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ander artificial and not unfrequently strained conditions. In the world of art the Rem- 
orandt school is a notable illustration. 
Says Mr. Gilbert Hamerton, in his “Graphic Arts”: ¢ Practice in outline drawing 
involves a special danger to the student which ought not to be passed in silence. It con- 
centrates his attention so much upon the contour of things that he ceases to perceive 
what is within them, and then he becomes the victim of a peculiar delusion. He fan- 
cies that because he knows the coast, he knows the country ; the draughtsman is fre- 
quently innocently persuaded that the flat white spaces which his lines inclose actually 
:ontain the modeling which he vainly imagines for them.” 
Now truth of linear drawing is not the truth of expression by light and shade, any 
more than the truth of the fact is the truth of the appearance of an object. Expression 
oy outline drawing is independent of the thickness or quality of the line emplcyed; there 
may be all varieties used, from the poetic and artistic that suggests rather than formu- 
lates, to the most prosaic and exquisitely fine hair line such as is found in the drawing 
of pieces of delicate machinery. Giotto’s celebrated line with which he astonished the 
Vatican, it is now universally accepted, was a broad, soft line drawn with the brush, 
similar to what one continually finds in Japanese art. 
Mr. Hamerton continues: ‘‘ The value of outlive drawing has been variously esti- 
mated by artists. Painters hardly ever use it in its purity ; they occasionally bave 
recourse to it, but they do not keep to it. In this they are guided by a sure instinct, for 
outline drawing belongs to an essential, early stage in art, and is not compatible with 
those habits of sight and thought which are or ought to be the habits of painters ; yet 
>utline drawing may be practiced with advantage as part of every artist’s education.” 
As to ruled lines, Mr. Hammerton notes the curious fact that while they are the 
basis of every architectural drawing, yet they are so disagreeable to the eye that a ruled 
ine is inadmissible in any pictorial view of a building or street, for it destroys the pict- 
uresque effect. Yet the ruled line as a literal fact is the truer of the two; but it is sug- 
gestiveness, not literalism, that in this instance the mind requires; hence its discontent 
with the exact, prosaic line. 
In ‘“ Modern Painters,” vol. i., Mr. Ruskin sustains Colonel Larned’s position by saying: 
“No form can be known to the eye without its chiaroscuro. In all observation ef land- 
scape, nature tells her story as plainly by her light and shade as by her form. Hun- 
dreds of people talk for one who can think, but thousands think for one who can see: to 
see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion all in one.” 
Nature is the mother and nourisher of the imagination; and when we see nature 
shrough the eyes of the imagination, we see her not in facts and bare outlines, but 
;ransformed and mediated by an infinite play of light and shade. Observation of 
nass is not observation of detail and limit ; neither can expression of mass be rendered 
m the same way as expression of detail and limit. 
The real question is, Should not both methods of observation and expression be culti- 
vated side by side from the earliest beginnings to study drawing ? Will not continual 
practice in a one-sided observation and expression leave the individual biassed and 
orejudiced ? 
There are degrees of seeing ; there is a seeing that is purely physical, that sees only 
processes, operations, and limitations, To begin with expression by outline drawing is 
such seeing. But there is a seeing that is internal as well as external, that pierces 
oehind the phenomena, the world of effects and operations, and feels the movement of 
the celestial order. Such seeing is directly dependent upon contact with nature, and 
seeks expression not by outline drawing, but by a feeling for the mass as the whole. 
Upon this observation of nature in masses of light and shade and shadow, and power 
to express the same, depends the art feeling of a people. 
Indeed. there can be no fine observation of color in nature apart from observation of