al hygiene.

They require, however, that schoolrooms be enlarged, not in deference
to the laws of respiration, for central heating, which makes it
possible to keep windows open, renders calculations based on cubic
measure negligible; but because space is necessary for the liberty of
movement which should be allowed to the child. However, as the child's
walking exercise will not be taken indoors, this increase of space
will be sufficient if it permits free movement among the furniture.
Still, if an ideal perfection is to be achieved, we may say that the
"psychical" class-room should be twice as large as the "physical"
class-room. We all know the sense of comfort of which we are conscious
when a good half of the floor space in a room is unencumbered; this
seems to offer us the agreeable possibility of _moving_ about freely.
This sensation of well-being is more intimate than the possibility of
breathing offered to us in a room of medium size crowded with
furniture.

Scantiness of furniture is certainly a powerful factor in hygiene;
here physical and psychical hygiene are at one. In our schools we
recommend the use of "light" furniture, which is correspondingly
simple, and economical in the extreme. If it be washable, so much the
better, especially as the children will then "learn to wash it," thus
performing a pleasing and very instructive exercise. But what is above
all essential is, that it should be "artistically beautiful." In this
case beauty is not produced by superfluity or luxury, but by grace and
harmony of line and color, combined with that absolute simplicity
necessitated by the lightness of the furniture. Just as the modern
dress of children is more elegant than that of the past, and at the
same time infinitely simpler and more economical, so is this
furniture.

In a "Children's House" in the country, at Palidano, built to
commemorate the Marchese Carlo Guerrieri Gonzaga, we initiated the
study of "artistic" furnishing. It is well known that every little
corner of Italy is a storehouse of local art, and there is no province
which in bygone times did not contain graceful and convenient objects,
due to a combination of practical sense and artistic instinct. Nearly
all these treasures are now being dispersed, and the very memory of
them is dying out, under the tyranny of the stupid and uniform
"hygienic" fashions of our day. It was therefore a delightful
undertaking on the part of Maria Maraini to make careful