material to play with, and the country child has a far greater treasury from which to supply the need of hand and mind than his neighbor of the city. Imagination can find an immensity of outlet and opportunity, even in the neighborhood of cities. I remember well my village of cave dwellings which I carefully hollowed out beneath the spreading roots of trees—very dirty trees—in a suburban wood in a Lancashire town. The caves were furnished with stones and twigs, and populated with earwigs or any creeping thing to be found and housed there. Later I owned an island in a Westmorland Lake, and had a beautiful house of woven branches of the growing rowan trees, with a garden planted with ferns and wild flowers among mossy bordered paths. And again, my sisters and brothers and I made fine wigwams of the branches of young oak and hazel trees found in those lakeland woods; they were tied together at the top with the fibrous stems of honeysuckle, spread tentwise at the base, and heaped outside with a covering of dead bracken and dry leafy twigs. In town too, for wet days there was always the house under the table, walled in with table cover and blankets: delightful dwellings all, and happy little "homes" to live in, for any place is a "home" to us when we look back to it with happy memory. And the garlands we made of daisies and red clover, thick as a man's arm and plaited strongly together, with which we decked the clothes-props on the drying green, and made them into Maypoles! We remember the joy these things gave, chiefly because we made them; we remember them far better than the games we played, or the entertainments we went to.

At school again, my best personal experience, and one that I have found valuable above all the other education I got, was not the lessons I learned from books; I have forgotten almost all I got from them. It was the great days when we had plays in school, and I was allowed to devise, and practically direct the whole making of the stage properties. A great time that. We made armor, and weapons, and crowns, and garments, and wings, and scenery. We had no assistance from teachers for this, and I know it taught me more than any of my teachers did. During school days I did not learn to draw because I had a drawing lesson once a week, and painfully and carefully drew perspectives of chairs and schoolrooms and other dull things. I learned to draw because I loved to scribble in my lesson books princes and princesses, and fairies, and because I had few playthings, and was always making and decorating little gifts for other people.

This practise of decorating the things we make is really far the best way to teach drawing to either children or others. We make our education in drawing a far too limited affair by directing it to a pictorial issue alone, and drawing is a far wider subject than concerns picture-making solely. If we go into our museums, we see from the ancient handicrafts left to us by primitive peoples, that in the beginning all art was purely applied to useful things. The clay jar modelled in the hands alone, with its lines and curves just emphasized with a few scratches or impressions made with a stick or a bone, what is this but just play? and yet it is art also and the art adds immensely to the value of that jar. So also to-day, if any child takes a piece of clay and makes a vessel by hand, the very same thing is produced. I have seen little pots made in schools which it is difficult to distinguish from some of those of ancient Egypt or Peru in our museums. They are not one whit less artistic, and yet the art is quite unconscious, the child was only "playing" with the clay.

We would be much the richer, commercially speaking, if schools would only take up this different side of art teaching—making patterns, instead of pictures. I am not condemning the drawing of pictures, but I am urging that pattern-making—constructive design in actual material, not on paper—should come first. Pattern is the mathematics of art, and it can develop the mathematical faculties far more widely than mere mental calculations can. It must be learned by wise gradations, and the learner must never be allowed to get out of hand or run riot with over-elaboration. If we can teach the children in their drawing lessons to decorate the useful articles they need for the home, we shall give a great impetus to the commercial arts. For example, if a child has one lesson at decorating a piece of pottery with a brush dipped in glaze paint and decorates it with nothing but a line of dots or strokes, he can have this fired and fixed and use it, and he also at once looks at every china shop with a sharply discriminating eye. In a very short time he will be able to choose between good decoration and bad, he will understand economy in production, he will very soon demand from the trade a higher class of design, and he will be willing to pay for better design because he understands the working of it.

The fashion for amateurs to practice photography did not do harm to the professional photographer, as was feared at first; it raised the standard of professional work, and brought more custom, and not less, to the professional worker. And this holds good in all work, the more widely and thoroughly it is "understanded of the people," the more desirable do the people find it.

There is a great education before art teachers, and they must realize that they must come into touch with science and mathematics and general constructive work. They must watch the changing needs and fashions of the day, and realize that not only in classic times was the art of the people a beautiful and desirable thing. They must realize, too, that in this Twentieth Century our hands are extending their powers, and that by the use of machines we are reaching a far larger public than unaided hands could do. The artist has spent two or three generations bewailing the machine; he forgot that no machine can, of its own powers, be artistic or inartistic. He left the machine alone, and therefore the machine-work has fallen into discredit. The artist craftsman is too often too conscious of his art, and does not subordinate himself sufficiently to modern ways and conditions. It is not the fault of the machine that much of our manufactured output is inartistic, it is the fault of the artist that he has not managed to control the machine. First and foremost, however, we must have some change in the training of artists, and must direct their attention to utility, rather than pictorial work. It is difficult to count the outlets possible to the decorative craftsman, provided he understands modern machinery and commercial demands. This training in handicraft begins, very rightly and naturally in the kindergarten schools, but there, unfortunately, it stops short. Now what we want to do is to plan out for our growing children such crafts as will develop intelligence and skill of hand, without demanding too great physical strength or technical training, and without undue expenditure of money upon materials and outfit.

For the younger children the easiest media to work in are clay and needlework. The clay-work should be directed to the most permanent and useful things that can be produced; pottery and tiles can be very easily made, and are very permanent if they are glazed and fired and decorated, and this can be done at very little expense. Needlework must be taught so that the worker develops intelligence and independence, and is no longer made to sew the multitudes of fine stitches which were once considered necessary, and which made the girls mere unthinking machines. There are endless new ways to be followed out in the sewing and embroidery and