, which Mr. Browning puts into the mouth of Fra Lippo Lippi, are, I believe, perfectly true: "We're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see; And so they are better, painted-better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that God uses us to help each other so, Lending our minds out.' "If a child is led in school, as he easily may be by a few words spoken by his teacher, to notice the form and color of a flower in a picture, or the forms and colors in a picture of landscape, and to find a little pleasantness in them, he will |