either along with or independently of artistic power, and is proper to a well-educated man, and tends to the formation of a sound judgment in matters of art.

I, of course, think the professional men in the right; and you will observe that my letter to you was written and read at the Conference before I had seen Mr. Hullah's reply to your questions, and the memorial of the architects.

I notice that you give as a reason for not going beyond the testing of mere skill in drawing, that "criticism in art and its history would, for boys, be only second-hand retailing of other men's views -prejudicial to real artists, and bad training for sound judgment in general education." Surely you do not mean to imply that you ever, and on any subject whatever, expect to elicit original views from boys, even pretty old ones. So far, however, as I am concerned, I imagined there was a middle course between testing the graphic powers of the candidates and plunging them at once into the wide and foggy sea of art-criticism. I thought that, avoiding all debatable ground, there was still a pretty extensive domain of general and preliminary information respecting the arts, which the University might, with great advantage to the interests of art, encourage candidates to cultivate; and the cultivation of which, to my mind, would not only not be prejudicial to real artists, but would be the best commencement of a healthy training of the judgment for all, whether for the future artist or amateur.

Putting my notion in a practical form, it is this: that the exhibition of graphic power should be chiefly confined to the examination of the Junior class, leaving it optional with the Seniors in the second examination to exhibit proofs of further progress in that line; but making the higher examination, as a rule, refer, not to what the candidates can do in the arts, but to what they know about them, their history, their several objects, and their relations to one another and to science.

T. D. Acland, Esq.

Yours faithfully,

W. DYCE.

MY DEAR MR. ACLAND,

Streatham, Oct. 24, 1857.

I am glad to learn from your note of the 22nd that the examination scheme is coming to maturity.

As to that part of it which concerns the Arts, I think it will do

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well enough if Section E be termed Arts of Design" instead of Drawing," or, as you afterwards write it, "Drawing and Architecture." As the scheme stands at present, you make the "History and Principles of the Arts of Design" to stand under the general heading of "Drawing and Architecture," an arrangement which, I confess, does not satisfy me. The Arts of Design include drawing; but drawing only includes itself and its species. Architecture is not a species of drawing. What we term an architectural drawing is not a work of architecture, but only a picture of it. Drawing, in short, is not an essential part of architecture, nor is it of sculpture: though both architects and sculptors make drawings of their future works for convenience' sake, and accordingly the study of drawing forms part of their education; but, so far as they study drawing, they are studying the art of painting, which essentially includes all species of drawing. My idea is, that Section E ought to be named "Arts of Design," and so have the same general character as the other sections. For observe, you term Section F "Music," not singing" or "playing on instruments; " and so Section D is "Science," not a particular branch of it. Section E then being termed "Arts of Design," you would come to your subdivisions included under the general heading. These subdivisions would range themselves under the heads of Practical and Theoretical-much as you have set them down.

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Practical

1. Drawing and modelling, and, if you choose, painting. These three processes are common to painters and architects. The two former only are required by sculptors.

2. Design.

Theoretical

3. History and principles of the arts.

I am not sure that I understand what is implied in your second head of "Design;" but I imagine that what you intend might be included under the first head, as I do not suppose you expect to obtain specimens of original design.

I see you include machine-drawing and botanical under C and D. Perhaps you might add to D anatomical drawing, and to C engineering-drawing. By the latter I mean drawing of works, in which the merely necessary and unadorned constructions are employed, and which belong to practical science rather than to architecture.

Of course, I do not think that a perfect arrangement is possible

not even in theory-for the same branches must occur in more than one section even to be theoretically accurate. The chief point is to secure that the general divisions shall with propriety include all the subdivisions; in what section the examinations in particular subdivisions shall take place must be dictated by convenience. Yours faithfully,

T. D. Acland, Esq.

W. DYCE.

It has occurred to me that you might add " drawing of architectural ornament" to your section of architectural drawing (drawing of plans and elevations).

Extracts from Letters from REV. F. Temple.*

MY DEAR ACLAND,

8, Royal Crescent, Oct. 20, 1857. WHEN I threatened fight, you must not suppose I meant more than a battle of details. Practical men are, in reality, agreed on most matters of principle, unless they are either dishonest or very narrow-minded.

Now, I will draw up an indictment against you.

1. You are infected with the prevalent heresy of the day, which wants school to be a substitute for apprenticeship. The thing is simply impossible. You may make apprenticeship a substitute (a very poor substitute) for school; but the inverse substitution will invariably fail, sooner or later. Now, I find this heresy in your distinction between the upper and middle classes. You say that the latter are to be practical in a sense in which the former are not, and that they must be educated in a practical way accordingly. Now, this I entirely disagree with. No education is, in reality, or ought to be, more practical than that which is given to the upper classes. The metaphysics in Oxford are, perhaps, and only perhaps, an exception to this assertion; but everything else, both at Oxford and Cambridge, is practical in the very highest sense. And though you

* Mr. Temple's kindness has permitted me to print the portions above given of two of his letters, written with the unrestrained freedom of private friendship; but the views they contain appear to me so valuable, and to bear so directly on the object of the present publication, that I am unwilling to deprive others of the pleasure of reading them.

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want accurate thinkers from Oxford, you want also doers, and you get them. But the upper classes do not try to push back apprenticeship into school; they do not make the barrister learn his law at Oxford, nor the physician his medicine. The middle classes do; and very mischievous it is. A certain amount of adaptation of the school-work to the apprenticeship which is to follow, is possible and useful; but that adaptation has its limits. The predominant idea of good education must be to make men, not to make engineers, or artists, or any other specialty; subordinate to this you may introduce much, but it must be subordinate, or it becomes mischievous.

2. You do not recognize the value of growth. You want to make a system of education for the middle classes. In spite of the fact that none of your Exeter boys could touch your Art paper, you want a special school for the subject. Who is to teach this Art? Where are your masters? Surely you know that what we shall get at present from these schools, in the way either of History or Criticism, will be valueless. Depend upon it, if Art is wanted, Art will come: create the taste, and the demand will follow, and then the supply to that demand. It is politically absurd to begin by creating the supply. The way in which some of your friends talk about education seems to me to rest on the hypothesis that you may teach the middle classes, or indeed any classes, what you please. Nothing can be a greater mistake. Education, to be worth anything, must follow precisely the same laws as trade or legislation, or any other fruit of human intercourse. Improvements in education must grow partly out of EXISTING methods, partly out of FELT needs; they can never come out of thinkers' brains except by passing through the last-named source.

But if in any way you can (and I really think the thing can and will be done, nay, by help of Ruskin and Co., is being done) create a taste, there is no doubt whatever about the result. Then will come Art in your Middle Class Schools, great Schools of Art in our towns, and a Professor of Art at Oxford.

I have written a long memorandum on the whole matter for the sub-delegacy, and have asked for a meeting on the 16th.

In that memorandum I have assigned to Art as high a place as I dare. I doubt whether it would not be better to have an examina

tion in Drawing for the juniors, and in Drawing and Colouring for the seniors, and put a D after the name of every one who did well; and the same for Music. But I have proposed a class list in each, as you seem to wish it so much. I have not proposed a "School" of the Arts, which seems to me ambitious and unmeaning. A First-class in Music is intelligible; a First-class in "the Arts," as at present we have them, is totally unintelligible.

T. D. Acland, Esq.

Yours ever,

F. TEMPLE.

[To the indictment contained in the preceding letter I pleaded, on the first count, not guilty,' and called evidence to character to prove that I had never kept company with model farms, model workshops, common things, and other well-intentioned plans for making schoolmasters jacks of all trades, and the boys masters of

none.

On the second count, admitting the importance of growth in living ideas, I entered a demurrer on a general principle, with a view to justify my assertion, that a knowledge of the principles of the Arts is, for certain persons at least, an important instrument of mental training, the use of which ought to be actively encouraged. What I meant by principles I have endeavoured to explain in the earlier part of this volume.

But it matters little to the reader what I said, except that it drew forth the following letter:-]

MY DEAR ACLAND,

London, Oct. 8th, 1857.

You are freer from the great heresy than I had believed. But I see, or (forgive my arrogance) I think I see that you are in the meshes of a different snare. You are forgetting the great distinction between the mechanical and liberal arts.

The mechanical arts are subordinate to their sciences. The sciences here are absolute and rule with a despotic sway, and the highest aim of the art is to attain to the perfection of the science. A machine which could get rid of friction, a chemical preparation which should get rid of impurity, would be the perfect results of the arts of mechanism and of chemistry.

The liberal arts, on the contrary, are supreme over their sciences. The sciences here, so far from being absolute, are always tentative, and their perfection is to come up to the level of their arts. Instead