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qualities they possess must be studied, and those facts in nature
selected that are in harmony with them. The treatment of hair by
sculptors is an extreme instance of this. What are those qualities of
hair that are amenable to expression in stone? Obviously they are few,
and confined chiefly to the mass forms in which the hair arranges
itself. The finest sculptors have never attempted more than this, have
never lost sight of the fact that it was stone they were working with,
and never made any attempt to create an illusion of real hair. And in
the same way, when working in bronze, the fine artist never loses sight
of the fact that it is bronze with which he is working. How sadly the
distinguished painter to whom a misguided administration entrusted the
work of modelling the British emblem overlooked this, may be seen any
day in Trafalgar Square, the lions there possessing none of the
splendour of bronze but looking as if they were modelled in dough, and
possessing in consequence none of the vital qualities of the lion. It is
interesting to compare them with the little lion Alfred Stevens modelled
for the railing of the British Museum, and to speculate on what a thrill
we might have received every time we passed Trafalgar Square, had he
been entrusted with the work, as he might have been.

And in painting, the great painters never lose sight of the fact that it
is paint with which they are expressing themselves. And although paint
is capable of approaching much nearer an actual illusory appearance of
nature than stone or bronze, they never push this to the point where you
forget that it is paint. This has been left for some of the smaller men.

And when it comes to drawing, the great artists have always confined
themselves to the qualities in nature that the tool they were drawing
with was capable of expressing, and no others. Whether working with pen,
pencil, chalk, or charcoal, they always created a convention within
which unlimited expression has been possible.

To sum up, academic drawing is all that can be really taught, and is as
necessary to the painter as the practising of exercises is to the
musician, that his powers of observation and execution may be trained.
But the vital matter of art is not in all this necessary training. And
this fact the student should always keep in mind, and be ever ready to
give rein to those natural enthusiasms which, if he is an artist, he
will find welling up within him. The dan