ART MUSEUMS AND SCHOOLS

FOUR LECTURES BY G.STANLEY HALL : KENYON COX : STOCKTON AXSON : AND OLIVER S.TONRS

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ART MUSEUMS AND SCHOOLS

/ART MUSEUMS AND SCHOOLS

FOUR LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

BY

STOCKTON AXSON, Litt.D.

KENYON COX, Litt.D.

G. STANLEY HALL, Ph.D.

AND

OLIVER S. TONKS, Ph.D.

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1913

Copyright, igi3, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published January, 1913

\-^

PREFACE

The following lectures were delivered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the spring of last year as a course for teachers. Their object was to show instructors in various departments of school work how the Museum collections might be used by them in connection with the teaching of their subjects.

They have been printed in the belief that their excellent presentation of the subject of school and museum co-operation demands a permanent form.

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CONTENTS

PAGE

Preface v

Museums of Art and Teachers of

English i

Stockton Axson, Litt.D.

Museums of Art and Teachers of Art 43

Kenyon Cox, Litt.D.

Museums of Art and Teachers of

History 67

G. Stanley Hall, Ph.D.

Museums of Art and Teachers of the

Classics 95

Oliver S. Tonks, Ph.D.

MUSEUMS OF ART AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH

BY STOCKTON AXSON, Litt.D.

MUSEUMS OF ART AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH

I BEGIN my remarks this afternoon with a con- fession and a hope : the hope is that you will be so touched by my confiding spirit that you will want to do all you can to help me keep the secret I am about to tell you. I have slipped away from home to come here to-day, and I don't want the people down there to hear about it. I have all the combined thrill and fright that I used to have when I stole away to go in swimming while the family thought I was at school — that surreptitious sense of adventure which left me in doubt as to whether I was a hero or a criminal. The point is, I have a sister who is an artist, and I should rather go to jail than have her know that I am here. She would laugh her- self to death, or laugh me to shame — maybe both.

You see, as she is an artist and my sister, she has a comprehensive and topographical plan of my exhaustive and detailed unfitness 3

i' " ' "'museums of art

for the job I am about to attempt. So, if you will kindly say nothing about this Httle adventure of mine, I will run back to Prince- ton and take up my normal work as if noth- ing had occurred.

I am not to tell you anything this after- noon about art or teaching literature — noth- ing about art, for reasons that my sister could tell you; and nothing about teaching, because I have been teaching too long to talk about it. You teachers know what I mean by that last remark, do you not? If any of you are so new in the profession that you do not understand that, I will let Ruskin inform you. He said: "The moment a man can really do his work, he becomes speechless about it. All words become idle to him, all theories."

When I began to teach I had elaborate theories and would have imparted them to Socrates and Abelard themselves, if I had met them. But I do not think I have any theories about it now; I am too busy teaching to know much about the "methods." We teachers tend to approximate the skill and silence of those wonderful negro cooks of the Old South, who could make any dish in the world, but

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could not under penalty of hanging tell any- body else how they did it. It was a "dab" of this ingredient, and "right smart" of that, and "some" of another; and that was as near as they could arrive at a recipe. Of course, the real secret of it was that, like the painter, they mixed their ingredients "with brains." So with such brains as were born in us and such heart and patience as we have acquired we go on, adding a little here and relinquishing a little there and arriving at such results as we may.

All I know is, that if I lived next door to the museum I could make much use of it. In the first place, I should visit it very often myself. I do visit it as often as possible in a busy life which is centred fifty miles away. I should try to let my students have some indirect benefits from these frequent visits, as I now try to let them have such indirect benefits from my infrequent visits: some light radiating from this source of light and extend- ing to them through the medium of my per- sonality— a very imperfect and at times dis- tracting medium, but with some translucent faculty as a result of such visits; some en- largement of my nature; some increase of

6 MUSEUMS OF ART

personal happiness, for I like to think that the happiness of an employee is an asset to the corporation he serves.

I seem to be in a confidential mood with you teachers this afternoon, bred of a feeling that we all belong to one family, a family not too intimately acquainted with me — the mellow glow and expansive ease which come to a man when he thinks his hearers under- stand him, and he hopes they do not under- stand him too well; that complacency which a man has on a particularly genial night at the club, that middle ground of social inter- change which relieves a. man of his natural shyness before strangers and spares him the other shyness of the family circle, when he does not dare venture on a "bluff" or two, knowing how promptly the ''bluff" would be "called."

So being in this ingenuous frame of mind, I am going to tell you that I did not always reaHze the simple fact that the mood of pro- ductivity and good influence is the mood of happiness. In my consciousness I used to echo the words of the Duchess of Malfi and her steward, "Naught made me e'er go right but Heaven's scourge-stick;" and again,

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"Man, like to cassia, is proved best being bruised."

Carlyle did much to insinuate that error into the minds of the distant generation of my college days; Carlyle, who fretted him- self into a lather and disturbed our equi- librium with the notion that man was not intended to be happy — the **whim of hap- piness" he called it: "I tell thee. Blockhead, it all comes of thy vanity; of what thou fanciest those same deserts of thine to be. Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot; fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp."

It was all so wrong, and so perversely wrong. It was bad enough for this great man to diminish his own usefulness by deriding as "whim" that which is as fundamental as life — is the instinct for Hfe; but it was still worse for him to throw over the two or three generations which he influenced this pall, clouding the sun, the very source of our pro- ductive energy.

So, if I lived in New York I should try to get more abundantly than is now possible

8 MUSEUMS OF ART

that happiness which so quickly tells in one's work — try to get it from these art chaps who started with the proposition that we were intended to be happy, and arrived at the con- clusion that the sources of happiness are in- numerable and many of them right at the front door.

Henry Ranger, for instance, has shown us that High Bridge, right here in New York, is not merely a convenience for getting from one side of the river to another, but also a source of perpetual joy when a painter with imagination and technique puts it on a can- vas with a glory of light and color. And, in- deed, that West wall of Gallery No. 20 should be a joy to all Americans, to think that there could be painted in our own day, by our own countrymen — two of them still living — three such pictures as Ranger's "High Bridge," Childe Hassam's "Golden Afternoon in Ore- gon," and Homer Martin's "View on the Seine."

We sometimes feel a little dubious about the accomplishments in American literature; but there is no question about American painting. We can hold our own in that. On that wall is part of the evidence, and much

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else is in other parts of the museum — the Whistlers, Sargents, Innesses, and many- others. If we will journey just a Httle way out of New York, we shall find other things that set these painters singing in paint. There is George Inness's great painting (great in every way, in size, conception, and execution), "Peace and Plenty," in Gallery No. 14. He found that idea in New England. It might just as well have been in New Jersey, where he painted his Turneresque "Sunset Across the Passaic." But that picture is not in the museum now. So, here is New England "Peace and Plenty," harvest and content- ment; and in the same room, over on another wall, is "Evening at Medfield, Mass.," by the same generous hand, and in the same soft browns and mellow gold.

And there is Henry Ranger's "Spring" with all its tender glad tidings of the season that is coming; and its stone hedges tell us also that it is near-by New England.

Almost by the side of it in this Gallery — it is Gallery No. 13 — is a companion piece by Bruce Crane, "Autumn Uplands," in the golden glory of the dying year — and it is any- where near by.

lo MUSEUMS OF ART

And if we should journey a little farther north, we should come to the Maine coast, which Winslow Homer almost made his own princedom by his power to paint its bold rocks and rough waves and water that is so wet. If you will go into Gallery No. 15, you will see how he did it in "Northeaster," and in the painting which he simply called "Maine Coast."

This, then, is one of the things that I should get more copiously than is now possible, if I lived within an electric-car ride of the museum — the great happiness which comes from the reveaUng power of art touching the things near at hand, touching the beauty and in- terest of life and the world. I do not know just why it is that the joy which comes from seeing pictures is a purer joy than almost any other, except that which comes from right affection and human service; but so I find it. Nothing but the laughter of children seems quite so innocently joyous as the delights of painting, sometimes even when the subject is sad or pensive.

Artists themselves, at least as I have known them, seem to have more freshness of delight and buoyant childlikeness than most other

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people of the same age. I am sorry to say that I do not always find this among the literary people. They seem more harassed in the process of getting their visions and inspi- rations committed to paper.

It is Du Maurier, is it not, who remarks on the fact that the young painter is often found whistling at his work, but never the young poet. I never saw an old painter, though some were gray-haired and some were bald.

And when a poet does carry about with him this air of zest and gusto, he is hkely to be a poet who is less frequently pondering on the insoluble mysteries of the future life than he is innocently rioting in the obvious opportunities for happiness right in this world — like old Walt Whitman or young John Keats.

It was Walt Whitman who said :

"And I say to Mankind, Be not curious about

God, For I who am curious about each am not curious

about God; No array of terms can say how much I am at

peace about God and about Death."

12 MUSEUMS OF ART

It was John Keats who said:

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health and quiet breathing."

And I should hope that the happiness I got from these museum pictures would pass in- sensibly into my work; not merely by invig- orating it, but by imparting some small measure of art even to the business of teach- ing. Are we whose trade it is to interpret literature to younger people never to lend the touch of art to that work? Are we to handle these literary treasures with hands Hke the carters who haul crated pictures and statuary from the steam-ship docks to the museum? May we not have at least the craftsman's skill of the restorer — at least the cleverness of a clerk who displays gems to a customer and holds them to the light for the best advantage of lustre and sparkle ?

I walked with a woman in a shop where metal objects of art are sold, and she was

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an artist literally "to the tips of her sensi- tive fingers." As she pointed a slender finger here and here and here, indicating, it seemed to me that the repousse rose, Hke filings to a magnet, to answer her summons. Many de- tails of workmanship, unseen by my un- tutored eye, emerged in beauty under the spell of her words and eloquent index finger, until, to my imagination, it appeared that there was magic in that finger, as in the wizard's wand which evokes flowers where before was barrenness. And of course there was magic — the magic of the art instinct in that woman's nature.

And shall we who make a business of ex- pounding literature never employ the magic touch of art to lift shy beauties into the vision and understanding of young people whose own eyes are only half-open ? It is a profane touch unless we do. Surely we must be in some sort artists, or else misinterpret the art of the authors whom we handle. Do we not owe it to those dead masters of literature who wrought in terms of art, to teach them in the spirit of art? Do we not owe it to them as well as to our classes?

As language is never so aptly learned as

14 MUSEUMS OF ART

among those who speak it well, so there is no such place to learn art as in association with the work of artists. And here it is, in this Museum!

And I am sure that I should, in these gal- leries, where art is spontaneous, learn sym- pathetically one way not to use a museum — I should not use it as a fact book. In Gal- lery No. 30 there is a BotticelH, a ravishing thing in blues and reds, "and all a wonder and a wild desire." I think I should not say to my pupils: "Three miracles of Saint Zeno- bius, by Botticelli; Florentine, fifteenth cen- tury; find out who Saint Zenobius was, Botticelli's real name, form of government in Florence in the fifteenth century; bound Italy; state its fauna and flora; chief ex- ports; and discuss the question of Itahan immigration."

That was Mr. Thomas Gradgrind's method. He said: "Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else. Girl No. 20, give me your definition of a horse. Girl No. 20 unable to define a horse. Bitzer, your definition of a horse ? " "Quadruped, graminivorous. Forty teeth,

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namely, twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisors. Sheds coat in the spring: in marshy countries sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in the mouth." Thus and much more by Bitzer. "Now, Girl No. 20," said Mr. Gradgrind, "you know what a horse is!"

That was Mr. Gradgrind's method. Only Mr. Gradgrind's?

Possibly I should get them to find out some- thing about Zenobius and Botticelli, but I should try to make all facts centre about the great fact of the picture itself — its purity of color and clarity of outline. And I should try to have them feel the leap of joy that I myself felt when I first came suddenly upon this picture, not knowing it was in the mu- seum. If I found that something of this had sunk in, I should lead them to Gallery No. 33 and the new loan Era Angelico panel, "Madonna and Child," and get them to see how with equal simplicity (though less bright- ness) of color, just the purest blue, and red, and gold. Era Angelico had combined grace of figure, ease of posture, flow and fold of drapery, beauty of figure outline, especially

i6 MUSEUMS OF ART

perhaps in the blue-robed angel in the left- hand corner. Then I should call their atten- tion to something less obvious — the mysteri- ous way in which a workman's character passes into his work — the sweet gravity, mod- esty, humility, and the vital faith Fra An- gelico had in the truth of the thing he was painting.

And with the same purpose in mind I should take them to Holbein's "Archbishop Cran- mer," Gallery No. 34, and let them see what bold strength and a straightforward habit of looking out sincerely on the world has done in that picture. Or I should turn them to the small "Erasmus," the Morgan loan, in the same room, and let them see how thoughtful Holbein could be, as well as strong and sin- cere.

Then I should try the more comprehending of them, at any rate, with a subtler shading of the same idea, by leading them to the work of the greatest of all portrait-painters. Per- haps I ought to say Velasquez, but it is Rem- brandt I mean. I would show them Rem- brandt's portraits of himself, and tell them about those other self-portraitures which were in the Metropolitan during the great Dutch

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Loan Exhibition in 1909. I would make, or try to make, them feel the majesty of the man — the power, the poise, the bold self- confidence, the sure hand, the noble scorn of petty men and base infidelities.

And with that simmering in their minds I should guide them to Gallery No. 11 and halt them before the picture of "A Young Painter" — that tense, earnest, deHcate poet- soul — eager as Keats, sensitive as Shelley, burning up his frail life with his visions and his inward fires.

And then I should call their attention to the artistic power of sympathy, the ability of a man like Rembrandt, with enough strength to conquer Europe and enough poise to govern it, to sympathize with and recreate this fair, frail young Adonais of a painter. And I should remind them how great Shakespeare created Henry the Fifth, the typical man of gallant action; and four years later created Hamlet, who could not act at all but only think himself into dissolu- tion— Shakespeare, who created Falstaf and Ophelia, Brutus and Caliban.

Facts Hke these and moralizings like these are better and fitter than Gradgrind facts and

i8 MUSEUMS OF ART

the kind of moralizing Rossetti jeered at in *' The Burden of Nineveh" :

"In our museum galleries To-day I lingered o'er the prize Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes — Her art forever in fresh wise

From hour to hour rejoicing me. Sighing, I turned at last to win Once more the London dirt and din; And as I made the swing-door spin. And issued, they were hoisting in A winged beast from Nineveh.

"A human face the creature wore And hoofs behind and hoofs before. And flanks with dark runes fretted o'er— 'Twas bull, 'twas mitred Minotaur.

"Now, thou poor god, within this hall Where the blank windows blind the wall From pedestal to pedestal, The kind of light shall on thee fall

Which London takes the day to be: While school-foundations in the act Of holiday, three files compact,

, Shall learn to view thee as a fact Connected with that zealous tract: *Rome, — Babylon, — and Nineveh."*

And with Rossetti in mind, and Botticelli and Fra Angelico in mind only a few minutes

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ago, one naturally falls to thinking of pre- Raphaelitism; and pre-Raphaelitism may- suggest the oddity that two such different men as Rossetti and Ruskin should have had so many similar views on art. And one begins to wonder if such phrases as "art for art's sake," and "moral values in art," mean any such very different things or mean anything at all. There is the pure art side of it presented humorously and convincingly in Browning's "Era Lippo Lippi" (Filippo Lippi was Botti- celli's master, by the way) ; and there is the soul-motive side of it presented sadly and con- vincingly in Browning's "Andrea Del Sarto"; and one half believes they mean the same thing if men could only understand each other's language. And we begin to approach the conclusion that the truest thing Ruskin ever said about art was that "art must not be talked about" — he who talked about it all the time and in a score or two of volumes. Not so much to talk about it as to feel the bigness of it is our business. And it would be a wonderfully salutary thing for our young Americans to be made to feel that. There is nothing they understand so well as bigness, but unfortunately they have the eccentric

20 MUSEUMS OF ART

idea that it is big to have money enough to buy pictures, but small to have genius enough to make them. It would be for the good of America's future if these youngsters could be brought to see that nothing merely human has come into the world bigger than Rem- brandt's pictures and Shakespeare's plays.

What a lesson in history as well as the arts it would be to get them to see how special gifts are bequeathed to special countries in special ages; that one age and country is greatly noble in scientific discovery and in- vention, like our own; another in poetry, like Shakespeare's England; another in painting, Hke Rembrandt's Holland; and that, though Shakespeare and Rembrandt never pressed an electric button, or talked through a tele- phone, or rode in an automobile, or saw an air-ship, they were just as great, manly, and useful in their ways as our great inventors are in theirs.

In a less toploftical mood the pupils and I would look at some pictures which bear di- rectly on literature, maybe at lovely "Peg Woffington," by Hogarth, in Gallery No. 15. A look at that portrait explains why Charles Reade got so infatuated with his "darling

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Peggy" when he was writing his novel about her that he seemed to forget that the real Peggy had been in her grave a century when he sat down to write. Peggy was the sort of girl who seems never really dead — with that warm Irish nature of hers, for she was so vital and so charming at all times and in all media — in the novel, in the portrait, and in her eighteenth-century flesh; and there she is before us just as Hogarth saw her, with that beautiful mouth — larger than the Greeks liked, but so expressive, so sensitive, and almost bowed in a smile. And in the eyes too there are smiles, but the tears are just behind. Dear, beautiful, lovable, frail Peggy!

And, of course, Peggy makes us think of Garrick, and Garrick makes us think of Drury Lane Theatre and all of its triumphs, and of Sheridan and Goldsmith; and they make us think of Doctor Johnson, and all of them make us think of that comfort- able eighteenth century when nobody rushed, when so many could do such great things with ease, when nobody tried to do more than he could, but did it with charm and finished art.

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And the greatest artist of them all was Sir Joshua Reynolds, painting his dukes and duchesses and many honorable women with power and charm, including splendid Mrs. Barnard, whom you may see in this same Gallery No. 15. And again in this Gallery No. 15 — this place of "infinite riches in a ht- tle room" — ^you may see a favorite by George Romney, on whose worthy shoulders the garment of Reynolds fell. He painted Lady Hamilton again and again — and no wonder, say we, when we look at this portrait. She is in the guise of Daphne, but that does not in the least disguise her adorable self. It seems almost wrong that he who adored her most of all should be so far away in Gallery No. 24. Lord Nelson is thinking very hard as he sits there in the cabin of the Victory. He may be thinking of Cape Saint Vincent, or of Copenhagen, or pending Trafalgar, for this is the very day of the battle, as the date of the letter on his desk shows — the last letter he ever wrote — or maybe he is thinking of Lady Hamilton, so far away in Gallery No. 15.

Lord Nelson naturally suggests Southey, who wrote his biography, and Southey's

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friend Wordsworth, who was inspired by- Nelson's genius and his own brother's char- acter to write the great ode on the " Character of the Happy Warrior." And that noble word picture of the ideal hero makes us think of our own heroes by sea and land — from Paul Jones and Washington to Grant and Lee and Dewey.

We turn to less exalted but more poig- nant tragedies than Nelson's — to the Master of Ravenswood, Lucy Ashton, and Sir John Millais's illustration painting for "The Bride of Lammermoor" — No. 21 in the Vander- bilt Collection. The young people who have been reading Scott's novel will have no difficulty in finding the moment the artist chose for his illustration. It will be a nice exercise to have them explain from the book the attitude of Lucy, explain it in terms of character as well as incident, and also explain the look in Ravenswood' s eyes. If they are reading Bulwer's "Last Days of Pompeii," which we all once read with joy but would not care to read again, they should see George Fuller's "Nydia" in Gallery No. 12. If any of them are old enough to read "Don Juan" they will be after seeing Chaplain's "Haidee"

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in Gallery No. i8; but as few of them are likely to be reading that piece of ironical disillusionment, little will be lost, for I do not think this is the Haidee Byron wrote about. By the same token they might be set to find some of the things in Shakespeare's Portia which are not in Sir John Millais's *Tortia" (Gallery No. 20), fine as is that picture of a typical English girl in a gorgeous scarlet robe.

The museum is bursting with great pictures less directly illustrative of particular books, but splendidly adapted to send spectators, young and old, back to books with freshened appetites. For instance, there is the "Pyr- amus and Thisbe," by Rubens, in Gallery 27 — the tale that has been woven into so much English literature, not forgetting Bot- tom s version of "The most lamentable com- edy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe."

In Byron's "Childe Harold" they will read that Venice

** Looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, Rising with her tiara of proud towers At airy distance with majestic motion A ruler of the waters and their powers."

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And Turner's "Grand Canal, Venice" (Gal- lery No^ 24), will tell them what Byron meant better than most of us can — the blue of the Italian sky, the light clouds, the reflections in the water, the briUiant sunshine, the proud towers, all airy, majestic, and with motion. It is Venice herself, sitting in state, " throned on her hundred isles/'

In Gallery No. 30 there is a picture of Co- lumbus, by Piombo; and as I stood before it my mind automatically selected from the infinity of literature about Columbus, Arthur Hugh Clough's poem, which expresses best the thought that I, and doubtless thousands of others, have had about Columbus when standing on the prow of a ship, looking out over the boundless untracked waste of water:

"How in God's name did Columbus get over

Is a pure wonder to me, I protest. Cabot, and Raleigh, too, that well-read rover, Frobisher, Dampier, Drake, and the rest. Bad enough all the same For them that after came. But, in great Heaven's name. How he should ever think That on the other brink Of this wild waste terra firma should be. Is a pure wonder, I must say, to me.

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"What if wise men had, as far back as Ptolemy, Judged that the Earth, like an orange, was round, None of them ever said, 'Come along! Follow me! Sail to the West and the East will be found.' Many a day before Ever they'd come ashore From the San Salvador Sadder and wiser men; They'd have turned back again; And that he did not, but did cross the sea. Is a pure wonder, I must say, to me."

When we look at Piombo's picture we see how it was done. That was just the man to do such a daring, foolish, splendid thing — this strong, bold, resolute, practical dreamer! Like everything else that has kept the world moving, there was the personality of a man behind it.

As I looked at Zurbaran's "Saint Michael, the Archangel," in Gallery 28, there slipped into my mind the old pope's words in Brown- ing's "Ring and the Book," as he, "heart-sick at having all his world to blame," looked wearily up at the picture of Saint Michael over his head and wondered if saints are not all the greater for having human weak-

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ness to contend with and human virtue to gratify them: "Would Michael yonder be, nor armed nor crowned, the less pre-eminent angel?"

These were subjective impressions, but sometimes our discarded subjectivities are just the things that would have sunk deeper in on others than our learning and our clever- ness. That is Emerson's thought, is it not? "A man dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain ahenated majesty."

In a more objective way one might call the attention of pupils, especially boys, to Borglum's "Mares of Diomedes," at the foot of the Grand Stairway, as illustrating Ma- zeppas wild ride — the strength and fury of motion; or Frederic Remington's smaller bronzes in Gallery No. 22 might serve the same purpose with more realism and less beauty. And while looking at these small bronzes I should direct attention to the two "Motherhoods," one by Mrs. Vonnoh and the other by Jules Dalou. And if I were a woman teacher, I think I should not suppress

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a little sex triumph at this point. Dalou*s piece is very noble, very graceful, and has more of power in it than Mrs. Vonnoh's; but Mrs. Vonnoh's is motherhood in all its utter tenderness — the inclined head, the slight droop of the right shoulder, from which reaches the protective, nesthng arm to shelter the child. We hear it stated fairly frequently nowadays that women can do anything that men can do, and I suppose they can. But I know there is one thing women can do that men cannot, and it is in the bend of that head and the curve of that arm.

It would be a natural transition from the sanctity of human motherhood to the sanc- tity of divine motherhood as the elder mas- ters conceived it. We should go back to Fra Angelico for another and a deeper purpose now; to Lorenzo Monaco's crude but rever- ently adoring panel in Gallery No. 3 1 ; to the beautiful BeUini in Gallery No. 1 1 ; to Baroc- cio's splendid picture in Gallery No. 29, where art has become adequate to the painter's pur- pose, where the joy in the young mother's face and the earnestness in old Elizabeth's fece are no more skilfully done than are the

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details of that richly colored and altogether wonderful interior. We should visit the "Madonna" of the school of Van Eyck in Gallery No. 34, and perhaps conclude the Ma- donnas with Dagnan-Bouveret's sweet, mod- ern mother saint in Gallery No. 17.

These are only side-lights on literature from the fine arts. But for older and more thought- ful pupils there is something deeper that the museum can do, and do it wonderfully, namely, show how the same conception is treated in the different media of art and letters. It is always stimulating to watch two superior minds working toward the same idea under diverse conditions of labor. The contemporaries Darwin and Tennyson feel- ing after the principle of evolution, one in sure-footed science, the other in winged po- etry; Greek Plato and EngHsh Shelley ex- ploring the dizzy and rarefied heights of the absolute idea, one in philosophy, the other in poetry. It is interesting to see a poet and a painter expressing the same great human truth in different media, and that we can see in Wordsworth's "Michael" and the French Millet's "Water-Carrier," No. ^^ of the Van- derbilt Collection. So many young readers,

30 MUSEUMS OF ART

and older ones too, miss the point of Words- worth's "Michael," because it is so simple; for it is in simpHcity that we lose our way even oftener than in complexity. An obvious poet would have followed the boy Luke to London and traced him through the degrees of his temptation, capitulation, ruin, disgrace, and banishment; but the unsensational Words- worth remains back in the mountain home with the peasant father. A sentimental poet would have shown in Michael the agony of a broken heart; but the serene Wordsworth shows the heart kept sadly, gravely whole by the very love which the son has insulted.

"There is a comfort in the strength of love; 'Twill make a thing endurable, which else Would overset the brain or break the heart."

The peasant woman in Millet's picture has had nothing to break her heart, but every- thing to wear it out in toil and privation and stagnating routine of life with no diversion. You see it in the dull and heavy face, the coarse flesh, the work-roughened hands, the drag on her shoulders of the heavy water- pails, the eyes half-closed. But, says Millet himself — and you may read his words in the

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 31

catalogue — "she has an air of rustic goodness. She is not a servant, but a wife who has just drawn water, with which she makes her hus- band's soup. She is accompHshing with sim- pHcity and wiUingness an act which is, with the other household duties, an every-day part of her Hfe." In Wordsworth's "Michael" and in Millet's "Water-Carrier" the love of ignorant peasants supports everything — toil and monotony, and even the ruin of the loved object. Millet says of his picture: "I have avoided, as I always do, with a sort of horror anything that turned toward the sentimen- tal. " And how completely was that Words- worth's purpose, in all his poetry, to reveal the primal sympathies and to reveal them in tranquillity.

Two men utterly different from these stead- fast souls were Turner and Shelley — different enough from each other in many ways, but similar in the daring impatience of their genius, and similar in the way they handled sky and sunlight in their pictures and poems. In the luminosity of Turner's "Fountain of Indolence" (Gallery No. 24), in its gold, crimson, blue, deep red, and all its merging colors. In its hills, misty in excess of light.

32 MUSEUMS OF ART

there is exactly the quaHty that you find in Shelley's sun pictures — in "Prometheus Un- bound," "JuHan and Maddalo," and "Lines Written in the Euganean Hills," the same audacity, brilliancy, scorn of defining out- Hnes, passion for light and color, blinding radiance, and dazzling chromatics. In the "Julian and Maddalo" he described the sky and the hills at just that moment of sunset when the two fuse together in hquid gold, and the hills are as unsubstantial as the clouds, all merged in a mist of Hght and dissolved in red and yellow flames. Only Shelley and Turner could look undazzled on those glories and then tell the world what they had seen — one in poetry, the other in paint.

In moods quite different, but equally true, Tennyson and those English landscape-paint- ers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries interpreted nature, not venturing into the seventh heaven of light and color rapture where earth and sky are no longer divisible, but all burned up in blaze — not doing that, but staying at home quietly in England and revealing the charm of England — its own atmosphere, the peace, the security of Eng- land.

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 33

"An English home, — gray twilight poured

On dewy pastures, dewy trees. Softer than sleep, — all things in order stored,

A haunt of ancient Peace."

So Tennyson wrote, and so Constable and Gainsborough and John Crome painted. In Crome's large landscape, in Gallery No. 15, there are heavy thunder-clouds and laborers are driving the wain home for shelter from the rain. But if they do not reach cover before the storm breaks, the worst they will get is a wetting. No such storm here as breaks in the Rockies, but just some normal thunder and lightning, a downpour of rain, then clear- ing, sunshine, and the peace of tight little England. It is the same note in Tennyson's poetry:

"And one, a full-fed river winding slow By herds upon an endless plain. The ragged rines of thunder brooding low, With shadow streaks of rain."

In the broken foreground of Gainsborough's picture, called simply "EngHsh Landscape," in this same Gallery No. 15, there is the same quahty of England — it is properly called

34 MUSEUMS OF ART

"English" landscape — it couldn't be any- where else. The background of this picture, with its high hills, is not Tennyson, for he loved wide horizons. When he left the snug- geries of quiet English lanes, and the soft bends and pools of Httle English rivers, he loved to get out on the English moorland, the "endless plains," or by the gray sea. It is the influence of his native Lincolnshire, and his pensive, not painful, melancholy.

In Constable's "On the River Stour," in this same fascinating Gallery No. 15 — and this is my last look at it — there is the nooked and sheltered England which Tennyson loved, the rustic rural England — the bridge, the awkward boat, the fishers, the thick foliage — the charm that Tennyson put into so much of his English landscape — "The Miller's Daughter," for example.

It is all very beautiful, this work of Tenny- son, and the early EngHsh landscapists; it is very peaceful and snug; but, above all, it is English. It has "atmosphere." I don't know what "atmosphere" is, but I know these men had it. One thing I do know that it is : it is magic, and it comes in part from really loving what you paint.

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 35

While pointing out these resemblances, I should perhaps try to do a Httle practical work in composition-teaching, by suggesting to the pupils the limitations in each medium — the pictorial and the literary. I would show them that some things can be done in one medium, and some other things can be done in the other medium; and that it is a mistake to try to do with words what should be left to paint, or to try to do with paint what should be left to words.

I should, for instance, call their attention to the fact that Turner uses actual color, and Shelley uses only symbols of color — words; and that Turner makes his impression on the eye all at once, while Shelley makes his im- pression on the ear in a sequence of lines. These are Turner's advantages over Shel- ley; but I should call their attention to an advantage which Shelley has over Turner, namely, that Shelley can show the succession of changes in a sunrise or a sunset — crimson turning into gold, or gold into crimson, right before our eyes, as in the actual sun- rise or sunset, the whole brightening or darkening every second, while Turner can show only one particular and momen-

36 MUSEUMS OF ART

tary phase of the phenomenon on a single canvas.

And then I should emphasize the fact that Shelley is one of the few literary artists who ever mastered color effects in words, and that Tennyson is one of the few who ever mastered effect of line as well as color in words, and that he does this largely by selection and con- densation, as in those compact word-pictures which I read just now from "The Palace of Art," and as in these two other pictures which I take from the same fine-wrought poem — both marines. The first with just a sugges- tion of the "wideness" of an Elihu Vedder, the second with the strength of a Paul Dougherty :

"One seemed all dark and red, — a tract of sand. And some one pacing there alone, Who paced forever in a glimmering land. Lit with a low, large moon.

"One showed an iron coast and angry waves. You seemed to hear them climb and fall And roar rock-thwarted under bellowing caves. Beneath the windy wall."

And the moral of it all would be that as there are few Shelleys and Tennysons, the more pru-

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 37

dent course is to refrain from attempts at elaborate word-painting.

I should remind the pupils of their own habit of skipping good Sir Walter Scott's long descriptions of nature in discouragingly close- printed paragraphs unrelieved by dialogue; and would suggest that if Sir Walter could not do this entertainingly, the probabilities are unfavorable to themselves. I should try to get them to see that as a general rule, with only brilliant exceptions, the true medium for nature delineation in detail is paint, not words, and the true medium of human nar- rative is words, not paint.

I take it that the real objection of fastidi- ous people to those mid-Victorian pictures which "tell a story" of sentiment is not an objection to story or sentiment, but a cavil at an attempt to do with a brush what is better done with a pen. And by the same token a painter's brush can better describe in detail a Scottish moorland than can Sir Walter's pen, for the simple reason that, as the written details must be got in sequence, the first are forgotten before the last are learned; for the human mind can hold only a limited number of impressions, and where a

38 MUSEUMS OF ART

considerable number of impressions are given in word sequence the mind never gets the impression of the whole — in short, never gets a picture.

The whole matter, like all human things, reduces itself in the end to psychology. Moreover, the tendency nowadays in nat- ure portrayal, whether in paint or words, is away from the narrative and dramatic to the purely lyrical.

I fancy that the old Dutch painters would be mystified by some of the full-noon pict- ures of to-day, which have no human asso- ciation beyond the human joy in sunlight and green leaves and the wind in the trees. Correspondingly, the mood of nature in much contemporary verse is just the "lyric cry," and therefore brief. And when a twentieth-century poet does keep to the nar- rative method of description, he does it with brevity and swiftness. As KipHng, for in- stance, in that fine stanza of "The Explorer," where in four lines he takes his reader out of the snowlands, down into the fertile valley, through the valley, and out into the barren, cursed, and horror-haunted desert; not ex- actly a formed picture like those Tennyson

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 39

made for his "Palace of Art," but the utmost brevity of virile narrative:

**TI11 the snow ran out in flowers, and the flowers turned to aloes,

And the aloes sprung to thickets, and a brim- ming stream ran by;

But the thickets dwined to thorn-scrub, and the water ran to shallows —

And I dropped again on desert, — blasted earth and blasting sky."

Not being a teacher of these things, but just an average person who loves pictures very much but without any technical intelli- gence, and who loves literature very much and, I trust, with a little technical intelli- gence, I have known no way to address you this afternoon except personally — to tell you some of the things that I myself might do with the museum if I were teaching in a New York school.

One last thing I should do — but I should do it first and do it last and do it all the time — try to get these young moralists to leave their "obstinate questionings" at home, and to understand that the primary purpose of art is to give pleasure and not to settle ques-

40 MUSEUMS OF ART

tions of conscience and social arrangement. Questions of conscience are the most impor- tant of all questions, but they must be settled in grave counsel, in self-examination, in se- cret, and in prayer. A visit to an art gal- lery is for another purpose.

Theoretically, at least, our young Americans are excessive moralists, and will, in Charles Lamb's phrase, "indict our very dreams," shrink from "imagining a state of things for which there is neither reward nor punish- ment," "cling to the painful necessities of shame and blame," raise questions of moral propriety because Romeo kisses Juliet at their first meeting (a problem which I en- countered on more than one recent examina- tion paper), and put in question the civic utility of Sir John Falstaff. I should try to ease them a Httle of all that, and get them to understand that a great artist looks out on the world with open eyes, and is in sympathy with the pageantry of nature and human nature because it is true and because it is alive; and that he recreates what he sees and feels in the impersonal and universal terms of art, and leaves to those who preach and to us who teach the tremendous responsibility

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 41

of being personal and particular; of assisting them to apply to their own cases the universal and inexorable laws; of being counsellors of conscience and advisers of conduct.

I would urge upon them, at least upon the older ones who could understand and not be confused in values, that the artist loves the world, not because it is moral or immoral, not because it is always* even beautiful, but because it is his world, our world, a world sometimes good and sometimes bad, some- times happy and sometimes sad, sometimes sane and sometimes mad, but the world of the facts that God made and allowed, the world of the facts which art can transmute into a mystic source of happiness to all peo- ple with seeing eyes and responsive hearts.

MUSEUMS OF ART AND TEACHERS OF ART

BY KENYON COX, Litt.D.

MUSEUMS OF ART AND TEACHERS OF ART

I FEEL very much flattered that so many of you should come out in such weather to hear me speak on this subject, and I feel a little embarrassed in speaking on it to such an audience, because, while I have spent a good deal of my life in teaching, and while I am pro- foundly convinced of the importance of the museum in connection with all teaching of art, I do not know very much about what is actually done in the way of art-teaching in the public schools, in which field I suppose many of you are specialists. Neither do I know anything of the science of pedagogy, which you have all presumably studied. So I feel a Httle as if I were asked to address Mr. Morgan on "The Joys of Collecting," or perhaps Mr. Bryan on "Public Speaking." I can only talk to you informally, giving my ideas for what they may be worth, and I shall stop when I have finished what I have to say, whether it be much or Httle, because I think

45

46 MUSEUMS OF ART

you would rather hear a short talk than one pieced out with words that mean nothing.

In discussing the uses of the museum in connection with the teaching of art, the most important things to consider are, first, what we mean by "the teaching of art"; and, second, what purpose is to be subserved by such teaching. We are apt to talk of the teaching of art, it seems to me, rather loosely. Of course, there is one sense in which art cannot be taught at all. In our ordinary art schools, certainly, there is very little attempt to teach it. We can teach the trades con- nected with art — the handicrafts in which art expresses itself; in the arts of design, for in- stance, we can teach more or less drawing and painting, more or less sculpture and modelhng — but we cannot teach art. The art in these things is a matter of individual creative im- pulse. The artist, like the poet, is born — only, he has to be "made" too; at least, he has to be trained, and we can do something toward the training of artists, though that is no part of the work of our public schools. What we can actually give in the way of teach- ing of art may be classed under three heads. In the first place, we can teach about art. A

AND TEACHERS OF ART 47

great deal of the teaching in our schools and colleges, a great deal that appears in books and lectures everywhere, is, I think, rather teaching about art than teaching art. It is teaching the history of art; to some extent the theory of art. It is a very useful kind of teaching in its place and for its own ends, but it is to be clearly distinguished from the other two kinds of teaching — the teaching of, or the assistance and encouragement in, the appreciation of art, which is the rarest kind of teaching, and the teaching of the use of the tools of art, which is what all teachers of drawing or of modelling are engaged in.

Now, it is obvious that in this teaching about art — this teaching of the history or the theory of art — a museum is a tool of the highest utility. It is possible, as we know too well, to teach something of art history by lectures and text-books without the use of concrete examples; but such teaching is pretty sure to degenerate into a teaching of names, or about names, instead of a teaching about things. Lecturing, for instance, on the history of painting, without the possibihty of constant reference to the paintings them- selves, seems to me a rather barren exercise.

48 MUSEUMS OF ART

It IS a little pathetic to see the hunger for such teaching, to note how many people go to lectures on the history of art, or read books on that history, without ever reaHzing that they know nothing — really nothing — about the things of which they are hearing or reading.

But whatever you may learn of the history of art without seeing the actual objects which are the subject of that history, you can learn not at all to appreciate art without studying the objects themselves. The best that you can get outside of a good museum is a lim- ited supply of photographs or of illustrations in books, and these are a very, very poor sub- stitute. One really good picture of almost any school or epoch, one fragment of Greek sculpture or of Gothic carving, is an infinitely better introduction to the enjoyment of art than all of the illustrations in all of the illus- trated books on art that have been printed. In the attempt to teach appreciation the museum is not merely a valuable aid, it is an absolute necessity.

In the third form of teaching — the teach- ing of the use of the tools of art — the museum is less obviously necessary; and as a matter

AND TEACHERS OF ART 49

of fact such teaching, whether in the pro- fessional art schools or in general schools, has made little use of the museum. I think it can be shown, however, that even in this part of the teaching of art the uses of the museum are many and its facilities should be taken advantage of.

As to the purpose of art-teaching in our schools, I imagine it to have two principal aims or ends. I imagine art to be taught in the schools, first, for the sake of general cult- ure; and, second, for the training of eye and hand, and for the providing of a valuable tool for use in the future life of the students.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of art-teaching for the diffusion of culture. Our general school training be- comes— of necessity — more and more a mat- ter of utility. The necessarily, obviously use- ful things that will help a student to gain a hving are insisted upon; and what used to be called the "humanities'* are perhaps more and more neglected. We all know how much regret has been felt and expressed at the gradual decay of the study of Greek in our institutions of learning. Now, it seems to me that in the teaching of art there is a pretty good substitute for some of the more humane

So MUSEUMS OF ART

studies that are being discontinued. The ten- dency to do away with the study of Greek is lamented by scholars, because, they say, the Greek spirit is of the utmost importance to our general culture and to our finer and higher education, and that we are in danger of losing the influence of this spirit through the dis- continuance of the study of the Greek lan- guage. But, as long as there is Greek sculpt- ure and Greek architecture to be studied in our museums, it seems to me we need not despair of arriving at some very tolerable notion of the Greek spirit. I am not at all sure that Greek art in these forms is not even more characteristic of the Greek spirit than is Greek literature. It certainly is as much so.

I have always been interested in the story that has been told of Goethe, who when he was about to write his "Iphigenia" wished to fill himself with the Greek spirit and did it, not by reading Greek tragedies, but by taking a course of drawing from the antique. I am not sure but that in this manner he came more closely into touch with the finer spirit of the Greeks than he could have done in any other way.

The theory of art I think we can dismiss

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from this discussion as a thing hardly to be taught in the ordinary schools. The theory of art, or what we know as aesthetics, is a branch of metaphysics — a thing only to be understood or enjoyed by very advanced stu- dents— by mature minds. And, on the other hand, if a child or a young person in the high schools can be brought to take a natural and healthy interest in art — the concrete thing as it exists — I think he need not be troubled much about the theory of it. He can be allowed to take that for granted, leaving it as a matter for the metaphysicians and the aestheticians to discuss.

Of the history of art there is much more that is favorable to be said, but the teaching of the history of art has also its dangers. I think there is always a little danger that in studying and in teaching the history of art we shall get too much into the scientific frame of mind — shall get to thinking too much of the importance of things as specimens. Thinking scientifically, rather than artis- tically, we shall classify and pigeon-hole and come to treat a work of art as if it were an insect with a pin through it. If we are to make much out of the study of art, we have

52 MUSEUMS OF ART

got to know it as something alive, not as something in a cabinet with a label on it. If it is not alive, it is of very little use to us. In studying the work of art as if it were conven- iently dead we are studying, in reality, ar- chaeology rather than art, for archaeology does not necessarily confine itself to the study of the work of extinct peoples. There is Egyp- tian archaeology and Greek archaeology, etc., but there is also nowadays a good deal of Renaissance archaeology. Even the study of modern art may reduce itself to what one may call a sort of premature archaeology. The archaeologist looks at a work of art for the light it throws on history or the life of man, on customs or costumes, on religion, or a thousand other things; but he sometimes for- gets that the one important thing about a work of art is its beauty. We should re- member that the teaching of art history is, after all, less a branch of the teaching of art than a branch of the teaching of history. As a branch of the teaching of history it has very great uses and very great importance; but for those specifically engaged in trying to get some idea of the meaning of art into the minds of the young, and in trying to give them such

AND TEACHERS OF ART 53

benefit for general culture as is to be had from the study of art, the study of art history should, it seems to me, take a minor place.

The important thing about a work of art, then, for us is not its country or its date or the name of its author, not its authenticity or any other fact about it — the important thing is its beauty. If it have not beauty, it is use- less for our purpose, however authentic and interesting it may be as a specimen. And that is one of the things that make it neces- sary to use a museum with discretion, for a museum necessarily contains a good many specimens which have their interest of one or another sort but which are not beautiful. They may not be beautiful, possibly, because the whole art of a certain period or school was unbeautiful; or they may be unbeautiful be- cause they are the inferior works of a given period or the failures of a particular artist. But the things which in themselves intrinsic- ally possess beauty are the only things which should interest us. If it have real beauty, it does not much matter when a work of art was made or where or by whom it was made — its beauty is its reason for existence, and the best we can do for the young people over

54 MUSEUMS OF ART

whom we may have an influence is to try- to encourage and as far as possible to train their appreciation of the beautiful. It is, therefore, the second kind of art-teaching, the training in the appreciation of art, that is most important for our first purpose, that of the diffusion of culture.

Now, it is not an easy thing to do to train the appreciation of art. As far as it can be done at all it can be done in a museum, and hardly anywhere else. As far as the teachers of art in our schools are to perform that func- tion of training the young to the appreciation of art, they can only perform it in this museum or in some other; and it becomes of the utmost importance, therefore, that relations between the museums and the schools should be sys- tematic and should be kept constantly in view.

I should like not only to see regular trips to the museum at certain intervals by classes, under the direction of their teachers, but I should like to see the school-children en- couraged to come to the museum of their own voHtion — to come in their spare hours and on their holidays. I should like to see some reason given to them to do this; some ques- tion asked them that they could come here

AND TEACHERS OF ART 55

to find an answer for. I should like to see anything done that might tend to give them the museum habit. It is a habit which is lamentably lacking in a large class of well- to-do and well-educated people, who seem neither to know what there is in the museum nor to feel any need of what is to be got from a museum.

I should like, as I say, to see the museum made much more important and effective in its appeal to all the people; and I should hke to begin with the school-children and the high-school students. But I think it might be rather dangerous to try to give too much direction at first to these young people. It seems to me that if one took a class through the rooms of this museum, carefully pointing out the best things and explaining why they should be admired and why they are the best, one might readily produce the result that a good many teachers of literature produce — the result of making the pupils hate those particular things forever. My idea would be to take the horse to water, but not at first to make any ineffectual attempt to compel drinking. Take the children to the museum. Let them range a little. See what they like.

56 MUSEUMS OF ART

Find out, if you can, whether they really like anything; and, when they like something, find out why. Then, it seems to me, if you can find out why any child or young person has liked a particular work of art, you can begin to point out the quality he has liked in other things, in better form and in higher degree; and you can gradually produce a very decided impression on the taste of the student.

To this end we must specially guard against the old error of thinking of art as a thing limited to pictures in gold frames and statues standing on pedestals. We must not forget the enormous number and variety of objects collected in a museum like this, and the genu- inely artistic nature of almost all of these ob- jects. One could not begin to describe, in the time at my disposal, what there is in this particular museum, and I must confess to a very partial acquaintance with its contents. But take such a thing as the collection of musical instruments, and I can imagine a sense of line being awakened for the first time by the study of these musical instruments, just as I can imagine a sense of color being awakened by the study of the deep tones and rich glazes of some piece of oriental pottery.

AND TEACHERS OF ART 57

In the first place, many of these things, by their association or connection, are more likely to interest the young than the pictures and the statues — certainly than the statues. And, in the second place, I am not at all sure that the purely artistic sensations cannot be given more directly by some of these works of minor art than by works of painting or sculpture, because the artistic element is less confused, less entangled with the question of representation. When we look at a picture we are inevitably thinking somewhat of the subject; we are inevitably thinking of the things represented; and the color of the pict- ure, as color, does not come to us with any- thing like the force and the clearness and simplicity of appeal that it might have coming from some oriental plaque. So with beauty of Hne, which it is hard to disentangle from representation, but which is entirely discon- nected with representation in the fine forms of a musical instrument or of a beautiful piece of furniture. Therefore, in trying to culti- vate artistic appreciation in the young, I should, especially in the beginning, allow them a wide range of choice of subject, try- ing, little by httle, to lead them to a finer.

S8 MUSEUMS OF ART

higher appreciation of the qualities they had first shown a Hking for, taking them from the Hne of a fiddle neck to the line of a draw- ing by Botticelli, and from the color of a tile to the color of a Titian.

If this could be done — if the pupils could be brought frequently to a museum, and en- couraged to come oftener by themselves — if visits were held regularly once a week, or once a month even, until they became pretty familiar with the contents of a museum Hke this, there seems to be no real reason why, in a few years, such pupils should not have a really sounder, better-based, and more cul- tivated taste in the fine arts than most of the members of our highly educated classes.

The third form of the teaching of art, the teaching of the use of the tools of art, reduces itself, for our purpose, practically to the teaching of drawing. I do not think painting can be profitably taught in our public schools, and I shall not now consider the teaching of modelling, though much of what I shall say of the teaching of drawing would apply to the other study. This form of art-teaching is especially fitted to promote the second of our aims, the training of eye and hand and the

AND TEACHERS OF ART 59

providing of a useful tool for the life work of the student. Drawing as a training of eye and hand is a kind of physical culture. It sharpens the senses, broadens the powers, and stim- ulates the observation and the intelligence, making of the student a finer and every way more efficient being than he could become without it. Drawing is also, in many walks of life, an indispensable tool, and I can im- agine no walk of life in which the power of expressing oneself with lines might not oc- casionally be of the utmost service. There- fore I consider the teaching of drawing a most important part of a good general education. Now, the highest possible material for the study of drawing is undoubtedly the human figure; but I take it that very few of the pupils in our schools are at all Hkely to become professional artists, and I am quite certain that the amount of time which can be given to the teaching of drawing in the schools is utterly insufficient for any useful attempt at the mastery of the human figure. Therefore I should eliminate at once any attempt to draw the human figure either from Hfe or from casts or copies. Landscape is poor material for the training of the sense of form.

6o MUSEUMS OF ART

The whole tendency of the study of landscape is necessarily toward the perception of color, of light and shade, and of effect, and toward the neglect of the precise study of form. Whatever may be proper for the education of the artist, I am quite certain that for the education of the artisan and for the general training of eye and hand, which is good for every one, any impressionistic work, any work that attempts "effect," any work that at- tempts the subtleties and intricacies of light, is work in a mistaken direction. Therefore, as far as the teaching of drawing in the pub- lic schools is concerned, and the connection of the museum with that teaching, I should say at once, don't try to connect this teach- ing of drawing with the paintings in the museum, nor even to any great extent with the figure sculpture. What you want for the kind of study of drawing that is necessary to the training of eye and hand, and to the form- ing of a useful tool, is something precise, definite, and simple in its forms. There can be nothing better for the purposes in view than the study of ornament, and of the minor and decorative arts — the arts of pottery and furniture and the like — and there is a splen-

AND TEACHERS OF ART 6i

did mass of material for that kind of study in this museum. For the future use of the pupil he has no need of effect, of mystery, of all that impressionism deals with. What he wants IS a tool that will lend itself to the mastery of concrete facts. He wants to be able to see what the shapes of things and the makes of things are; for his general training it is even more important that he should learn to see the facts of form and construc- tion before thinking of effect. If I could direct the training of our painters, I should, even for them, lay a great deal more stress on the acquisition in the beginning of a clear style of draughtsmanship than is usually placed upon it, and should, for a long time, rather discourage anything more than clear outline- drawing, with a minimum of light and shade, making the attainment of exact proportion and construction the principal aim.

It is to be remembered also that many of the pupils in the pubHc schools are Hkely to practise one or another trade or handicraft in which not only will drawing be useful to them, but in which a knowledge of what has been done in the past in the way of artistic handicraft will also be of inestimable advan-

62 MUSEUMS OF ART

tage. Now, that knowledge cannot be ac- quired in any useful degree by mere looking. Such things, for instance, as the beautiful furniture and mural decorations of the eigh- teenth century, of which we have admirable examples here in the museum, can only be really understood by drawing them; and for the general cultivation of the pupils, for pro- viding them with that power to draw which will be a useful tool for them, and for the incidental gaining of some real understanding of the various styles of historic ornament and of some appreciation of the beauty of work- manship to be found in work in the minor and decorative arts of past times, I should wish that all classes in drawing, connected with our pubHc schools, should have a cer- tain regular allotment of time for work in the museum, where instead of drawing from in- significant objects or from copies of one sort or another, they should be able to draw from really fine specimens of decorative art.

One thing more as to the methods of such study and I shall have done. I think in al- most all modern training in art there is a lamentable neglect of the training of the memory. I have frequently been astonished

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to find that artists of great ability have ap- parently no visual memory and are unable to do anything without the immediate pres- ence of the model. This seems to me to be a patent evidence of a lack of the right sort of education. But perhaps even more than to the artist is it essential to the artisan that he have a trained memory. Certainly a stone-cutter should be able to carve an acanthus-leaf "out of his head/' and not have to go and look it up somewhere, and a wood- carver should surely "know by heart" the most of the ornamental forms he is in the habit of employing. I should feel that half the value of a sound training in drawing was lost if it were not made to include a training of the memory as well as of the eye and hand. Therefore, in working with a class of pupils in drawing in a museum, my idea would be to set them to drawing selected objects in the museum, and then to ask them to reproduce these drawings from memory when away from the objects. That of itself would be an admirable training; but I should not stop there. As the pupils became more used to the work and more able to analyze and to remember the forms of things, I should

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set the more advanced among them to study the objects in the museum without drawing at all — simply making mental notes and decid- ing upon the height and width and construc- tion of the thing, on its form and on its orna- ment; and then I should ask them to make their drawing in the absence of the model, at school or at home, returning as often as neces- sary to the museum to correct their impres- sions, but never touching the drawing in the presence of the object. In working either from memory of a previous drawing or from direct memory of the object itself the stu- dent should, of course, have the aid of the instructor in comparing his work with the original in the museum, and should be shown where his drawing is wrong, and what is the nature and the importance of his mistakes.

I do not believe that every one can learn to draw. I think there are people without eye as there are people without ear. There are people who will never draw, just as there are people who will never be able to play an air by ear or from memory. But such a course of training the eye and the hand by drawing from objects of decorative art, and of train- ing the memory by constant practice of the

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sort here recommended — all this done defi- nitely and decisively, without sketching and scrawling, or impressionistic treatment of light and shade, but with a constant insist- ence upon clear statement of form — such a course should put into the hands of some con- siderable part of the class a fundamentally better and more generally available knowl- edge of drawing than is possessed by many a well-known artist to-day.

MUSEUMS OF ART AND TEACHERS OF HISTORY

BY G. STANLEY HALL, Ph.D.

MUSEUMS OF ART AND TEACHERS OF HISTORY

My own interest in the co-operation between museums and educational work is very keen, and let me say, also, at the outset that I thank you again for reminding me that I am no artist but only a pedagogue.

Fifteen years ago the question was much agitated among teachers as to what an art museum could do for drawing and art in- struction in high schools and in grammar schools, and it was something of an epoch when, in 1893, a national congress was held on the subject to enhghten and bring to- gether people interested in the co-operation between the museums and the teachers of art and drawing. In those days much used to be said in pedagogic circles in regard to museums not being helpful to the pubHc, not reaching the masses. As you know, in some places — for instance, at South Kensington — there was as a result of this complaint an immense deal of pains put forth to effect an 69

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interest on the part of the public in such things as domestic art. Some places have gone further yet, and say that this move- ment has been a very great success. So the museums and the schools have come together, in some places more than others, to be sure. Still there has been a great deal of the best kind of co-operation. I do not need to remind you of the movement which the Metropolitan Museum has led, organizing, as I believe it did in 1906, another congress which gave great stimulus to this kind of co-operation between the teaching of art and art muse- ums. To-day, as you know, there are many new devices unheard of ten or fifteen years ago. Then the purpose of a museum was simply to provide an esoteric and aesthetic mausoleum of pictures, open on certain days of the week to a few people, but now the museums desire to reach the largest number of people and do the greatest amount of good. Some museums provide trained guides — for instance, at the Boston Museum — ^who go around with visitors to explain things. The system, I believe, is also in existence in the Metropolitan Museum.

Some of the Western cities have actually

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gone so far as to invite the children to vote upon what new pictures the museum should buy. Toledo, Milwaukee, and several other Western cities have done this, the idea being that thus children have a greater interest in the museums and in art matters. In one of the cities the children are even allowed to de- termine by vote one picture each year to be added to the collection. Moreover, a few of the smaller museums in the West, as in To- ledo, ofFer prizes each year for the best draw- ing by a school child, and there is an exhibit in the museum of the children's best draw- ings. There is also the movement to lend lantern sHdes and collections far and wide, slides illustrating methods of teaching, and comprehending almost everything included in the teacher's work. When I was in Paris the last time, they told me they had there five thousand different pictures, mostly lan- tern slides, I think, in circulation among the schools. In some of our own States the cir- culation of pictures and lantern sHdes is not confined to any certain city or cities, but ex- tends throughout the State, so that I think we can say that the co-operation of the museums in that way has been most fruitful.

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But our question to-day is more limited; that is, whether such methods can be em- ployed by the museums and teachers, and can be as useful and go as far in the matter of history. Now, in regard to that I want to group my remarks under a few general heads.

First of all, let me speak as a psychologist, and remind you that there is a type of mind which we are in the habit of designating as the visual type of mind, which is particularly susceptible to form and color. Many psy- chologists classify minds into three main types: one that is auditory, that remembers words; one that is essentially visual; and one that is motor, but of this we do not need to speak now. It is very well made out that Americans, as a class, are rather more visual- minded than most other races, and perhaps more than any other race since the ancient Greeks. This characteristic is suggested, at least, by the contour of the long head. All the senses are highly developed, and there is unusual sensibility to and power of remember- ing color and form. Wherever you can teach the visual mind by means of illustrative ap- paratus, you have a strong ally in your work, and the type of mind exemplified in the Amer-

AND TEACHERS OF HISTORY 73

ican is the type which responds to that method of instruction. That is a point which, if this were a lecture on psychology, I should like to amplify, and perhaps spend the entire hour in performing various tests and experiments to confirm these general conclusions which might be of a good deal of interest to teachers.

It was, indeed, a great movement that Comenius, whom some call the Father of Modern Education, inaugurated, when he recognized that to give images makes things concrete and definite. His " Orbis Pictus " is one of the most potent inventions of educa- tion, and its pictures were constructed with remarkable ingenuity.

We have now another two-volumed edi- tion of a book by Basedow which every teacher should read, constructed on the prin- ciples of Comenius. The work is intended to cover in pictures the whole range of human life: the marriage of the parents, and then the birth of the child, and every typical phase of his Hfe. After Comenius and Basedow came the object-lesson craze, and now we find that the eye actually stimulates the other senses. For instance, in experimenting with a Victor talking-machine, we find that while

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one can remember sentences in French and German when merely spoken by the machine, if the subject matter that is talked of is re- inforced by a picture, the memory of that im- pression is very greatly enhanced. It can be remembered more quickly, and can be recalled after a longer period of time, and even though most of it is apparently forgotten and is be- yond the reach of voluntary recollection, it can be relearned with greatly increased facil- ity, showing that traces of it still remain, and showing the agency and operation of the eye, which is the point I want to impress upon you. This visual aid we have much neglected of late in our teaching, I think especially in the classics. I do not mean in the high schools alone, but in the colleges as well. There has been usually considerable difficulty in getting teachers interested in the power of illustra- tion. A foreign visitor to our country some time ago said that it was incomprehensible to him how, up and down the length of this land, the teachers of Greek and Latin in our high schools and colleges could proceed with the equipment which they had at their dis- posal. They would have a few maps on the wall and possibly two or three busts and

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nothing more, although it is possible, with- out very great expense, to equip a class-room with models of Roman antiquities or with cuts of all the things essential to inspire the instruction, and in a sense transport the child back to ancient Greece and Rome. Let me say here parenthetically that I have been sur- prised to reaHze lately how effective apparatus of this kind is. We have been spending at our Children's Institute a few thousand dol- lars to see what could be done in a pedagogic museum, and we bought a lot of German col- ored charts (almost all these things are of German manufacture), Roman coins, disks, and various other antiquities. There are, per- haps, only a dozen of these charts on Rome, costing one dollar each. But these things vivify instruction so much that our college teachers have been using them habitually, and just now there is a rivalry between the high-school and college teachers as to which shall get the new ones first. Why this illus- trative apparatus, which appeals with such cogency to the eye, has not been used by teachers in the large cities of the country I do not quite understand. Surely there is no place where it is quite so necessary, because

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the Greek and Roman languages are the deadest things there are, and there is not a person in the world now living, I suppose, who worships Jupiter, once beheved to be the father of gods and men. This ancient culture has all to be revived and reconstructed by the scientific imagination alone. Some years ago classical teachers were very much im- pressed with the exhibit for teaching Roman antiquities which was displayed at the World's Fair in Saint Louis. There was everything in illustrations and models : the dining customs of the people, all of the details of the home life, and every other feature of Roman life — their houses, courts, theatres, forum, and everything else. That collection was the first of its kind. It is now in the Washington Uni- versity at Saint Louis, and even a day spent there would do a great deal to give zest and animation to the teacher as well as to the pupil.

There is no time to go into detail on the subject which we are considering. In fact, I am not competent to do so, for I am not a classical teacher, but as a pedagogue it has been amazing to me to see, when the teachers of classics really avail themselves of all the

AND TEACHERS OF HISTORY ^^

accessible material of the character which the Germans call Anschauung, how very greatly it benefits the classes, and gives greatly em- phasized efficiency to instruction in that do- main. It seems to me that such aids to in- struction are particularly necessary in regard to the past.

I have not the learning to go down through the ages and tell you what would be the ideal equipment of teachers of history if there were unlimited material at hand for their special use and service. An ideal collec- tion does not exist, but those familiar with pedagogic literature know that such ideals are now seething in the minds of many pro- gressive educators. I read some time ago that it was projected in Germany to have a model of ancient Rome under glass, I sup- pose on the model of Palestine, which we have at Chautauqua, though the school model of ancient Rome should be on a much larger scale. The idea was to do what the early teachers of classics attempted to do to the boys from the earliest days of the gymnasia; that is, Hterally to transport them to ancient Greece and Rome, to play Roman games, and to carry on all the conversation and exchange

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of ideas In Latin. Such ideals are very good. I do not know whether we shall have any such ideals in this country. Not often are super- intendents, still less educators, bold enough, when they see a good thing, to take a forward step and grasp it. To my mind, one of the pathetic things about our American education is that we spend relatively too much money on these palatial high-school buildings. For, when it comes to equipment in the way of illustrative material, the money is all gone, although a high-school building, without ap- paratus, charts, diagrams, pictures, etc., is a ghastly thing. It is a body without a soul; it is a corpse.

When we realize the possibilities, my ques- tion is, why don't we somewhere make a be- ginning and show what art is able to do with all its very many resources ? I think it is high time we had a committee to look over our entire educational scheme and see what can be done in the various departments to make things more anschaulich. The American mind does not run to problems so much as it does to vivid, clear images. That is what makes us inventive and progressive, and makes us observe the beauty of the short cut,

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of the "direct method," of "getting there" with the least expenditure of effort. I do not know that there is any definition of sci- ence I have heard repeated at the scientific meetings in this country which I think com- pares with the German definition, that sci- ence is the easiest and most effective way of thinking the largest things with the least effort.

Besides the various kinds of illustrative material of ancient history, which this and other museums are so rich in — art, tapestries, busts, illustrations, pictures, figures, etc. — there is another line of work that has in- terested me for many years. In a little coun- try town where I lived — it must have been about twenty years ago — we had the good fortune to have one summer a rather prom- inent man who was connected with a large art institution in Baltimore. At his sugges- tion he and I went around and looked over all the attics and brought together all that could be lent to us to illustrate the early history of this old New England town, which at that time had a population of less than one thou- sand inhabitants. We got some looms and set them up, and all the apparatus of spinning yarn. We hired a room and equipped it fully.

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We had collections of maps of the town, two or three old surveys, and copies of the char- ter. We had a lot of old text-books, as far back as we could get them. We had all the relics of the old town that we could possibly gather, and I think altogether, before we got through, we had over four thousand different labelled items in our Hst for teaching local history, with the idea that history begins at home and begins with rather definite things. This exhibition certainly did give great in- terest there to the whole topic of history, and there have been many things far better and far larger than that done elsewhere both in New England and in New York.

Everybody knows about the very interest- ing exhibit that Doctor Sheldon, of Deerfield, Mass., — a man who is now over ninety years of age, — has been collecting all his life. In this collection is brought together everything from the old Indian days down. He has an old high-school building filled with these ob- jects— old Indian fireplaces, and all the old cuts and illustrations, files of old newspapers, etc., so that you can go back two hundred years when you go through the museum and catch the true historical spirit.

It has been found lately that there is no

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good historic museum in the States of the Northwest Territory settled by the expedi- tion of Israel Putnam, except the one at Marietta, Ohio, where he made his first stop. There a zealous professor wants to institute what may be called a historical museum, and the college has become the centre of a propa- ganda which is connecting the East and the West. New Englanders are not only improv- ing the historical museum in the town from which Israel Putnam started, namely, Rut- land, Mass., but they are active in their sup- port of the more elaborate museum at Mari- etta, and propose to wake up the historic sense, which seems to be rather lacking in this country as a whole, and particularly in the West, by giving the people tangible ob- jects to which to attach their history lessons. The Marietta Institute has done a good deal of work for the schools in that county, and perhaps in Ohio generally.

A little of this work, too, we are trying to do with the Museum of the Massachusetts Historical Society. I hope that something is going to come in the way of lending some of its materials, in the shape of photographs, lantern slides, etc. So the method of teach-

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ing history seems to be drifting in the right direction, namely, to get more and more in touch with pictures and with old relics and objects of art that vivify to the child's mind historical events.

History badly taught is about the most mechanical subject in the world. If it is mere text-book cramming; if it is an abstract catalogue of names, dates, and battles; if it lacks the vital touch that makes personahties, in which children are extremely interested, stand out and glow, it can be made one of the deadest possible studies; on the other hand, with proper arrangement of details, it can be made one of the vitally interesting topics.

Now, in the third place, I want to speak of another movement along this line which, to my mind, is just now of burning interest. I feel that I am addressing chiefly teachers of history or those interested in that subject. Most of our text-books, until about fifteen years ago, ended back one or two administra- tions, or, if they came down to the last ad- ministration, everything in reference to that period was very faint and general, so that there was a hiatus between the end of the period actually treated in the history and the

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present day. That has been corrected to a greater or less extent, but now there is a move- ment which, to my mind, is the most interest- ing in the whole question of the pedagogics of history, which has not gone very far, but has great promise for the future. That is the method of beginning with the present and teaching history backward. I do not see why it is not just as logical to do that, and to pass from effect to cause, as it is to follow the stream down from cause to effect. I do not mean by that that the movement is likely to or should disparage or in any way make the interest in ancient history, or medi- aeval history, or any other grade of history, less than it should be, but it should give the vital touch with the present that has been so lacking.

Perhaps I may illustrate this movement by telling yoii what I happened to hear by chance in a normal school in western Pennsylvania. I dropped in at the normal school and found a class on "The Gulf of Mexico." At first I hardly knew whether it was a lesson in history or in geography. It began with Florida, with a touch of the Everglades, pictures of the Everglades held up and passed around, and

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some views shown by the magic lantern. We took a hasty trip clear around from the Flor- ida coast, by the Gulf, to the Mississippi and Mexico. The burning present questions were touched on, and there was a little touch of the geological history of the river, and plenty of history of men and events sandwiched in. It ended with a glance at the antiquities of Yucatan. I could not but marvel at it, as it seemed to me a masterpiece of history in- struction. There was the vital present touch, not merely of past history, but of those effects of history which the teacher seemed to think were at hand, that really bore upon vital present interests. Afterward I asked this lady how she got up such an interesting and effective lecture. She said she had got it almost entirely from encyclopaedias and the monthly magazines, etc. She had spent about four years in getting together eight lectures of that type, and she was giving them in a condensed form, as she said, because there were continually visitors in the class-room and she wanted to show that course. It seemed to me that she was doing a most ad- mirable thing. When I have had the pleasure of talking to

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history-teachers, I have for years been rather stressing this point — that the present is the most vital time the world has ever seen. There are more problems to be solved and we are making history to-day far faster than it was ever made before probably, save in just a few great, critical periods of the world's history. Moreover, it is our day. There is the great question of Africa looming up. What is to be done.^ The Congo basin is about three-quarters the size of the United States. Africa is vastly larger than all of North America, and she has a vast popula- tion. There are more people to the square mile in Africa than in North America. What is to become of the people ? Since the great land scramble culminating in 1897 all the nations seem to desire to possess colonies there. The Colonial Congress in England last year seemed to make some of these things stand out as the critical questions for the future to decide.

Then there is the Eastern question, China and Japan. Perhaps here I may mention a rather personal incident in our own institu- tion, where a young man thoroughly trained in history undertook to teach in the usual

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way. He taught Greek, Roman, and mediae- val history, and then he covered the ground of American history, following the recommenda- tions of the Committee of Seven. Finally it occurred to him, and he was encouraged in the thought, that that was not all that these young men who were going out into the world needed as a historical study. He thought there should be the vital present touch. He obtained leave of absence from the college for nearly a year, and later for a second time, and went to the Far East, Siberia, Japan, etc. He came home with every kind of picture and illustration he could get, and his teach- ing since has been a marvellous renaissance of history. He has introduced many new methods, and he has brought together now for three years at Clark University confer- ences on the Far East which have even in- fluenced both our national poHcy and that of the other countries concerned. That is, he has not only taught history, but even helped to make history.

I think that most of our colleges will get into this method rather slowly — some three or four of the largest of them have allowed their history instructors lately to travel to

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the cities of present central interest, and to try to prepare young people for their future.

Out on the Pacific Coast lately I was told by a number of prominent people, President Jor- dan of the Leland Stanford University being one, that they believe modern history will have a fresh impetus dating from the open- ing of the Panama Canal in 191 3. There will be a new bond of sympathy with all our South American neighbors, and it will be necessary for our students to know something about South America, and a little about the history of the different countries there. This is a thing which a few bright men are already posted on.

Once more, I suppose the North American Indians are a pretty important factor in his- tory. They are not our ancestors and we never feel toward them as the modern Greek feels toward the ancient Greek, or the mod- ern ItaHan toward the ancient Roman, from whom each believes himself descended. But the Indians were the aborigines; they are the natural link with the men of the Stone Age. The remarkable relics of art that have been recovered from the time the Indian Bureau was established down to the present time, the

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splendid faces of these men, their modes of life, which are the inspirations of every boy — all these offer some of the best and most con- crete methods of stimulating interest in his- tory. We have, of course, a great many peo- ple who are interested in Indians, but they do not often get together. We have, for in- stance, the admirable movement represented by the Lake Mohonk Conference for the Indian, but that represents the philanthropic side, and you will hardly ever hear from a single representative of the great Indian Eth- nological Bureau, which is a fine institution, spending a milHon dollars a year in making scientific studies of the Indian. The people who desire to study the matter from the scien- tific point of view and the philanthropists who want to do the best thing possible for the Indian of to-day, should get together, and the most practical way to do that is through the teacher of history. When it comes to teaching the history of the Indian, do it in an effective way. That seems to me to be the moral of Frobenius's little book entitled " Aus den Flegeljahren der Menschheit." This book has over four hundred rather rough pictures of primitive life, the different aspects

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of it, how people lived before the historic period proper began. The author was con- nected with the Anthropological Museum in Berhn, and he wrote and collected these illus- trations for his own children, but when the publisher got hold of the book he found, lo and behold, that he had struck a book of tre- mendous interest to all children, like the man who invented the Teddy bear, or the man who conceived the Boy-Scout movement. That book has gone throughout the world, and is, it seems to me, something that ought to be interesting to every child.

The whole field of history is so vastly large and intricate that the problem of the teacher of general history is almost incapable of so- lution. What period shall we teach ? We can not teach it all, except in the most super- ficial way. Shall we hang up a chart and get a few crude diagrams that will show the names of kings and the periods of their reigns, with certain other titles, dates of battles, etc.? From this vast field it is imperative that we should select some period for intensive teach- ing and that we should also have some defi- nite end in view.

If you will look over the educational liter-

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ature, you will find that there are a great many different opinions as to what is the most profitable period to teach thus inten- sively: whether it is our own history; whether it is the history of the mother country, Eng- land; whether it is the mediaeval age, when our institutions were shaped; or whether it is the classical period. What can a high- school teacher do with so little time at his or her disposal in this vast field?

But when you come to ask why you teach history, that problem, to my mind, is more complex yet. Shall we teach history merely to inform the memory? Surely, that is not sufiicient. Shall we teach history in order to give a man the technique for historical in- vestigation ? Shall we explore the old palimp- sest documents of human experience? Shall we go to them and evaluate them and dis- cuss the methods of Droysen and make it essentially an intellectual training? Or shall we teach children those things they need to know to be good citizens? Shall we have civics or politics as the chief end in view? It seems to me that here we have an ascending order of value, and that the last is higher

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than the first. But, to my mind, there is only one goal in teaching history, which is higher yet; and that is the moral end. Most of the pupils in our schools will not be writers of history, most of them will not be even great scholars in history, and the best and highest things they will get out of it are the examples of heroism, of patriotism, of self-abnegation, of the highest of all civil and rehgious virtues. So I believe that above all the other goals of teaching history in the grammar course and in the high school, and even in the colleges, should stand the moral goal. The great crises of history have been made by men who staked their lives on something which they beheved to be of such supreme importance that they would die for what they hved for, and to in- culcate enthusiasm for their virtue is, I be- lieve, the chief goal in reviving their deeds.

Our histories now, the best of them, seem to be written very largely with a political end in view, but if it be true that moral virtues are really supreme, then it follows that the highest goal, which includes all the others — honesty, integrity, thoroughness of investiga- tion in preparing for a lesson or in rendering a piece of history — is included in, and culmi-

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nates in, the moral inspiration that children get from history.

So it seems to me that where art comes in and does its most ideahzing work is in gilding the gray acts of history with a Httle touch of that "light that never was on sea or land'' by showing how great men felt and thought, by revealing the higher motives of their acts, and by anticipating a Httle the highest and best motives and thought of the future so that the students of history will themselves be infected with these ideals and will themselves do good when opportunity offers. If this, indeed, be the best goal, then the whole field of art, which is itself devoted to the idealization of life, is apropos and ought to be a part of the arma- ment of the teacher of history.

The final and the largest view, it seems to me, that we can take on this subject is that, glorious as history is, marvellous as is the progress that we find from savagery up to civiHzation, from arbitrary and tyrannical governments up to the rule of the people and the possession of liberty throughout the world, nevertheless the greatest lesson that we can possibly get from all this past history is the knowledge that the best things have not hap-

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pened yet, and that therefore the best his- tory has not and cannot yet be written.

We do not need to be thorough-going evo- lutionists in the sense that Huxley was, who used to declare that man to-day is only the tadpole of the archangel which he is to be; we do not need to be the disciples of Darwin or any fanatics of evolution. We only need to look back and see what man has been and what he has become, and what, despite all the vicissitudes and set-backs, the drift of things is, in order to realize that the optimist must be right when he insists that there is to come a day of the superman when moral ideals and a purer type of citizenship and of devotion to public good are to prevail in the world. Thus the final sources of inspiration for teachers and artists are not so very far apart. The teacher of history must see in the drift of things something that is ideal, and it is also this ideal that the artist seeks to embody. I cannot but feel, therefore, that in this movement which you teachers and the directors of this great art museum represent, of getting a rapport between teachers of his- tory and the precious treasures here, you are in the line of one of the very best modern educational tendencies.

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Who knows but that when man, who is now in the gristle, shall have become complete in some far-ofF future, even the most ideal present creations of art hung in great gal- leries like these may have become so realized that they will be only plain photographic reproductions of Hfe in that great day when our bodies and our virtues shall fully match up to the standards now only prophetically anticipated by artists?

MUSEUMS OF ART AND TEACHERS OF THE CLASSICS

BiY OLIVER S. TONKS, Ph.D.

MUSEUMS OF ART AND TEACHERS OF THE CLASSICS

The age we live in is utilitarian — perhaps too much so. We have awakened to the fact that anything to be valuable must have a use. The time has passed when we felt that we had employed to the best purpose any object of archaeological or artistic interest the moment we derived from it an aesthetic titillation or a momentary wonderment at the unusual character of the object seen. We now know that unless we can appro- priate to ourselves the artistic or archaeo- logical value of the specific relic of antiquity, and, from the inspiration derived therefrom, turn to the production of like or better ob- jects of art, or can learn how the ancient peoples of the world lived, and from them learn to correct our own elemental faults; unless we learn this, I say, we fail to make proper use of the invaluable legacy left to us by a venerable antiquity. 97

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It was doubtless in part the idea that we might make better use of the treasures that we have that led the authorities of the Mu- seum to ask me to speak to you of the latent possibilities in the proper employment of the objects possessed by this great institu- tion, in the teaching in our pubHc schools — and more specifically of the fine opportuni- ties the teachers of the classics have to make the classical past a living age for their pupils. That the choice of speaker has fallen upon me is possibly due to the fact that my early training was classical, then archaeological, and then concerned with the history of art, so that I have enjoyed the privilege of seeing how the classical literature becomes an abso- lutely new thing when illuminated by the light of the monumental remains of Greece and Rome.

We are all of us conscious of a strong feel- ing among those interested in classics that this branch of knowledge has been much crowded by the sciences in the immediate past to such an extent as to cause some to fear lest it be blotted out entirely from our school curriculum. How much cause there may be for the fear that refers to the actual

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disappearance of classics from our schools, I leave for you yourselves to decide. All must admit, however, that the gradual elim- ination of the subject from some of our schools is a sign of poor intellectual health. That the energy of the advocates of science has been in a measure responsible for this crowding of Greek and Latin is unquestion- ably true. But this enthusiastic support of the new subjects is not entirely to blame for the neglect of the classics.

The prime reason is that the advocates of the sciences have been able to vitalize them, and by so doing to make them appear to be living, to make them interesting, and to endow them with the specious charm of util- ity. The teachers of the classics, on the other hand, at least my own early experi- ence with them lends color to the thought, have failed to make their subject real — to make it live. We speak of the dead lan- guages and by the adjective "dead" rel- egate them to an imminent grave. The most vivid impression I have brought away with me from my school days is that the end of the teaching of classics was accuracy of translation. If facility of translation were

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to be added to that, then we had perfection. It never occurred to my teachers — so it now seems to me — to Hnger over the beauty of Homer, to give me the mise en scene, or to analyze the thought there expressed. Once in a while, when the foot-notes called atten- tion to it, I noticed that the poet indulged himself in the linguistic figure of onomato- poeia. But that the verse in itself — aside from the meaning — possessed any inherent beauty, that my teachers failed to convey to me. It never occurred to me for a mo- ment that the wonderful tales of Homer were told to enraptured, listening audiences. I never really knew how the poem grew, never once had the remotest idea of how these sagas were sung to the weaker de- scendants of an heroic people who had been dislodged from their original habitat, dis- possessed of their ancestral homes, and forced to become residents in an aHen land; I never knew that the songs of Homer were a glorious apotheosis of a lost past. In a word, the masterpiece of the "Iliad" was to me not much more than a book of some thousands of lines to be set over into Eng- lish at the rate of so many lines a day.

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Homer by the yard! It never occurred to my teachers to make me so familiar with, say, one book of Homer, that I could read it in the original, feel its beauty without translation, and visualize in Greek what I read in Greek. Instead, I was made to murder Homer every day by translating him into execrable English, and so induced to spoil all the enjoyment that I could have obtained from the poet by proper teaching.

This is not an exaggerated statement of the case as touches the old-fashioned method of teaching the classics. Far from it. Add to this the fearful idea which was also held out that Greek and Latin had a disciplinary value, and you at once see that the subject was bound to lose caste with many a stu- dent. Can you indeed imagine healthy boys and girls ever falling in love with anything which rested its claims to popularity upon its value as a means of discipline .f* How much is it going to add to the enjoyment of Homer, or any other ancient poet, as for that, to know that the person familiar with Greek or Latin is sure to be a more finished writer in English (which I much doubt), and is going to possess a neater method of

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thought (which is possible) ? We killed the beauty of the poem at the start when we removed the tale of Troy from Greek into English, and we buried it when we made the great epic a stalking-horse for discipline. I venture, indeed, to say that the claim of disciplinary value would never have been alleged had not our teachers of classics become pedants, dry-as-dusts, and, worst of all, apologists for the subject they were try- ing to teach.

These are some of the faults developed by the old system of teaching. But worst of all, perhaps, is the false impression of the ancients which this manner of instruc- tion fostered. From my own experience — and that I take to have been a normal one — the Greeks never existed as real people of real flesh and blood. They might have stood perpetually in classic poses, dressed in everlasting white garments, or they may have addressed one another in orations (never, of course, in the vernacular), but that they ever lived, that they ever had passions as we do, that they were at times great statesmen, and at other times capable of the dirtiest politics, that there could be a

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fine residential quarter in Athens, that there was also a tenderloin district, as tough as that In any modern city, a quarter to which the jeunesse doree betook themselves at times, also that these great people of the past ever had had a real home, that little children rolled hoop, spun their tops, and loved their dolls, that old nurses sang lullabies to babies, that the children when grown up to manhood and womanhood cherished these ignorant old nurses, that the Greeks ever sorrowed for a sister or brother, son or daughter, that these people loved gay clothes, that boys sometimes ran to horse-racing, that the life in ancient Athens (I speak from the Greek student's point of view) was the same as, say, in New York City — that times may change, but that men do not, of all this I never caught the faintest glimmer until I was well on In my study of the classics and had begun for myself to see what the Greeks did outside of producing literature.

This conception of the life of classical times (and what I have said applies with equal force whether you are a Hellenist or a Latlnlst) is all wrong, and its incorrectness is due almost entirely to a lack of the type

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of knowledge which is to be derived from a study of the monuments. The fault, how- ever, lies not entirely with the teachers of the classics. It was not so very long ago that, at least in this country, the museums which we possessed were considered as lit- tle more than repositories for curious and, sometimes, beautiful objects. That these ob- jects could be of further use than to amuse us temporarily on half-hoHdays never ap- parently entered the heads of the directors. The method of exhibition, moreover, lacked discrimination, so that what was good was lost in a wilderness of what was mediocre; and when to this was added the inability to see that even the best things lose value by lack of a proper setting, then it becomes no longer a matter for wonder that the mu- seum failed to help the student, nay, that it even repelled him.

On which side the awakening took place first is a matter of no importance. Prob- ably the teachers were the first to become conscious of the potentials in the museums. They had seen the laboratory methods ap- plied with eminent success in the teaching of the sciences, and they naturally asked

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themselves why the same method could not be applied with equally good results in the teaching of the classics.

Such a method of instruction, however, would have been impossible if the archae- ologists had not been turning up with their spades priceless data which cast a flood of light upon almost every phase of ancient life. It is, as a fact, not so many years ago that our knowledge of Greek civilization, beyond what was largely derived from tra- dition, reached no further back than the fifth century B.C. We knew of Homer, but he lived in such a misty past that we be- gan to doubt his own existence as well as the culture he was supposed to represent. Then came Schliemann's epoch-making dis- coveries at Mycenae, Tiryns, and Ilium. At a jump we cleared centuries and found ourselves in the presence of the monuments Homer described. The Homeric times be- gan to live for us. Then in rapid succes- sion came other discoveries which told us much of the Minyans and Minoans, and above all made it possible for us to trace by means of indelible records the history of Greece thousands of years back into the

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past. All these finds meant the revivifica- tion of ancient Greece. We now felt that we were dealing with a real people who had an ancestry and were not the ephemeridae of a century or so. We had data lying before us which the historian recognized as of price- less worth. Scholars in general at once awoke to the fact that from the monuments so re- covered it became possible now to obtain a more or less complete picture of ancient life. Previously, no matter what might have been the desire to know the ancients intimately, our means of approach, neglecting a few archi- tectural, sculptural, and ceramic remains, was through the path afforded by the literature. How incomplete of necessity was the impres- sion thus derived may be appreciated by try- ing to imagine how little students living two thousand years from now would compre- hend the character of Hfe in this country during this and the last century if they were obliged to reconstruct this life through the medium of the best writers of our time. Do you imagine that through Longfellow, Bry- ant, or Emerson these future students would gain any just or comprehensive impression of life nowadays, say, in New York City?

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And do you also believe that we ourselves obtain a clear presentment of the ancients through the works of Homer, ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Demosthenes, Cicero, or Virgil? The prose writers, to be sure, present us with a more intimate glimpse than do the poets, but even then we see the Latins and Greeks only when engaged in public affairs, or, occasionally, as in Lysias, involved in the petty business of their more private lives.

Now, however, all this is changed. We have at hand a large store of material which is of incalculable value to the teacher who has it at heart to make the classics living and not dead languages. If they are dead, it is not because they are no longer spoken; for although we no longer speak as did Chaucer, we do not call his EngHsh dead. The clas- sics in fact become deprived of life and die only when they are stifled by the dust of dry teaching. For the teacher, therefore, who desires to make them live, the means lies at his hand. Fortunately we have come at last to see that the teaching of Hterature is helped by reference to the monuments which have been recovered. You all know that we feel better acquainted with an his-

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torical character when we have once seen or handled something which he has used. Washington, for instance, metamorphoses from the somewhat mythical first President of the United States into a real personality as we move through one after another of his rooms at Mount Vernon and see the dif- ferent things which he actually used in daily life. The same is just as true of the ancients. They, too, begin to live again when we as- sociate them with the things they used from day to day. It is our desire to make them live. We must make them live in order to make the classics live. This, indeed, is our function as teachers, whether it be in art, archaeology, or classical literature. We must come to see that the individual subject which we teach is but one expression of the life of the time, and that it is not only our duty to teach literature, history, or art, but it is also incumbent upon us as well to see to it that we enable the students to reconstruct the whole Hfe of the classical past, and bring them to see that our own specialty is only one phase of ancient life, which, to under- stand, we must place in its true environ- ment; that is, among the other mediums of

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expression employed by the Greeks and the Romans in recording their mode of life.

This vitalizing of the classics is obviously to be brought about by the employment of whatever material has been recovered from the past. Being physical, these objects are capable of visualization, and so can be more easily apprehended than could any abstrac- tion, for we are all of us conscious that an object visuaHzed is more readily understood and more indelibly stamped upon our minds than it could be by means of any descrip- tion, be it ever so brilliant. It requires no great amount of mental effort, therefore, to see that the pupil's mind is foredoomed to fail in visualizing objects he has never seen, and whose character he must create from such hints as he may obtain from the printed page.

On the other hand, the same student is at once made aware, from seeing and hand- ling the objects unearthed, that he is dealing with honest, unconscious records. The ob- jects with which he is confronted in this Museum were made to satisfy the taste of their own time, and so are faithful expres- sions of the spirit of that period. They

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represent, as it were, a passing mood, thereby- allowing us to see the people who produced them when they were not, as were the his- torians, for instance, thinking of posterity, and so not revealing themselves completely to us. We have, as a fact, in the monu- ments a more intimate record of ancient life than can be found in the Hterature alone.

That the classic past can be made to re- live its life is certain. Witness with what success this was accompHshed at the time of the ItaHan Renaissance. The ItaHans of that period so loved the relics of the clas- sical period which had come down to them that, fully believing them to represent per- fection, they could imagine nothing finer than to try to approximate their beauty. When it is remembered that so great a gen- ius as Michelangelo felt that he could do no better than to copy the classical forms, when also you remember that cultivated peo- ple so absorbed the classical literature that classical forms and reminiscences were fre- quent in their correspondence, and even their conversations were tinctured with classical thought; when again you call to mind that many a scholar and good Christian tried to

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reconcile the pagan thought of Plato and Aristotle with the ideals of a Christian re- ligion, you must at once become conscious how real the classics and the ancients were to the men of the Renaissance, and how for the men of that time the classics were a liv- ing thing. Furthermore, you will remem- ber that from making the past live, from realizing it not only from the Hterature but also from the ancient art, the Renaissance was able to produce an art and a literature, yes, and an architecture, that perhaps has never been surpassed.

It becomes evident, therefore, that the past can be made to live. It also becomes clear that it is by direct contact with the monuments as well as with the Hterature that this is to be accomplished, and that the literature, interesting as it is, becomes a much more living thing when considered in connection with the other mediums of ex- pression of the ancient mind — that is, with the monuments.

It is possible, of course, that here and there a dearly treasured relic may stimulate an individual scholar to see with a clearer vision what his beloved ancient author may

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tell him. But instances of this character are sporadic, and at best the soHtary treas- ure gives but a one-sided view of the past. What is essential for a correct understand- ing of Greek and Roman Hfe is a fairly com- plete collection of objects representative of the various arts of antiquity — and the only place in which such a collection may be properly assembled is the Museum. Here, through the generosity of those interested in its growth, it becomes possible to gather representative collections of ancient art and, by the employment of a trained staff, to arrange them so intelligently that they may be understood and appreciated by the vis- itors to the Museum. We no longer go to the Museum with the same spirit as that in which we used to visit Barnum's circus — to be amused or to be astonished. What we now demand from the Museum is an oppor- tunity to acquire knowledge. To this de- mand the Museum has responded. It now remains to be seen how capable we are to use the means so generously placed at our disposal.

It is pertinent to ask: What monuments has the past left to us, and how are these

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monuments to be employed by the teachers in our public schools?

In the first place, antiquity has bequeathed to us its architecture. The monuments for the most part remain in situ in their native country. But even if complete buildings may not be translated thither and re-erected where we may study them, we can at least obtain portions of them, and may supple- ment these fragments by the use of photo- graphic material possessed by the Museum. Unfortunately the preponderance of remains in this branch of archaeology consists of the temples. Nevertheless, enough houses more or less complete have been unearthed to make possible an intelligent study of the private as well as the pubHc architecture of Greece and Rome.

In the next place, we have sculpture. Until within a comparatively short time ago this branch was limited in its earher phases by the fifth century, and what we did know was in large part derived through Roman copies. Now, however, since the archaeolo- gist has been busy our field of vision has been largely extended. From the material which is fast accumulating much is find-

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ing Its final resting-place in our museums, so that we now have the means of study- ing the sculpture not only of a more public character, such as architectural and votive sculpture, but once in a while we catch a glimpse of the more personal side of ancient life through the sculptured grave stelae.

Then come the vases. No department of ancient art (except perhaps numismatics) is so rich numerically as this, none possesses finer examples of the remarkable artistic and technical skill of the Greeks, and none gives a more complete picture of the complexity of ancient life than does this. In these cups, jugs, and jars, in these mixing-bowls, drink- ing-horns, and goblets, we have illustrations of the skill not of the men who bulk so large in the literature, but of the common arti- sans, and from these works we begin to grasp the fact that art with these folk was not an excrescence upon their life, but so much a part of their existence that even the ordi- nary utensils used in daily life never came into being without the endowment of beauty.

Allied to the art of sculpture is that of gem-cutting. In this art, again, we are able to watch the lesser artists of Greece at work.

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Here, as it were, we encounter a miniature style which repeats, so far as it was appro- priate, the mannerisms of the greater art of monumental sculpture. The subjects, how- ever, which are represented often vary from those seen in the greater art, with the result that we are able to see the daintier side of the artistic character of the ancients.

When we turn to numismatics we imme- diately find ourselves in a department of art which possesses a twofold interest. The coins often display a splendid disregard for that form of utilitarianism which precludes beau- ty, and they afford much information that is of prime importance to the historian. Then, too, it should be remembered that, hke the vases, they are about the most numerous class of monuments that have come down to us. Hardly ever does the archaeologist thrust his spade into the ground but he uncovers many of these relics of the past. Their place of discovery also is often illuminative of the customs in ancient times. Thus, to me at least, it was most interesting to learn that in the recent excavations of the Americans on the temple site at Sardis coins of the time of Alexander had been found between cracks

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in the floor of the temple just in front of the statue of the god — showing how visitors used to toss a coin down at the feet of the divinity as an offering when they visited the temple. Who knows but what they had much the same feeling as we do when we cast our pennies into the fountain of Trevi? Is it not also illuminative of the unchanging character of man when we hear of a jug full of coins being turned up in some field where centuries ago some thrifty and timorous soul had buried them for safety, and then from some unknown cause — death or exile — never came to recover them? Who knows but possibly he did return, but, like a child who has buried a wish-stone without marking the place of burial carefully enough, was unable to locate his buried treasure?

Two other classes of monuments are to be mentioned: those produced by the work- ers in metal and those executed by the painters. In the metalwork we have on the one hand the jewelry, which in itself pos- sesses a wonderful beauty as well as exhibit- ing the remarkable jskill of the ancient gold- smiths. How perfect this skill was may be judged from the statement of the great

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modern Italian goldsmith, Castellani, who said that try as best he could he found him- self unable to equal in fineness the granula- tion with which the Greeks frosted the sur- face of some of their jewelry. Does not an admission of this sort make you wish to know more intimately these ancient work- men by a familiarity with their work?

From Greek and Roman painting we learn something more than what the pictures themselves tell, for we come by them to see what was deemed good taste in the way of color as well as decoration. Unfortunately the work of the great artists has all gone, so that we are unable to appreciate the pictures which were held in just as high esteem as were the sculptural monuments. But we do have work from the early and the late times, so that we can, when we supplement our knowledge by what we glean from the vases, form a fair estimate of what Greek and Roman painting was.

As departments of Greek and Roman art which the teacher may employ in connection with instruction in history or literature, we have then those of architecture, sculpture, ceramics, gem-cutting, numismatics, metal-

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work, and painting. The question arises as to the fashion in which they are to be em- ployed.

It must become evident in what I am about to say to you that it would be unreasonable to look for specific directions as to the best method to be used in reference to every ob- ject of classical art when it is to be called upon to assist the teacher of literature or history. Each teacher will evolve a system of his own as each case arises. Yet while I do not expect to be able to give definite directions for the use of every object in this Museum, I am nevertheless anxious to place before you instances which have occurred to me wherein, for me at least, the literature in places became an illuminated page by the light derived from monumental sources. If I draw from Greek art and archaeology and seem to neglect the Latin side, I hope to ob- tain your pardon because in the first place my interest leans somewhat more to that side, and in the second because what I say in reference to Greek may be applied with equal force to Latin.

First, as to architecture. An acquaint- ance with this subject alone is sufficient to

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stimulate in the student a feeling of respect for the Greek mind. No normal boy, and as for that, no normal girl, can help feeling that he knows the Greeks better when he sees how from century to century they im- proved upon their methods of building, and when he understands how at first the archi- tects worked with the more easily handled material, wood, and only later turned their attention to stone, how for some purposes they used at all times so perishable material as sun-dried brick because it possessed qual- ities not inherent in the apparently stronger material, stone, and how in the perfection of their art they came to construct the perfect Parthenon with a most subtle adjustment of curves so arranged as to correct all faults of optics that might be present in a mechani- cally true, square structure. This, however, is but an illustration, by the way, to show how famiHarity with one form of monument might quicken our interest in the personaHty of the people who produced the literature we are reading.

I have spoken of the use of sun-dried brick as a building material. Would not the natu- ral boy find it interesting to know that this

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form of material was better for fortification walls in some cases because it packed when hammered by the battering-ram, whereas a stone or baked-brick wall would crumble away under the repeated blows ? Would not the boy also wake up to a lively interest when he learned that it was this type of sun- dried party-wall which made it possible for the valiant defenders of a little Greek city one stormy night to burrow their way from one end of their town (while the enemy pa- trolled the streets) and then to rush out in a body from the last house broken through; would not, under these circumstances, the name "wall-breaker," as applied to burglars, become intelligible, and would not all this (and this is what I am coming to) become a living fact if we could show that boy a series of photographs of the ancient Heraion at Argos, where actually the sun-dried brick construction was used?

But let us go further. We would be will- ing to admit, I think, that one of the most dramatic passages in the "Odyssey," I mean the Slaying of the Suitors, left with the most of us but a confused impression of the mise en scene. On the other hand (and here I

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am describing my own impressions), think how vastly more vivid the scene would have been had we been shown the palace of Tiryns, and the drama then worked out for us with an actual Homeric palace repeopled with its native folk. The "sounding portico" would then have echoed for us with the clattering hoofs of impatient horses, and we could have seen Odysseus sitting in the guise of a beg- gar in the open court-yard of the palace while the place rang with the ribald shouts of the arrogant suitors. Then the past would have lived for us, and it is now possible for you to make it live for your students. Bring them here; show them the plans and the photographs of Tiryns; show them how the watchman on the palace roof at Mycenae could sweep the whole Argive plain at his feet; make your pupils feel the reality of the situation. Why, the opening scene of "Ham- let" with the frost-nipped watchmen on the tower is no more picturesque than that which opens the Agamemnon with the watchman teUing the stars from night to night as he looked for the flaring beacons which were to announce the return of the heroes from Troy. Yet I am sure that the scene loses value

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unless you and your pupils can reconstruct the scene and visualize the event. Or, again, if you will recall the imprisonment of Orestes and Pylades in the temple at Tauris, you will grant that as they talk of escape by an open- ing under the eaves the scene loses its ob- jectivity unless you know that in the wooden and sun-dried brick structures there was originally an opening in the top of the wall between the ceiling beams, and that when in the course of centuries the Greeks translated their buildings into stone, this space was closed and became known as the metope. Therefore, bring your classes here, and when you have shown them the model of a Greek temple, explain how such a method of escape as I have mentioned was possible. I might go on further to show other instances in which the students could be made to feel the reahty of what they were reading. For in- stance, it is probably safe to say that the appearance of the palace of Alcinous would come out the clearer if you could show the student illustrations of the kyanos, or blue glass, frieze from the palace at Tiryns.

Architecture, then (which can best be studied in the Museum), does afford a

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means for making your teaching vital, does it not?

But with architecture we do not come to the end of our possibiUties. Think how much we learn or can learn from sculpture. By a consideration of this phase of Greek artistic expression we see how the Greeks dressed; and we can come to appreciate how the grace of their costume depended solely upon its simplicity; we learn how the costume was made, and how the desire on the part of the ancients to be properly dressed led them to hang little weights at the corners of their outer garment, the himation, to cause it to hang gracefully. If you doubt it, examine the cast of the statue of the Greek poet Sophocles in this Museum. In this wise we learn that the Greek gentleman gave as much attention to the appearance of his dress as does a modern man, and we at once appre- ciate in the "Birds" of Aristophanes the point of the jeer of Herakles that Triballos, the barbarian god on an embassy with Hera- kles and other divinities for the purpose of making a truce with the insurgent birds, was not a gentleman because he draped his hima- tion over his left shoulder instead of his right.

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This, of course, is only a detail. But, after all, is it not by the careful study of detail that we come to a more complete knowledge of any subject which interests us? We know the various gods of antiquity from our read- ing of the literature of Greece and Rome; still you will be ready to admit that they move across the pages as more or less shadowy beings until (from a consideration of the types presented to us in sculpture) we learn what they meant to the ancients; what informa- tion the other arts afford us in this matter we shall see presently. If that is so, and the point is hardly debatable, it becomes our duty to bring our pupils here and show them in the original works of art or in the cast what was the character of these ancient divinities. Then shall the pupil come to see that Hermes was an agile, well-developed athlete capable of travelling as a rapid messenger for the superior divinities, and that Zeus was indeed a venerable father of gods and men; Athena shall become the pure goddess indeed, and Herakles the powerful and not too intellect- ual demigod. A printed page is completely capable of presenting a scene of action, but it never sufficed for depicting the appearance

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of a personality. To obtain a true impres- sion of that, we — and that applies with equal or greater force to our pupils — must come face to face with the tangible presentments of the ancient gods. And when we have gained that acquaintanceship with these per- sonaHties, then shall the myths and legends become definite instead of indeterminate, and as far as is possible shall live for us as they did for the ancients. The only place, it goes without saying, in which this can be accomplished, is the Museum — this Muse- um, so far as you and your classes are con- cerned.

Nor is this all. With your classes, or, bet- ter still, with a few members of your classes, come here, show them the casts of the Pan- athenaic frieze, and see if you do not there- by make an ancient ceremonial real when, as you stand there, you tell your pupils how these splendid young knights served an ap- prenticeship of two years as guardsmen on the Attic frontier, how they (only a thousand in number) represented the flower of the Athenian youth, how they, like our crack regiments, were called upon to add to the civic spectacle, and how they waited in the

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market-place at the western end of the Acrop- oHs until the more leisurely moving part of the procession had wound its dignified way around the hill to the stately Propylaia, and, when all was in readiness and the street of the Tripods was Hned with people waiting to see them pass, they came dashing in a cloud of dust, and with the clattering hoofs of their horses pounding the road, at full speed in a headlong race about the hill, and stopped panting at the great western en- trance to the Acropolis. And would it not be all the more real if then you and your pupils traced the progress of the procession by means of the relief map of the Acropolis and its environs? All this from the Pan- athenaic frieze.

But sculpture offers still more to the teacher of classics. From it we come to know the ancients themselves in person. We can see the thoroughbred Athenian in the stately pose of Sophocles; the aristocrat in the bust of Pericles; and the earnest, unhe- roic patriot in Demosthenes's quiet pose and care-wrinkled brow.

Then, on the sadder side, we study the gravestones and watch almost as if present

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in person the departure of father, or mother, or Httle one, for the long last journey; and here we see the calm confidence with which the Greek made ready to go. Finally, here and there, we get gUmpses of child hfe. Speak- ing for myself, excepting the touching scene of the parting of Hector and Andromache, I never really felt, in my days of studying the classics, that there were children, real chil- dren, in ancient times. The little folks do not often get into the literature; yet the ancients loved their children, and their homes were full of them. These little people played the games of eternal childhood even as now. Would not this fact come home all the more forcibly to the pupils in your charge after they had seen the group representing a fat, tubby, naked baby with legs a-straddle, strug- gling with all his might to subdue his pet goose with a desperate clasp about the creat- ure's neck?

If architecture and sculpture offer all these possibiHties to the teacher, he has yet an- other and richer treasury to draw upon when he turns to ceramics. In the vases of the Greeks he possesses a series of documents which extends practically without interrup-

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tion from an antiquity which reaches some- where from three to four thousand B. C, and perhaps from a still earlier period, down to the second century B. C.

It has been the custom of the inhabitants of the eastern Mediterranean at all times to decorate the surfaces of their clay vessels. From these decorations we have an oppor- tunity to study the artistic character of the Greeks and their prehistoric forebears, to learn of their love of nature, their observance of sea forms, and finally to see how their taste developed from simple beginnings to perfection only to degenerate into a flam- boyant manner. We can also follow the vicissitudes of their history by the same means, for on the vases we have curious evi- dence of the incoming of a barbaric folk whose advent overturned the whole culture of Greece about iioo B. C. We can then watch this new race gradually succumbing to the balmy influences of the mild Mediter- ranean climate until, artistically speaking, it was re-created into a new race, and we can see it as it reached in trade toward the East and, experiencing influences from that quar- ter as well as Egypt, developed into the peo-

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pie whom we know as the Greeks of historic times.

Finally, when we come to the vases that belong to the time of the Cypselids of Cor- inth and the Pisistratidae of Athens we get glimpses of the mythology and private life of the ancients. So it is that we see Herakles, the great Dorian hero, gradually supplanted at Athens by the local hero Theseus, that we see the gods in concourse assembled or engaged in struggles with the giants. We find warriors departing for battle or already fighting, we see horse-racing, boxing-matches, wrestling-bouts, girls going to the public foun- tain for water; we observe a doting father watching while a shoemaker measures his daughter for a pair of shoes; we find black- smiths at work, fish-mongers cutting up fish, farmers picking olives, or men at symposia; in fact, hardly a phase of Greek life is to be mentioned which does not pass before us on the vases. Does it not, for instance, bring home to you the perennial youth of the world to find on a sixth-century vase a group of men and a boy watching a swallow and saying, "Look, there's a swallow"; "Yes, by Herakles; spring is here".? And does it not

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mean something to you in the way of making the past Hve to see a wreath-crowned worthy throwing back his head as he strums on his lyre and sings:

**w iraiBcov KaXkiare koL Ifiepoeo-Tare nravrtov CTTjO* avTOV KaC fjLOV nravp' eirdKovcrov eirr}^^

("Oh, most beautiful and beloved boy, Linger to hear my little song")?

We love to read Theognis. So did the Greeks. But did the love of the Greeks for their poets ever come home so strongly to you before you saw this man singing to his beloved ?

Then, as we come later into the fifth cen- tury, our Greek literature is illuminated and our vision of ancient life is cleared by see- ing the heroes and gods gradually giving place to men of actual life. Now we see the boy with his top, or hoop, or pet rabbit, or dog, we find the jeunesse doree turning night into day — probably down in the Ceramicus, the tenderloin of Athens; in fact, we catch the Greek when he was not posing for posterity, and we learn to love him as one human being loves another. We now cease to think of

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•

him as everlastingly writing orations or dramas, or building temples. We discover that the ancients were in truth men and women like ourselves, with emotions, joys, sorrows, and trivial as well as great interests. We come to understand that the little boy of two thousand years ago recited his lessons as nowadays; that he developed himself in the gymnasium as now; we learn that some- times he blacked his opponent's eye, that he did not always play fair, and that he some- times had the slipper applied in the univer- sally conventional fashion.

This is not all that we get from the vases. No series of ancient documents gives us a better opportunity to study the costumes of the ancients. We see every garment which they wore, and learn how they put it on. We catch a glimpse of the decorations of their clothes, so that it becomes an easy matter to appreciate that white was not the eternal vogue, as we (or at least I) used to imagine. More than that, the equipment for war is repeatedly exhibited upon the vases — spears, shields, swords, greaves, and helmets. And by way of bringing home to you the amount of minute information that may be obtained

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from an examination of the vases, did it ever occur to you, before you studied the vase- paintings, that the Greek warrior prevented the helmet he wore from rattling upon his head, and so chafing him, by binding a woollen fillet about his forehead; or that he guarded his ankles from the same possibility by a band tied about his leg in that locality?

I could go on to show you numberless other instances wherein the study of Greek vases would profit you in the teaching of classics. But let it be sufficient for me to say that when the fine post-Persian war period was over, and habits of luxury began to creep into daily life, the type of subject found upon the vases begins to change. No longer the roistering scene, seldom the war- rior, and rarely the athletic contest. In- stead we have shown to us the softer side of life — ^women at their toilet or engaged in the household duties of spinning, etc., or even gossiping (which might perhaps be classified as a household duty). Instead of the half- grown boy with hoop and top, now we see the little chap with his tiny cart or ball. In a word, if we need to see how ancient life changed from period to period, and desire

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to understand more fully what is merely hinted at in the later writers, such as Aris- tophanes, we shall discover all that we re- quire to a large extent upon the vases.

At this point it may, perhaps, be pertinent to emphasize the fact, just alluded to a mo- ment ago, that ancient life did change from decade to decade, even as it does now, and that properly to teach the classics it must always be present in the mind of the teacher that he is not dealing with a fixed quantity. It should always stand clearly in his mind that not only did times and fashions change in the past just as they do now, but also that these changes in a large measure, perhaps entirely, are responsible for the changes that are so clearly to be seen in the Hterature. The literature, indeed, belongs with its en- vironment, and since it does it is imperative that the teacher, who is to obtain full results, be famiUar with this environment. This en- vironment is largely to be understood by a study of the monuments, and particularly of the type just previously considered.

You must not, however, think that we have already exhausted the fund of informa- tion which Hes at hand for the teacher who will make use of the Museum.

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Turn to the gems. In these diminutive objects of art shines brightly the love of the ancient for miniature work. So fond of this form of art were the Romans that by the time of the Caesars collections were being formed and even dedicated in the temples as objects worthy of being presented to the gods. The seal was an object of importance in ancient society; its possession, when com- ing from the Emperor, was sufficient to guar- antee to the holder a tremendous power. There is every reason, therefore, why we should not neglect this form of art. Art it was and by a study of it we come to learn that while the ancient found pleasure in monumental sculpture he still found it very agreeable to adorn his person with the fine work of the gem-cutter. But here, too, as in other branches of art, taste changed. The more heroic subjects of the Persian war period receded before the more graceful ones of the later time, thus presenting us, as it were, with glimpses of fashion. Moreover, if we know our gems, we become aware of the reality of things when we read of seals in the "Birds" of Aristophanes, and, again, appre- ciate the gems as affording an indirect source of information for the study of ancient life

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— to say nothing of the chance which they offer for acquaintanceship with pure beauty in art.

Then consider the coins. These are val- uable for many reasons. They not only tell us of the industries and cults of this or that city state, but they also make possible the identification and restoration of ancient sculptures. Thus it is from a coin of Deme- trius, the sacker of cities, we know the origi- nal appearance of the magnificent Victory of Samothrace, while from a Roman coin we have been enabled to recognize in a Roman marble the copy of the famous Aphrodite of Cnidus, the work of Praxiteles.

Finally, turn to metalwork. From this branch of art much help is to be derived in the way of illuminating our classical litera- ture. Aside from the inherent and intrinsic beauty that resides in Greek metalwork, particularly the jewelry (and if you are scep- tical visit the gold-room in this Museum) — aside from this beauty, I say — much useful information is afforded you by this branch of art. Let us revert again to Homer. We learn that Nestor owned a cup ornamented on the handles with doves. Is it not, there-

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fore, somewhat startling, and at the same time instructive, to find a golden cup of that very character turning up at Mycenae? Other illustrations for our literary studies are at hand. We read of the long-haired Achaeans, only to see them true to the life upon the golden cups from Vaphio. We re- member that the shield of Ajax was Hkened by Homer to a tower. But if you were un- fortunate enough to have been trained in the classics in your early years as I was, you never could see what the simile meant until you beheld the inlaid dagger from Mycenae, whereon is a shield represented as tall as a man, and so bulky as to necessitate the sup- port of a heavy baldric. Do you wonder when you have seen this that the Salaminian heroes shield beat against his neck and heels when he walked; and do you wonder either that the Homeric hero found it more com- fortable to go to battle in a chariot rather than to trudge on foot when he had such a burden to carry? So I might go on to enu- merate other interesting facts that could be gleaned from a study of the metalwork. I might, for instance, have added that when you had pored over the forty pages that are

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used in Schliemann's account of the excava- tions at Mycenae to enumerate the golden treasure recovered, you will become vividly conscious why it was that Homer described Mycenae as rich in gold. Finally, I do not need to tell you that a study of the armor and replicas of gold work which the Museum possesses will make the ancient past live, and cause the literature you are teaching to live in the minds of your pupils.

Much that I have already said has dealt with the value of the monuments of the clas- sical past to the classical teacher. Perhaps it has seemed to you that I have said too little of the employment of the Museum by such a teacher. That, however, is not so, for I am fully convinced that unless I can bring you to feel what I feel — namely, that the strength of the teacher of the classics lies in his knowledge of the monuments of the past — then there would be little chance that I could persuade you that you should become an habitual visitor to the Museum, and that you ought to arouse in your students a liking for the place. That you must visit the Museum if you are effectively to teach the classics I believe you will admit, for it is here and only

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here that you can find anything approxi- mating completeness touching the monu- ments; and it is by the employment of these monuments that you are going to be able to illuminate your literature or your history and make them live.

I have so far dwelt upon the possibilities lying at hand for the teacher who cares to make his classical literature appeal to the pupil as the product of a real people and not as flotsam and jetsam which time has cast up from nowhere upon the shore of the pres- ent. I would like now, if it will not seem impertinent on my part, to suggest how the best use can be made of this fund of material about which I have spoken at length.

First, let me emphasize that the Museum is the place to visit for the study of such monuments as those which I have just de- scribed. There will inevitably be many times when the original object which you desire to study will not be here, for certain objects, perforce, must remain in the land of their discovery. But even then (as in the case of the Mycenaean gold work) electrotypes are at hand and, if not these, photographic copies. On the other hand, the Museum has

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in its keeping many valuable originals (not- ably in gold, gems, bronze, sculpture, and vases). These lie ready at hand for your serious consideration.

Now, at the risk of suggesting what is already in your own minds, let me say that classes ought to be formed for the study of the individual groups of monuments I have already discussed. By this I do not mean classes wherein you listen merely — as you have to me — to a general and of necessity a sketchy treatment of the subject, but classes in which from week to week a detailed study is given by yourselves under skilled direction to the various groups of monuments I have had under consideration this afternoon. In this way you would become familiar with ceramics, sculpture, architecture, or what not. You would come to see the beauty of the Arretine bowls, to recognize the large percentage of Greek workmen in Italy; you would learn to see your Romans in their proper setting, and come to feel the reahty of the past. This is imperative, for unless you know your monuments you cannot teach your classical literature sympatheti- cally, and you cannot know your monuments

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unless you come to associate with them in- timately as with old friends.

Perhaps you are thinking that I am trying to persuade you to become archaeologists. Maybe I am. But if I have this desire, it is that you may come to see that in order to breathe into your classical literature, whether it is Greek or Latin, the breath of life, you must use the classical monuments, use them again and then use them again, and then keep on using them. You cannot know the peo- ple of the past by familiarizing yourselves with but one of their forms of expression.

Thus far we have, concerned ourselves with the teacher who is to use the Museum successfully. If this were the end of our task, we should find it fairly simple to exe- cute. But it does not end here; the teacher IS not the end of our quest. Our object is to reach the student, and, having reached him, stimulate in him a desire to complete by a supplementary use of the monuments the picture already created in his mind by the literature. It becomes our function, then, to see that he as well as the teacher develops the museum habit.

Personal experience has shown me (after

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delivering a series of talks on art to children) that even the very youthful mind of the child can be awakened to an interest in periods as remote in time as the stone age, and to a consciousness as well of the art of that time. This being the case, most surely we have promise of success with pupils old enough to study the classics.

How we are to obtain their interest is the question. Manifestly it is not to be by com- pulsion— at least obvious compulsion. In the first place, it takes some time for a mind, no matter how mature, so to adjust itself to the Museum atmosphere that it can concen- trate itself on the things with which it is concerned and disregard the other objects, no matter how attractive they may be. It would seem best, therefore, that the teacher who intended to introduce his students to the monuments should see to it that the number of pupils who accompanied him to the Museum was not large. Were it left to my discretion I would limit the number to three or four — five or six at the most. My reason for this is that if you have a greater number than this in your charge you are bound to find yourself unable to hold the at-

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tention of the class in any personal way. To my mind, as soon as you have begun to lect- ure to your class (as I am doing, I am sorry to say) you have lost your chance. On the other hand, if you can chat with two or three as you stand before a case or as you pore over a photograph, you cannot fail to win the at- tention and interest of your pupils. Having secured, therefore, the desired number for the first visit to the Museum (a visit which could be repeated as often as need be for other members of the class), if it were I who was in charge of the students, I should see to it that I drew the attention of my pupils to the objects which were especially relative to the subject in hand, and I should supple- ment this by showing them as well how to deduce what information they required from the objects under consideration; for I do not need to add that much depends on one's ability to see things. Thus, if we were inter- ested in the Homeric poems, I would see to it that my little group of visitors knew where to find those monuments which were illus- trative of the subject. I should also see to it that the student appreciated what part these objects played in the life of the time,

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and how we could use them in completing the literary picture. Were I teaching Roman Hterature, I would be sure that my students moved in the atmosphere of Roman life; and to that end I would make them acquainted with the frescoes in this Museum from Bos- coreale as well as anything else Roman that would bring back the reality of the time. I need not mention the assignment of topics which would force the student to explore the treasures of the Museum on his own initia- tive, for you know as well as I do that dis- coveries made by ourselves seem twice as important and vivid in our minds as those made for us by some one else.

I have been somewhat pedagogic (and I detest the word as well as all things con- nected with pedagogics); but if I have been so, it is because I venture to hope that a method which I have myself tested may prove useful to you in your own field of work.

I am fully convinced (as you may judge from what I have said) that in order to teach the classics you must know more of ancient life than is to be gleaned from the literature by itself. You must know your ancient

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monuments, and until you do you cannot make your classical literature a living thing, and until you make your literature live you as teachers fail.

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