THE problem is to make a school boy or girl as rich a factor as possible in the social life of the future. Literature and art instruction contribute very largely to that end. We do not expect, in our art work in the schools, to develop artists any more than we expect to develop authors. But we do mean to cultivate an appreciation of beauty. Literature and art instruction both look to the development of individual power. We should try to get at the spirit of art work to grasp the power of the masters. A poem is not unlike a painting in general conception and meaning; and intelligent study of the relations that exist between them only broadens

the mind. Teachers should see that in the training of pupils in school, drawing is not only mechani

calbutitis

educative

on lines of

the truest and wisest culture. It is not a task to be fagged ov

er once a week with a pencil, a rubber, a compass, a ruler, for

at a loss to understand why so many teachers neglect this important part of their work. Study, if you will, children's play houses; and the first thing thrust upon us is their love for pictures as found in their decorations. However crude the picture may be, it adds a charm to a little home. If every school room were made inviting, by making it attractive, a great step would be taken in the child's ethical education. One of the most acceptable things among decorations for the school is the well-executed, well-selected picture. Pictures teach the most inspiring truths in such an interesting way to children that

an hour, then put away for another week; but it is rather to develop the pupil's appreciation of life, and is a good, plain, oldfashioned agency for the uplifting of the schools. In studying a poem, we try to get at the spirit of the master, to appreciate his selection of words or figures; after such an exercise, ask your pupils to describe to you with closed eyes the picture which the poem presents to their mental vision. Their expression may not be fine, but a picture may remain in the mind of the child that cannot be forgotten.

WHEN we stop to consider for a moment the joy that comes to the young through the beautifying of school rooms, we are

they seem not to tire of seeing them, and those that suggest to them one oranother event in the life of the nation may serve to teach a lesson of patriotism These are most appropriate in school. The influence of the picture is sometimes beyond estimation.

It is like a kind word

fitly spoken, it can never die.

THERE is a Wallachian legend which like most of the figments of popular fancy, has a moral in it. One Bakala, a goodfor-nothing kind of fellow in his way, having had the luck to offer a sacrifice especially well pleasing to God, is taken up into heaven. He finds the Almighty sitting in something like the best room of a Wallachian peasant's cottage-there is always a profound pathos in the homeliness of the popular imagination, forced, like the princess in the fairy tale, to weave its semblance of gold tissues out of straw. On being asked what reward he desires for the good service he has done, Bakala, who had always passionately longed to be

the owner of a bagpipe, seeing a half worn! out one lying among some rubbish in the corner of the room, begs eagerly that it may be bestowed on him. The Lord, with a smile of pity at the meanness of his choice, grants him his boon, and Bakala goes back to earth delighted with his prize. With an infinite possibility within his reach, with the choice of wisdom, of power, and of beauty at his tongue's end, he asked according to his kind, and his sordid wish is answered by a gift as sordid. Yes, there is a choice in books and pictures as in friends, and the mind sinks or rises to the level of its habitual society; is subdued, as Shakespeare has said of the dyer's hand, to what it works in.-James Russell Lowell.

The value of our teaching, Dr. Hall tells us, is not the information put into the mind, but

IF certain of this "Lincoln Art Series' were upon your walls at home or at school, would you be willing to have them taken down, and nothing at all or something less attractive put in their place? Imagine upon your wall this exquisite thing by Turner, the greatest of landscape painters of any age or country, and this one of his greatest works, "Dido Building Carthage," would you be willing to take it down? Then why not hang it up, making your life and that of others richer? And this lovely picture facing it, "The Sisters," by the late Charles A. Barry, which one never looks upon but with a sense of pleased companionship, and which so attracted and delighted John G. Whittier that he wrote upon it the little poem found below, entitled "The Sisters, a Picture by Barry." They cost little, but

THE SISTERS.

The shade for me, but over thee

The lingering sunshine still; As, smiling, to the silent stream

Comes down the singing rill. So come to me, my little one,

My years with thee I share,
And mingle with a sister's love
A mother's tender care.

But keep the smile upon thy lip,
The trust upon thy brow;

Since for the dear one God hath called

We have an angel now.

Our mother from the fields of Heaven
Shall still her ear incline;

Nor need we fear her human love
Is less for love divine.

The songs are sweet they sing beneath
The trees of life so fair,

But sweetest of the songs of heaven
Shall be her children's prayer.
Then, darling, rest upon my breast,
And teach my heart to lean
With thy sweet trust upon the arm
Which folds us both unseen!

If

pay large returns, making one stronger and better for work and richer for life. you have never read the immortal lines of the English poet Keats on The All-pervading Influence of Beauty," here they are, with merit enough to preserve the pamphlet for this poem alone:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet
breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read;
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.
Nor do we merely feel these essences

For one short hour; no, even as the trees That whisper round a temple become soon Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon, The passion poesy, glories infinite.

Haunt us till they become a cheering light Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast, That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast, They alway must be with us, or we die.-Keats.

IN Holyoke, Massachusetts, the school principal, Prof. H. B. Lawrence, has served for twenty-five years. Last May the citizens of Holyoke celebrated the anniversary of Mr. Lawrence's election by placing about $2,000 worth of pictures and works of art in the school building, the selections made from a list that he prepared. The classification is described as complete; so much so as to make it unique. Many great artists of all times are represented in their choicest masterpieces. We can advise no town to wait until a principal has served twenty-five years before trying this plan of two good men of Holyoke. All hail to great souls brave and

generous, like these!

man's spirit; in the childish days so soft, so susceptible to all impressions, so joyous to receive new ideas, treasuring them all up, gathering them all into itself, retaining them all for ever. And then, as years go on, habit, the growth of the soul into steadiness and power, and many other reasons beside, gradually make us less and less capable of being profoundly and permanently influenced by anything outside of us; so that the process from childhood to manhood seems a process of getting less impressible.-Ian Maclaren.

What do your pupils have to look at for hours of the day when they raise their

IT is the law of human nature that, when it is beginning to grow, it shall be soft as wax to receive all kinds of impressions, and then that it shall gradually stiffen and become hard as adamant to retain them. The rock was once all fluid and plastic. If the finger-dint had been put upon it in the early time, it would have left a mark that all the forces of the world could not make, nor can obliterate now. The passing shower and the light foot left their prints on the soft sediment; then ages went on, and it has hardened into stone; and there they remain and will remain for evermore. That is like a

eyes from the books? Is the room beautiful? Are you as beautiful as you can make yourself?

See

how the little faces all light up, almost without knowing it, when you come to school in a new gown. "There is little merit in ugliness, and want of beauty may also cause sinfulness. Whatever makes life

more beau

tiful should

serve mor

ality as well

as pleasure, and minister directly to human need." The teacher conscientiously striving to cultivate a love for the beautiful in his or her pupils will favor things of real art, and will make their influence felt wherever possible. A photograph or fine engraving true to nature will do much to educate a child's æsthetic nature. Beauty is character. Lead pupils to see this.

Say there is beauty with no soul at all: (I never saw it, put the case the same), If you get simple beauty and naught else, You get about the best thing God invents. That's somewhat; and you'll find the soul you've missed

Within yourself, when you return Him thanks

THERE are few things that go farther toward making the home, the school, or the office, attractive and pleasant to live in than good pictures. They brighten the walls, often tell interesting stories, and always, in their selection, show something of the tastes of people who enjoy them. To put work of really famous artists within easy reach of most people is an undertaking deserving of much praise, and this will be done more and more as attention is directed to so important a matter. Good pictures well

effect of beautiful surroundings on the human soul is deep and salutary; the elevating, stimulating forces of a noble art can hardly be over-estimated, and in childhood is

framed are an essential feature of good school furnishing, and should be included among the necessary school supplies. Why people should ever have regarded blank, white-washed walls, relieved only by lines of black board as good influenceseducationally it is hard to say. In a penal insti

tution there

may seem reason for condemning the sad inmates to a depressing monotony of such surroundings, but in

and women. Let the great masters be brought into daily contact with the little ones; they will respond irresistibly to the subtle influence. The divine smile of motherhood, the child born in the manger,

the school, where the acute young mind and the eager, open senses are so intensely alive to all impressions, why should this dull blank be presented as a; daily influence? The

saint and angel, and

many sweet

pictures of

human life and toil and love, these are in their daily sight a constant

suggestion of high purpose and of right living Would not wise teachers do well

to compare notes as to work doing here so as to

do more if they are able? and where the teacher's ability fails surely the school boards, backed by public opinion, will furnish that which the earnest teacher cannot.

LINCOLN ART SERIES.-Of half-tone engravings re-engraved also by Mr. REA in addition to half-tone work, these are some of the best things we have been able to secure-all made from the original English art proofs issued in small editions and sold at prices from twenty-five to fifty dollars each-as the very fine picture "Saved," by Sir Edwin Landseer; "The Mothers," by Verbeckhoven, a pleasing animal picture speaking from the wall; the famous picture by Turner, to which he gave the name, "Dido Building Carthage;" with "Shakspeare and his Friends," by John Faed, which should be a familiar picture everywhere; and "The

or broad frame, aud so made as to show smaller or larger as desired; or the portraits may be enlarged, with mat and glass, to 30 x 38 or 30 x 40 inches and

Baron's Charger," by Herring, who painted horses so that they were better than the man who owned them, this being one of his best. All the half-tones and the portraits of Lincoln and Washington are printed on plate paper 24 x 30 inches; the rest of these portraits are 22 x 28 inches, and printed on tone that adds to the picture. All are life-size or larger, and whether they occupy space smaller or larger upon the wall depends upon how theyare framed. This may be the size of plate

paper itself,

with narrow

Such

framed in such a style, where wall space permits, as to be more imposing and impressive. All the heads are of such size, andstrong characteristic as to gain from enlargement in framing, especially in a large room upon a spacious wall. portraits as Washington and Lincoln when framed quite large, and in wide moulding, and others framed smaller on each side, give variety of effect. The halftones can also be enlarged in framing, but not so much as the por

| traits. The pictures of the "Lincoln Art Series are from forty to fifty times as large as the copies shown in this pamphlet. The illustrations herewith were made from the pictures themselves, and show, in a degree, what choice things these pictures are. At an early day we hope to add to this series other portraits as well as engraved halftones of rare subjects in hand and in view. The experience of persons of moderate means who have spent much time

and money on a collection of good pictures for