AMATEUR ARTISTS 311 



cultivating observation; and yet how many go through 

 life without it I As one branch of ' the genius of observa- 

 tion,' the artistic pursuit educates the taste in the highest 

 sense of that j much-abused word. It increases immensely 

 the appreciation of works of art, both ancient and 

 modem. It often leads to a reasoned study of the 

 history of art, its interesting evolution, and its bio- 

 graphical and critical literature. Besides these, to come 

 to more homely matters and the most feminine side of 

 a woman's life — namely, the management of her dress and 

 the decoration of her house — the knowledge of colour and 

 the study of form will make both these more beautiful 

 and less commonplace. They wiU also give her assurance 

 to free herself from the often tasteless tyrannies of the 

 dressmaker and the upholsterer. 



Granting the wish, how is an ambitious girl to set 



about learning to draw ? She may do a great deal by 



herself ; but in the initial stage, help is very desirable — not 



in childhood, but after seventeen. Much waste of time 



and energy is prevented by a few timely lessons, even 



though solitary effort with the aid of books, especially 



such a book as Euskin's ' Elements of Drawing,' might 



in the end conquer the difficulties. The old accusation 



against amateur work, of showiness and superficiahty, was 



certainly well deserved in the days when the one idea 



was to send for a fashionable drawing-master, who taught 



his pupils to make feeble copies of his own drawings — 



which copies he most unfairly touched up, to make the 



results more satisfactory to parents or guardians. Of 



course, this system was deplorable ; but those evils have 



disappeared, to give place to their exact contraries in 



modern art teaching. The dryness of the grounding, the 



difficulties of getting through the earUer stages of an art 



school, often discourage the student who cannot give up 



all her time and energies to conquering these initial 



