Art museums and schools; four lectures delivered at the Metropolitan museum of art

ART MUSEUMS
AND SCHOOLS

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

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

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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.

2636i0

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

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 5

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,

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 7

"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

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 9

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

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH ii

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

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 13

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,

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 15

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

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 17

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

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 19

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

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 21

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.

22 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 23

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"

24 MUSEUMS OF ART

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."

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 25

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.

26 MUSEUMS OF ART

"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-

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 27

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

28 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 29

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

AND TEACHERS OF ART 51

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

AND TEACHERS OF ART 63

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

64 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF ART 65

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

70 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF HISTORY 71

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.

72 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

74 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF HISTORY 75

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

76 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

78 MUSEUMS OF ART

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,

AND TEACHERS OF HISTORY 79

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.

8o MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF HISTORY 8i

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-

82 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF HISTORY 83

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

84 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF HISTORY 85

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

86 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF HISTORY 87

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

88 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF HISTORY 89

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-

90 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF HISTORY 91

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-

92 MUSEUMS OF ART

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-

AND TEACHERS OF HISTORY 93

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.

94 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

98 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 99

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

loo MUSEUMS OF ART

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.

», 1 %» » »,»

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS loi

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

102 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 103

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

I04 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 105

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

io6 MUSEUMS OF ART

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?

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 107

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-

io8 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 109

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

no MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS in

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

112 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 113

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-

114 MUSEUMS OF ART

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.

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 115

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

ii6 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 117

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-

ii8 . MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 119

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

120 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 121

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

122 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 123

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.

124 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 125

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

126 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 127

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-

128 MUSEUMS OF ART

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-

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 129

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

I30 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 131

•

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

132 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 133

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.

134 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 135

— 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-

136 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 137

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

138 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 139

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

140 MUSEUMS OF ART

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

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 141

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-

142 MUSEUMS OF ART

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,

AND TEACHERS OF CLASSICS 143

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

144 MUSEUMS OF ART

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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