200 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



evening Art Classes in Paris, for in them we found an 

 explanation of the well-known superiority of the French 

 taste in all branches of art, not only in textiles, but in 

 metal-work, in bronzes, furniture, and every descrip- 

 tion of decorative work. 



The following picture of what we saw twenty years 

 ago is still of interest, although the strictures upon our 

 English methods of teaching drawing are probably not 

 so cogent now as they were then. In one of the Paris 

 schools of design, situated in the tenth arrondisse- 

 ment, we found no less than 300 adult pupils, all of 

 whom had been hard at work at their various trades 

 for twelve hours before they entered the school, for 

 there is no fifty-six hours Act in Paris. There, in 

 one room, we saw engravers, textile designers, stone- 

 masons, carpenters, decorators, and other tradesmen, to 

 the number of forty or fifty, all drawing from the living 

 model. In another room was a large mechanical draw- 

 ing-class, where we found an ordinary stonecutter 

 making a scale drawing of a skew bridge, a task 

 which very few working masons in England could 

 accomplish. In a third room was a class of thirty 

 men engaged in modelling in clay from a classic 

 figure ; and three or four other rooms were crammed 

 full of artisans working hard at their art studies, and 

 these same men came in every night in the week. This 

 is only one of thirty or forty such schools in Paris, 

 all crowded with zealous and diligent students, and 

 when we compare this with our sparsely attended 

 schools of design, it is evident that teaching has 

 much to do with the prominence into which French 

 taste and French fashions have forced themselves 

 on the markets of the world. 



The method of teaching drawing in the French 

 elementary schools is also founded on rational 



