xamples simple and severe enough for all necessary
practice.

143. And while you are learning to measure, and to draw, and lay flat
tints, with the brush, you must also get easy command of the pen; for
that is not only the great instrument for the first sketching, but its
right use is the foundation of the art of illumination. In nothing is
fine art more directly founded on utility than in the close dependence
of decorative illumination on good writing. Perfect illumination is only
writing made lovely; the moment it passes into picture-making it has
lost its dignity and function. For pictures, small or great, if
beautiful, ought not to be painted on leaves of books, to be worn with
service; and pictures, small or great, not beautiful, should be painted
nowhere. But to make writing _itself_ beautiful,--to make the sweep of
the pen lovely,--is the true art of illumination; and I particularly
wish you to note this, because it happens continually that young girls
who are incapable of tracing a single curve with steadiness, much more
of delineating any ornamental or organic form with correctness, think
that work, which would be intolerable in ordinary drawing, becomes
tolerable when it is employed for the decoration of texts; and thus they
render all healthy progress impossible, by protecting themselves in
inefficiency under the shield of good motive. Whereas the right way of
setting to work is to make themselves first mistresses of the art of
writing beautifully; and then to apply that art in its proper degrees of
development to whatever they desire permanently to write. And it is
indeed a much more truly religious duty for girls to acquire a habit of
deliberate, legible, and lovely penmanship in their daily use of the
pen, than to illuminate any quantity of texts. Having done so, they may
next discipline their hands into the control of lines of any length,
and, finally, add the beauty of colour and form to the flowing of these
perfect lines. But it is only after years of practice that they will be
able to illuminate noble words rightly for the eyes, as it is only after
years of practice that they can make them melodious rightly, with the
voice.

144. I shall not attempt, in this lecture, to give you any account of
the use of the pen as a drawing instrument. That use is connected in
many ways with principles both of shading and of engraving, hereafter to
be examined at length. But I may generally state to you that its