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Mr. Watts warmed to his subject as he spoke. "The education of the people," he continued,"that is the great question. Why do you not concentrate attention upon that? To educate your people, to draw out of them that which is latent in them, to teach them the faculties which they themselves possess, to tell them how to use their senses and to make themselves at home with nature and with their surroundings,-who teaches them that? Your elementary schools don't do it. No; nor your public schools. Your Eton and your Harrow are just as much to blame, perhaps even more so. What is the first object which a real education should aim at? To develop observation in the person educated, to teach him to use his eyes and his ears, to be keenly alive to all that surrounds him, to teach him to see, to observe,-in short, everything is in that. And then, after you have taught him to observe, the next great duty which lies immediately after observation is reflection,-to teach him to reflect, to ponder, to think over things, to find out the cause, the reason, the why and the wherefore; to put this and that together, to understand something of the world in which he lives, and so prepare him for all the circumstances of the life in which he may be found. But observation! Was there ever any method less calculated to develop the habit of observation than the practice of cramming up boys with the Latin and Greek grammar?

"Heaven forbid !" said Mr. Watts, "that I should say a word against the learning of Latin or Greek. I am all in favor of mastering the language of the classics, especially Greek; but the knowledge of the language is but as an instrument with which you can unlock the treasures of thought of these people. What do you do? You send your boys to school, and simply impress, as it were with a stamp, the rules of grammar, to them utterly meaningless, and till applied utterly without interest. The result is that in nine cases out of ten a boy never gets more than a smattering of the language, and forgets it as rapidly as he possibly can after leaving school.

THE DOMESTIC ARTS.

It is typical of the how not-to-do-it way that is characteristic of all our education. It neither teaches a man to live, nor how to make the best of himself, nor how to make the most of his

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surroundings. Look in any direction you please. You turn out hundreds of thousands of young men and young women from your schools to mate and to make homes for themselves without teaching the girl how to bake or how to cook, and the boy the best way to lay a fire or boil a kettle. Everything hinges upon this, they are not taught to observe; they are not taught to reflect; and education, instead of being the development of those faculties of the mind which enable them to use their senses, and to reflect on what they see, has given place to a mere mechanical stamping upon the memory of forms of words many of which have no relation to anything that they will have to see and do in their after-life.

THE EDUCATION OF A SAILOR.

"Contrast this with the education of a sailor. Oh, I wish," said Mr. Watts, "that you would endeavor to rouse public opinion on this subject, to point out the abominable waste that goes on of human faculties, the amount of misery that comes into the world from the fact that our young people are turned loose without any training that is calculated to make them happy and comfortable. The smaller their means, the more need there is for them to be able to make the most of them. But we have had an opportunity recently of seeing what can be done by giving something of the education of the sailor to our village lads. A boy in this neighborhood who was left without proper guardianship was sent to school for a little time, and then afterward sent to a training ship. He came back recently on a visit to the old village, and his people were surprised by the change that had been wrought in him. It was a transformation; the lad was respectful, alert, quick in movement, nice in his manners, and his faculties had been thoroughly trained. Now what an object lesson is that! Here is a great task that might surely be commended to the attention of those excellent ladies who are to be found all over the land who are anxious to do good, but who do not know exactly how to set about it.

THE WASTE OF CHILD-LIFE.

"Why should they not endeavor to check the waste of child-life that is going on, and to recog nize in practical fashion the guardianship which the nation owes to these its wards? Have you ever thought how many children there are growing up in our midst who have either no parents, or worse than none,-children of tramps, the offspring of criminals, or orphans, disinherited even of parentage,—who are growing up, if not exactly nobody's children, nevertheless without adequate parentage? Why should we not recog.

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nize the redemption of these children as one of those sacred tasks which in every age have appealed to the chivalrous sentiment of people? I would not call them Children of the State. No; they are the Children of the Nation, and the nation should set itself to the task of their redemption. Here and there philanthropists, no doubt, have done excellent work; but still, after all that has been done, how many thousands of children at this moment are growing up unnurtured, untended, uneducated in the worst sense of the word, to swell the tide of human misery! It is a marvel to me. It only shows how good we were originally, that human creatures who have such an origin should not grow up positive fiends.

THE MOST URGENT REFORM.

"There is, in fact, some goodness in human nature that seems ineradicable by circumstances. Even among the Hooligans and roughs of the slums you will find immense capacities for selfsacrifice, which are occasionally revealed when fires or accidents make a sudden appeal to the heroism of humble life. Why should we allow such rough dia

THE PAINTER AT WORK.

(Mr. Watts uses neither palette nor maul-stick.)

monds to escape without giving them adequate setting? It seems to me that we should stud the coasts of our country with training ships in which we should give the best education in the world to these Children of the Nation who are growing up to be the scourge and despair of civilization. This is the most urgent reform, -the utilization of the waste of humanity. I remember my old friend Lord Aberdare telling me once of a stream in Wales which was polluted by the waste product of some factory that had been established higher up the hills. It was a beautiful stream before the poisonous chemical refuse was flung into the upper water, but after that it was poisoned. All remonstrances were in vain. The owners of the factory relied upon legal right, and went on polluting the stream,

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until at last the dwellers down stream took counsel with some chemists. They intercepted the waste product of the factory, and found that it was possible, by chemical treatment, to convert it into a source of great revenue. So it is with This stream of neglected boyhood flows into the channel of our national life at present.neglected, waste, and poisonous material. But training ships would be as the crucible of the chemist, converting what had been a source of danger into a source of health, strength, and wealth to the community."

I ventured at this point to state the familiar objections to institutions for training children, and said I thought a very third-rate mother was better than the best head of a barracks. Mr. Watts said he did not argue in favor of huge institu

tions. His idea was training ships. When painting his memorial to the heroes in humble life he had been more and more impressed by the way in which the primal instincts of manly heroism burst out and flowered under most rough and rugged surroundings.

THE LAW OF COMBAT THE LAW OF LIFE.

"How is it," I asked, "that human society always seems to go rotten at the top?"

"It is a natural law," said the painter; "for the struggle for existence cannot be suspended without loss. The law of combat is the law of life. When a man is comfortable, and has all that he wants, his fibers become relaxed. He is no longer pressed by the daily and hourly contest which is the condition of a strenuous life. Hence all races tend to decay when they achieve comfort. And that law of combat," said he, suddenly giving the conversation a personal turn,

is what you ignore in your opposition to war. War is but the ultimate form,-gross, rude, hor. ribly painful, no doubt, but the culminating

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INSIDE THE POTTERY.

defeat the Boers who invaded our territory. Having defeated them, they harbor no ill will, but regard them with humane feelings. No, no,' said he, clinching his fist and stretching out his right arm, combat does not involve malice. Difference of function does not imply even antagonism. Look at my arm. With the extensor I thrust out my arm; with the flexor on the other side I draw it back. The two muscles have absolutely opposite functions, but you need both of them in order to use your arm. So it is in life. There is an apparent opposition, a duality of func tion necessary to build up a true unity. Hence intolerance of opposition is one of the worst sins against progress."

CREEDS AS PICTURES.

"Creeds," said he, are all very well in their way; but, after all, they are but pictures of the Infinite as seen by the human mind. Take an

illustration. I have seen some picture of some natural object, and I wish to make you understand what it is. Far simpler than to describe it in words is to make a picture,-draw a sketch, and let you look at it. It is the same with creeds. The Church makes creeds as I make a picture. For the ordinary man, who has had no vision himself, it suffices. If you can see the object yourself, you recognize that my sketch is only a picture, and not the real thing. tendency is always to substitute the sketched object for the reality. Look at this hand," said he. "What wonderful things we can do with the human hand."

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I looked at it closely, and wished that I could read the secret of the innumerable lines which crossed and recrossed, not only the palm, but every phalange; the hand of the artist and thinker, a hand every inch of the surface of which was scored deep with eloquent lines.

Mr. Watts was not thinking, however, of palmistry. He was bent upon giving me one of those homely illustrations with which his conversation abounds.

THE PARABLE OF THE FINGERS
AND THE THUMB.

"Here," said he, seizing the forefinger of his right hand in the finger and thumb of his left, "do you see that? That stands for faith, that for hope, and so on," he continued. "These four fingers represent the ministration of man. They stand for Religion. Now look at the thumb. The thumb stands for Reason. Cut off a man's thumb, and what can he do? Nothing, except perhaps hang on to a bar with his fingers. Take away the fingers, and what can he do with his thumb? And so it is in life. The human race loses the use of its hand when religion is divorced from reason or reason from religion. As you must have your fingers and your thumb in order to grasp anything, so man needs both reason and religion in order to conduct his life. But stay," said he; "I have had typed out for you two quotations which seem to me to express the highest thought uttered by man upon the subject of religion. There is nothing higher or simpler or more noble."

TWO GOLDEN SENTENCES.

With that he left the room, and presently returned with a sheet of paper on which were typewritten two sentences. "The first," he said, "contains the closing words of the speech of Abraham Lincoln ":

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his children, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

"Oh, he was a great man, Abraham Lincoln,

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THE UTMOST FOR THE HIGHEST.

"Yes, indeed," I said, "and the essence of all religion is the same. What is wanted is to create some center where the best thought of the best men, all the best that has been done and thought in the world, should be rendered accessible to every one, and that from that center should go forth the energizing force, reviving civic religion and summoning and directing us all in the service of mankind."

"Ah, yes," said he, "if you could make such a church, then indeed we would all belong to it. You know my motto," he continued, pointing as

THE DOOR OF THE MORTUARY CHAPEL.

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"Ah," said Mr. Watts, Mr. Rhodes was a great personality, one of the few of the great ones who were left to us. Bismarck, I suppose, was a great man; but here among us I do not see any other personality so great as Rhodes. You know, he came," said Mr. Watts, at six o'clock in the morning, and stood here for his portrait for two or three hours. I never finished Some day I hope I shall do so. He was a great man, and yet,' ," said he, "I do not know that I care very much for the idea of Imperialism."

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THE STATUE OF TENNYSON.

One of these good men to whom England gave birth in the nineteenth century is engaged in modeling plaster. Mr. Watts took me to the outbuilding in which he was modeling a colossal figure of Tennyson. It represented the poet wearing his familiar cloak. The head, though not then placed upon the shoulders of the gigantic figure, began to bear a striking likeness to the dead poet.

Speaking of ideal figures, Mr. Watts mentioned incidentally, when we were talking in the studio, that in painting his ideal pictures he never employed the services of any model. By this means he avoided the danger of introducing the copy of an actual physical creature into a picture which was designed solely to represent an idea. If he found himself at a loss for any particular anatomical detail, he would model the figure in clay, and use that as a guide to his brush. Of late Mr. Watts has been painting trees. His pictures, of panel shape, were painted from trees which can be seen from the windows of Limnerslease. There was a large unfinished picture in his studio representing Repentant Eve. Eve, mother of all mankind, stands with her back to the spectator, treading under foot a white lily, while a long glorious

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