METHODS OF ART EDUCATION. 477 
2 
seen in the history of art with its slow evolution through the course of 
centuries. In Greek art there was a vast deal anterior to its best epoch, 
of unskilled effort following rude methods and false types; although 
Greek art, while it had these incomplete periods, marked, in some sense, 
she perfection rather than the beginnings of art, and, in this respect, 
formed a standard of taste for all time; as Goethe, whose authority in 
matters of art is almost infallible, said, that ‘‘ we may take exceptions to 
some schools of art, but we are always debtors to Greek art.” Goethe felt 
she influence of his own words. He was, intellectually, a Greek, because 
ne aimed at truth in art, the truth of his own experience, and in this he 
was a master of style. He said that the poet should be ideal or something 
above reality, but, at the same time, be should keep his feet on the real, 
on truth and nature. To illustrate this observation in regard to the 
nndying vitality of Greek art, the architecture of the World’s Fair might 
fruly be considered as something original, or what could Le called ideal 
architecture such as never before appeared, like the architecture that we 
see in Turner’s picture of ¢* The Building of Carthage ”—a purely artistic 
creation ; and yet this World’s Fair architecture was formed on old Greek 
lines as its basis, or its starting-point, of creative combination. 
It is well to have a good illustration of a subject or a theory. Art edu- 
cation in France presents to us an apt illustration, and affords a living 
example of some of the best results of ®sthetic culture, in which, notwith- 
standing its recent impulse in the direction of extreme realism that might 
oe made a subject of criticism, there are contained principles which render 
.ts study profitable for us in a new land, as constituting, with whatever 
faults, the most thorough training-school that exists. French art educa- 
sion 18 connected with state education, so that it is less the product of 
individual minds than of the combined traditions of a continuous system, 
and the fact of its being a governmental school has given it a stamp, 
consistency, and authority that make it, technically, the center of modern 
art studies, exerting decided influence on other schools and nations, since 
it has taught the youth of all nations ; and this influence is notably seen 
in the exhibition of pictures at the Columbian Exposition, in which the 
works of all the schools appear side by side, all of them being markedly 
pervaded by the spirit of the French school. The French, indeed, arrogate 
fo themselves the name of modern Greeks, and justly so as regards artistic 
taste, though perhaps not so justly in other important respects of senti- 
ment and poetic power ; but the talent of the French for the organiza- 
don of knowledge and for scientific system makes them admirable 
guides in matters of education. 
There has existed an academy of painting and sculpture in France since 
the year 1648, with but a temporary suppression of it at the beginning of 
the first republic ; and, indeed, nearly two centuries before that time a 
school of painting was founded by one of the French kings, which has