40 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



done in this direction was through the professorship of Belles 

 lettres in our colleges. This comprised instruction in Rhetoric, 

 and on English authors of all classes ; but without any consider- 

 ation of literature as educational, or any recognition of the value 

 of art in mental development. In the English universities, there 

 was a professorship of poetry, but regarded mostly as a sinecure. 

 In some select schools, young ladies seminaries, etc., claim was 

 made to an art department, because young ladies were there misled 

 and corrupted in their natural feeling for art, by exercises in 

 water-colors, Grrecian painting, scratching off marble dust, and 

 other puerile quackeries. In our cities the rudiments and practice 

 of vocal music have been not uncommon ; but there never yet has 

 been, and there is not now, any practice or teaching of the princi- 

 ples and value of any form of art, in our common schools, in any 

 part of this land, except in a very few instances, which shall soon 

 be noticed. More than this, the most astonishing ignorance pre- 

 vails generally, not only with the advanced scholars, but among 

 the teachers. It is frequently the experience of artists, that visi- 

 tors to their studios, occupying high place in the professions, show 

 a wise modesty in the expression of judgment, or show that mod- 

 esty would have been wise. Critics generally get no farther than 

 to think close imitation the best art ; and tell of the birds pluck- 

 ing at painted grapes. Yet this proves not that the art was good? 

 "but," says Goethe, "that the critics were only poor birds." 



Too often our critics look into the church from the market- 

 square ; they do not step within. 



With the teaching of Ruskin a '' new departure" is taking 

 place. Schools of design, with special reference to art in manu- 

 factures, and ornamentation have been put in operation in several 

 English cities. A professorship of art has been established in 

 Oxford, which is filled by Mr. Ruskin ; who teaches the cultured 

 young men of England, the supreme value of the arts in all the 

 refinements of life, and in that development of the intellect and 

 the moral nature, for which alone life is given, as has never before 

 been done in the history of the world. 



In this country, three or four years ago, Walter Smith from 

 London, England, was appointed "state director of art-education 



