inquiries
into the rustic local art of the past, and to give it new life by
reproducing, in the furniture of the "Children's Houses," the forms
and colors of tables, chairs, sideboards, and pottery, the designs of
textiles and the characteristic decorative motives to be met with in
old country-houses. This revival of rustic art will bring back into
use objects used by the poor in ages less wealthy than ours, and
meanwhile may be a revelation in "economy." If, instead of school
benches, such simple and graceful objects were manufactured, even this
school furniture would show how beauty may be evolved from ugliness by
eliminating superfluous material; for beauty is a question, not of
material, but of inspiration. Hence we must not look to richness of
material, but to refinement of spirit for these practical reforms.

If similar studies should be made some day upon the rustic art of all
the Italian provinces, each of which has its special artistic
traditions, "types of furniture" might arise which would in themselves
do much to elevate the taste and refine the habits. They would bring
to the enlightenment of the world an "educational mode," because the
time-honored artistic feeling of a people with a very ancient
civilization would breathe new life into those moderns who seemed to
be suffocating under the obsession of physical hygiene, and to be
actuated solely by a despairing effort to combat disease.

We should witness the humanization of art, rising amidst the ugliness
and darkness of those who have accustomed themselves to think only of
death. Indeed, the "hygienic houses" of to-day, with their bare walls,
and white washable furniture, look like hospitals; while the schools
seem veritable tombs, with their desks ranged in rows like black
catafalques--black, merely because they have to be of the same color
as ink to hide the stains which are looked upon as a necessity, just
as certain sins and certain crimes are still considered to be
inevitable in the world; the alternative of avoiding them has never
occurred to any one. Class-rooms have black desks, and bare, gray
walls, more devoid of ornament than those of a mortuary chamber; this
is to the end that the starved and famishing spirit of the child may
"accept" the indigestible intellectual food which the teacher bestows
upon it. In other words, every distracting element has to be removed
from the environment, so that the teacher, by his oratorical art, and
with the