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nothing can help children so much as having teachers who aré 
of fine nature, finely trained. Direct personal contact with such 
teachers will do more to enable them to apprehend what art and 
language can tell them of human goodness and greatness in 
other times and other lands than any other means can do. 
More numerous means are at our command in using realities 
to give knowledge of nature, but in order that they may be used, 
both School-Boards and the managers of other elementary schools 
need much more power in dealing with school time than, I 
believe, they now possess. Ignorance of nature on the part of 
the inhabitants of towns is indeed not due to complete lack of 
chances of acquiring knowledge, but to the facts that, as they 
do not see nature when they are young and do not live among 
people who love it, they have no chance of gaining the wish to 
make use of their chances of seeing it. What a change would 
soon be made in our towns if only the majority of the inhabitants 
cared for what natural beauty is within their reach, and wished 
that they and their children should have as much as possible of 
it at their doors and in their houses. 
But only a comparatively small range of realities can be shown 
to town children and even that can be shown but seldom, and 
therefore realities will not suffice for our purpose. Any adequate 
definition of art, any sketch of its history, would by itself prove 
that its aid is needed for overcoming the educational difficulties 
which we have to deal with. The chief of those difficulties is 
that of giving ideas, thought, and feeling which words cannot 
convey, and especially of exciting admiration and love. Well, 
it is just that difficulty, which has existed as long as language, 
which has brought the graphic arts into existence. These arts 
are the expression of some of the most important impressions 
which cannot be conveyed in language, and they are pre-emi- 
nently the expression by artists of admiration and love, and 
therefore the exciters and directors of similar feelings in others. 
And while these arts would have been most valuable means 
of education in all previous ages, they have now reached a 
phase which makes them simply indispensable means for the 
education of the children of our large towns. Artists for many 
centuries have especially delighted in expressing the impres- 
sions produced on their nature by great human actions, and 
by the personality of great men and women; and artists in our 
own day and country, just when and where such help is most 
needed, have learnt to delight chiefly in expressing impressions 
received by them from the beauty of nature. 
As then it is the favourite function of the graphic arts to be 
channels of just those influences which are most important in 
education, and which town surroundings make it very difficult 
to bring to bear on children, it is evident that these arts ought 
