STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 393 



art presentation we may study other aspects of the aesthetic apti- 

 tude. Very quaint and interesting is the exacting realism of these 

 first appreciations. A child is apt to insist on a perfect detailed 

 reproduction of the familiar reality. And here one may often 

 trace the fine observation of these early years. Listen, for exam- 

 ple, to the talk of the little critic before a drawing of a horse or a 

 railway train, and you will be surprised to find how closely and 

 minutely he has studied the forms of things. It is the same with 

 other modes of art representation. Perez gives an amusing in- 

 stance of a boy, aged four, who when taken to a play was shocked 

 at the anomaly of a chambermaid touching glasses with her mas- 

 ter on a fete day. " In our home," exclaimed the stickler for regu- 

 larities, to the great amusement of the neighbors, " we don't let 

 the nurse drink like that." * It is the same with story. Children 

 are liable to be morally hurt if anything is described greatly at 

 variance with the daily custom. ^Esthetic Tightness is as yet con- 

 fused with moral Tightness or social propriety, which, as we have 

 seen, has its instinctive support in the child's mind in respect for 

 custom. 



Careful observation will disclose in these first frankly ex- 

 pressd impressions the special directions of childish taste. The 

 preferences of a boy of four in the matter of picture-books tell us 

 where his special interests lie, what things he finds pretty, and 

 how much of a genuine aesthetic faculty he is likely to develop 

 later on. Here, again, there is ample room for more careful stud- 

 ies directed to the detection of the first manifestations of a pure 

 delight in things as beautiful, as charming at once the senses and 

 the imagination. 



The first appearances of that complex interest in life and per- 

 sonality which fills so large a place in our aesthetic pleasures can 

 be best noted in the behavior of the child's mind toward dramatic 

 spectacle and story. The awful ecstatic delight with which a 

 child is apt to greet any moving semblance carrying with it the 

 look of life and action is something which some of us, like Goethe, 

 can recall among our oldest memories. The old-fashioned moving 

 " Schatten-'bilder" for which the gaudy but rigid pictures of the 

 magic lantern are but a poor substitute, the puppet-show, with 

 what a delicious wonder have these filled the childish heart ! And 

 as to the entrancing, enthralling delight of the story well have 

 Thackeray and others tried to describe this for us. 



Of very special interest in these early manifestations of a feel- 

 ing for art is the appearance of a crude form of the two emotions 

 to which all representations of life and character make appeal 

 the feeling for the comic and for the tragic side of things. What 



* Op. cit., pp. 216, 216. 



TOL. XLTni. 28 



