Note 5: — ON THE STUDY AND PRACTICE OF ART

In this connection I was much struck, while in America, with a method adopted by a teacher (Mr. Liberty Tadd)5 in Philadelphia, a city in which very great attention was being paid to all forms of technical instruction. Well, this teacher did not profess to train artists at all. His object was to give facility of hand. He took children of various ages—quite young to begin with—from the ordinary primary schools, and set them to draw on the black board with a piece of chalk in each hand certain figures. Circles to begin with, and certain symmetric forms of ornament as shown in the diagram. The facility they acquired was extraordinary. He then set them to what he called "memorize" these forms and combine them in design as they best could, and to model such designs in clay, and to carve them in wood.