y Richter. (See Appendix.) At about the age of twelve or
fourteen, it is quite time enough to set youth or girl to serious work;
and then this book will, I think, be useful to them; and I have good
hope it may be so, likewise, to persons of more advanced age wishing to
know something of the first principles of art.

iv. Yet observe, that the method of study recommended is not brought
forward as absolutely the best, but only as the best which I can at
present devise for an isolated student. It is very likely that farther
experience in teaching may enable me to modify it with advantage in
several important respects; but I am sure the main principles of it are
sound, and most of the exercises as useful as they can be rendered
without a master's superintendence. The method differs, however, so
materially from that generally adopted by drawing-masters, that a word
or two of explanation may be needed to justify what might otherwise be
thought willful eccentricity.

v. The manuals at present published on the subject of drawing are all
directed, as far as I know, to one or other of two objects. Either they
propose to give the student a power of dexterous sketching with pencil
or water-color, so as to emulate (at considerable distance) the slighter
work of our second-rate artists; or they propose to give him such
accurate command of mathematical forms as may afterwards enable him to
design rapidly and cheaply for manufactures. When drawing is taught as
an accomplishment, the first is the aim usually proposed; while the
second is the object kept chiefly in view at Marlborough House, and in
the branch Government Schools of Design.

vi. Of the fitness of the modes of study adopted in those schools, to
the end specially intended, judgment is hardly yet possible; only, it
seems to me, that we are all too much in the habit of confusing art as
_applied_ to manufacture, with manufacture itself. For instance, the
skill by which an inventive workman designs and molds a beautiful cup,
is skill of true art; but the skill by which that cup is copied and
afterwards multiplied a thousandfold, is skill of manufacture: and the
faculties which enable one workman to design and elaborate his original
piece, are not to be developed by the same system of instruction as
those which enable another to produce a maximum number of approximate
copies of it in a given time. Farther: it is surely inexpedient that any
reference to purposes of manufacture sh