al grants for these "subjects" is not given. But
informal gardening, informal cookery, and informal woodwork are
vital features of the school life. Nor are the children's essays in
handwork limited to these subjects. Whatever implement, instrument,
or other contrivance may be needed in order to illustrate or
otherwise help forward the general work of the school will be made by
the children, so far as their technical ability and the resources of
the school permit. For example, they will make fences, seats, frames,
and sheds for their gardens, and "properties" and dresses for their
dramatic performances. They will illustrate their games and lessons
by means of simple modelling and paper-cutting. The older girls will
dress dolls for the little ones to their own fancy, using their own
discretion as regards material, style of dress, and method of
dress-making. And so on.

But ready as the Utopian children are to use their hands, and clever
as they are at using them, it is not through manual activity only
that the development of their constructive instinct is carried on.
One of the characteristic features of the school is the largeness
of the scale on which the constructive powers of the children are
encouraged to energise, and the frequency and variety of the demands
that are made upon them. The Utopian child is expected to educate
himself, not merely in the sense of doing by and for himself whatever
task may be set him, but also in the sense of devising new tasks for
himself, in thinking out new ways of treating the different subjects
that appear on the school time-table, in taking thought for the whole
scheme of his education. As the years go by, Egeria makes more and
greater demands on the initiative and the intelligence of the
children, her aim being apparently to transform the school by slow
degrees into a self-governing community which, under her presidency,
shall order its own life and work out its own salvation. This means,
as I have lately pointed out, that at every turn the Utopian child is
being called upon to plan and contrive; and this, again, means that
his constructive instinct, with his inquisitive instinct as its other
self, is being continually exercised on the widest possible field
and under the most stimulating of all influences. The result of
this is that reciprocal action is ever going on in his mind between
the faculties that acquire knowledge and the faculties that apply
it,--action which makes for t