I will venture to throw out a few hints on the line of reading which may profitably be joined with deliberate art studies. It were easy to show that sympathy and reciprocity Art education, as already indicated, pre- between artists and the lovers of art bring sents a twofold aspect; the one concerns mutual benefits. The average business and those who propose to make of art a profes- commercial mind accustomed to cold calcusion; the other applies to the ever-increasing lation and steady-going routine, coming in class who use the arts as a kind of elegant contact with men embued with art, catches furniture for the mind, as a means of refined | ardour and the fire of imagination. The

artistic nature invites to genial intercourse; faculty is best sustained and trained, and

its movements and modes of manifestation, its moments of exaltation and depression, present fine studies of characters. The susceptibilities, sufferings, and calamities of the artist and the author are proverbial: "chords which vibrate sweetest pleasure, thrill the deepest notes of woe." Hence, it may be that a course of reading is seldom more pleasantly or profitably directed than in scanning the lives of the great painters, sculptors, and architects who have left "footprints on the sands of time." Such biographies come home to daily experience, meet actual exigencies, and in hours of weakness and misgiving communicate courage and strength. And in the day of small things, perchance in a garret, timely encouragement may come to the professional and non-professional man alike, in the consideration that art is a kingdom wherein not many mighty, not many noble are called. Biography recounts how humble has been the birth, how necessitous the estate, of many artists who in the end won world-wide renown. "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife" was the boy Giotto, found on the hillside, pencil in hand, guarding the sheep-fold. The career of the artist has a charm-like spell for the outside public; its orbit is eccentric; its track glitters with light; its goal is oft girt in darkness. Art talent, with some few signal exceptions, is not hereditary; it would seem to establish a democracy of genius; it comes as the wind, we know not whither; and, long before it makes itself heard aloud in the world, it speaks within the solitary chambers of the mind as a still, small voice. And it were well for a youth before he commits himself irrevocably to an art career, to search whether he can find within him such promptings and inspirations as are never wanting as the signs of true vocation. For if nature have not unmistakably marked him for the calling, he will only swell the multitude of mediocrity which the educational facilities of the present day inflict upon our contemporary arts. Fortunately the general and non-professional public need not subject themselves to such scrutiny; for them sympathy and appreciation are sufficient; a power to comprehend and enjoy the creations of the exceptionally gifted. All of us look with sympathetic interest on the scenes of art-life around us; many of us are in the daily use of art as a means of culture, and the checkered experiences of artists both dead and living, in their fortune or distress, in their health or sickness, teach how the art

how sensitive natures may preserve the sane mind in the sound body. The biographies of artists therefore deserve to be taken into the curriculum of education.

The choice of reading for all who in any way addict themselves to art deserves, I need scarcely say, careful consideration. Many minds in the present day are absolutely lost by the aimless miscellaneous reading incessantly supplied by periodicals and circulating libraries. The wholesale devouring of all sorts of literature, especially fiction, for which the vicious appetite is insatiable, seems to have no better purpose than to fill empty minds and to waste away the time that lies on hand idle. Surely one of the first things for a youth on entering seriously upon life to determine, is a systematic course of reading, the choice of books which, while bearing somewhat on daily avocations, shall bring variety and serve for recreation, and with this end I would suggest some of the many forms of art literature. If the student desire to mingle amusement with instruction, I know not where he can better seek for the happy combination than within the sphere of art, wherein fact and fiction, romance and reality go hand in hand. If he seek adventure, let him read the exploits of Salvator Rosapainter and improvisatore-among the bandits of Calabria. If he be fond of anecdote, he may seek the origin of the painter's art in the romantic myth of the Grecian girl who traced her lover's likeness on a marble slab; or he can peruse the pleasing and not quite apocryphal stories of how Charles V. graciously picked up the brush which Titian had let fall on the ground; how Philip IV. took the pencil from the hand of Velasquez and dubbed, or rather daubed, the painter Knight of Santiago; or how, as a consummation of condescension, Francis I. received in his arms the dying Da Vinci. Coming nearer home, the history of our English art, especially in the time of Sir Joshua Reynolds, with his brilliant associates, Garrick, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Johnson, Burke, and Boswell, offers chapters so vivid in personal incident. that the novelist has seldom penned situations more picturesque or dramatic. And within our own experience let me quote the sad story of poor Haydon, and by way of summary of much more that might be enlarged upon, I will transcribe Wordsworth's noble sonnet to the painter:

"High is our calling, friend! Creative Art
Whether the instrument of words she use,
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues)
Demands the service of a mind and heart,

Though sensitive, yet in their weakest part'
Heroically fashioned-to infuse

Faith in the whispers of the lonely muse,
While the whole world seems adverse to desert:
And oh! when Nature sinks, as oft she may,
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,-

Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness: !
Great is the glory, for the strife is hard!"

dramatized by Shakespeare. The art student of history will doubtless feel, sometimes painfully, the wide gulf which separates times past and present, which divides the dead from the living; yet the agencies at work are essentially the same, the aspirations of humanity perish not, and art ever presents new possibilities and promises for the future. History, it is often asserted, never repeats herself, yet art, like nature, observes law, preserves consistency and continuity, and secures, notwithstanding occasional retrogression, assured advance. Some such principles, I think, may with advantage be brought by the student to the right reading of art history; some such faith in the destiny of the race may sustain the hope that for the arts there is still in reserve a bright hereafter. And the youth who perchance when the day is dark and the strength insufficient, suffers discouragement, may for comfort turn even to the by-ways of history, and learn that out of the beaten path in the strait and narrow way, the true labourer has not been found unworthy of his hire, and that the artist who serves nature diligently has seldom been | denied his reward.

The art student, in common with all who in life have a definite aim, must, as before said, substitute systematic for casual reading, and in the choice of books he will naturally incline towards volumes that cast a light on those brilliant periods of history which are illumined by the arts. Historic reading, in fact, elucidates national art, just as the reading of biographies portrays the individual artist. The statesman, the political economist, the social reformer severally takes lessons from the pages of the world's experience; in like manner the art student should learn to recognise in history, situations, dramas, pictures, and to see how the painter may reflect light and borrow colour from the historic panorama of the past. It is for him to note the conditions under which the arts have flourished; to mark how political liberty has fostered the free play of fancy, the bold flight of imagination; how commerce, by creat- Poetry, dramatic literature, and works of ing wealth and aiding the interchange of fiction stand in such obvious relation to the riches and the intercourse of distant and Fine Arts that I had almost forgotten to urge divers civilisations, has given to the arts such reading on the student. I cannot, howsinews and sustenance; and how in the vita-ever, omit to say that the perusal of books lity of the common-weal the arts have shared with letters, honours and rewards. And it will be well for art students, for painters, sculptors, and architects, especially for all who may aspire to the rearing of national monuments, to bring as clearly and vividly as may be before the mind's eye the great epochs in history-the eras of Themistocles, the Cæsars, and Charlemagne ; to realise the whole scene and situation; to observe the connection between national life and national art-between the spirit of the age and its embodiment in visible form; in short, to under-painter's eye. stand the process, the relation of cause and effect, under which came into the world the greatest art products, such as the Parthenon sculptures of Phidias, the Sistine compositions by Michael Angelo, and the Vatican pictures by Raphael. Artists and art students too may make timely amends for past omissions by acting on a suggestion thrown out at a recent dinner of the Royal Academy; Lord Beaconsfield pointed to periods in English history which had been comparatively neglected by our painters, and especially singled out as worthy of representation the Wars of the Roses, and the great national events

for mere passing pleasure, vague impression, or sensational enjoyment is to be deprecated, and that instead the aim should be to trace in the poem a picture, to recognise in the drama, character and situation, to translate a ballad into a panorama, a sonnet into a cabinet gem, a lyric or an ode into a piece of pictorial colour. Such habit of reading sets on sharp edge the critical sense, brings true perception of poetic treatment and style, and in opening to view the art aspects of literature, presents enticing vistas to the

Art education should not ignore mental philosophy, for, though apparently far removed from practical results, it lies at the root of art germination. And inasmuch as in the act of art creation every faculty is in turn called into action, the constitution and capacity of the mind itself become of primary consideration. It is worthy of remark that the great artists of the world, such as Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and Dürer, have been large brained, endowed with capacious powers which would have obtained command in any sphere. And when we recall the arduous achievements of past times at im

portant art centres such as Athens, Rome, and Florence, we cannot but feel how wide must have been the sweep of vision, how mighty the mental forces brought into play. But though no intellectual energy is absolutely dormant, yet some more than others are rightly deemed pre-eminently art faculties. Among the mental powers habitually called into action are perception, the understanding, reason, fancy, imagination, taste, judgment; and the rank and value of any product may be fairly determined by the amount and intensity in which these faculties obtain visual expression. The perceptive sense, or the power of observation, prompts to realism, as in the Dutch School; the reasoning faculty tends to idealism, to generic forms, and representative types-manifestations which may be said to distinguish the schools of high art. Fancy and imagination almost speak for themselves; these are in art the originative, the creative powers, the springs and the life blood of genius. Then, lastly, taste and judgment come to control what may be wild and out of balance in the mind's imaginings. And this complexity of mental operations accounts for the frequent breakdown in artists and their works. It is obvious that the student will not be wise to neglect, as too often permitted, the mental machinery which each moment is brought into motion; it is evident each spring, wheel, and axle needs to be watched, tended, and diligently kept in going gear. The art functions of the mind are peculiarly liable to get wrong, if not guided aright by the training of tutors or of books. Numerous are the volumes which may be read with advantage; those used by the present writer in his youth have grown by this time all but | obsolete, yet as samples may still be quoted, Watts's "Logic," Lord Kames' "Elements of Criticism," Dr. Blair's "Lectures on the Belles Lettres," Dr. Abercromby on the "Intellectual Powers," Dugald Stewart's "Mental Philosophy," and Schlegel's "Dramatic Literature.' I may add that my observation of artists tells me that the best those at least who are most companionable -combine in their mental constitution and culture the poet with the philosopher. I have also noticed that painters who, as Dogberry, scoff at such "vanity," for the most part do so in self-defence, by way of excuse for their own want of mind and for a corresponding absence of intelligence within their works.

The art student must learn to think re

verently of religion. In these days, when
creeds are questioned, art to her loss becomes
dissevered from Churches, yet the most
superficial of inquirers cannot shirk the con-
viction that her best inspiration has been
on the side of religion.
the side of religion. History tells
that in all times and among all peoples
the worship of the Divine has prompted
and sustained the noblest creations. With-
out entering on matters of controversy, I
may simply, as art critic, state my conviction
that nothing is more withering and fatal in
our modern art than the materialism and the
soulless rationalism now the vogue, especially
among those who have not passed the
threshold of a "little learning." Youths of
promise and aspiration, who seek for sym-
pathetic aid from minds of a high order, will
be wise to choose as their guides teachers in
the opposite school-men who have not
wholly thrown overboard the belief in a
spiritual world and the agency of the
supernatural. The art student must abide
in a state of reverence; he should cultivate
humility, the sense of his own insignificance,
coupled with a conviction of the immensity
around and above him in God, nature, and
the human soul. One cause of the low con-
dition of our contemporary art is, that these
states of mind are in artistic circles laughed
at.

more

Persons engaged in the education of themselves or others may wisely deal with art as a language, an instrument of expression, a mode of conveying thought from mind to mind. A picture is to the eye what a melody is to the ear or a poem to the imagination : it speaks, it declares the personality, depicts the condition of the intellect and the emotions. Whatever be the character-whether gloomy or gay, refined or coarse, earnest or frivolous-such will inevitably be the art manifestation. No mirror reflects lucidly or literally an image than does a picture repeat the mental conception or vision. And just as the voice in song, or words in written composition, come as the issues of the inner sense, so is a picture the outer garb of the mind. And not only does active consciousness obtain outward and visible sign, but "unconscious cerebration" also declares itself involuntarily. The whole being-physical, intellectual, moral, and religious-obtains, through art, utterance. Educate therefore the man, train the mind to creative thought, the hand to truth-seeking execution; then will the nation's art express the best intelligence of the people.