r have thought of that?

[Illustration: FIG. 70.]

* * * * *

And why have I reserved these hints till now? surely these are things of
the work-bench, practical matters, and would have come more conveniently
in their own place? Why have I--do you ask--after arousing your
attention to the "great principles of art," gone back again all at once
to these little matters?

Dear reader, I have done so deliberately to emphasise the _First_ of
principles, that the right learning of any craft is the learning it
under a master, and that all else is makeshift; to drive home the lesson
insisted on in the former volumes of this series of handbooks, and
gathered into the sentence quoted as a motto on the fly-leaf of one of
them, that "An art can only be learned in the workshop of those who are
winning their bread by it."

These little things we have just been speaking of occurred to me after
the practical part was all written; and I determined, since it happened
so, to put them by themselves, to point this very lesson. They are just
typical instances of hundreds of little matters which belong to the
bench and the workshop, and which cannot all be told in any book; and
even if told can never be so fully grasped as they would be if shown by
master to pupil. Years--centuries of practice have made them the
commonplaces of the shops; things told in a word and learnt in an
instant, yet which one might go on for a whole lifetime without thinking
of, and for lack of which our lifetime's work would suffer.

Man's work upon earth is all like that. The things are there under his
very nose, but he never discovers them till some accident shows them;
how many centuries of sailing, think you, passed by before men knew that
the tides went with the moon?

Why then write a book at all, since it is not the best way?

Speaking for myself only, the reasons appear to be: First, because none
of these crafts is at present taught in its fulness in any ordinary
shop, and I would wish to give you at least a longing to learn yours in
that fulness; and, second, because it seems also very advisable to
interest the general reader in this question of the complete teaching of
the crafts to apprentices. To insist on the value and necessity of the
daily and hourly lessons that come from the constant presence, handling,
and use of all the tools and materials, all the apparatus and all the
conditions of the craft, and from the inte