ral system of instruction.

160. We are still, therefore, driven to the same point,--the need of an
authoritative recommendation of some method of study to the public; a
method determined upon by the concurrence of some of our best painters,
and avowedly sanctioned by them, so as to leave no room for hesitation
in its acceptance.

Nor need it be thought that, because the ultimate methods of work
employed by painters vary according to the particular effects produced
by each, there would be any difficulty in obtaining their collective
assent to a system of elementary precept. The facts of which it is
necessary that the student should be assured in his early efforts, are
so simple, so few, and so well known to all able draughtsmen that, as I
have just said, it would be rather doubt of the need of stating what
seemed to them self-evident, than reluctance to speak authoritatively on
points capable of dispute, that would stand in the way of their giving
form to a code of general instruction. To take merely two instances: It
will perhaps appear hardly credible that among amateur students, however
far advanced in more showy accomplishments, there will not be found one
in a hundred who can make an accurate drawing to scale. It is much if
they can copy anything with approximate fidelity of its real size. Now,
the inaccuracy of eye which prevents a student from drawing to scale is
in fact nothing else than an entire want of appreciation of proportion,
and therefore of composition. He who alters the relations of dimensions
to each other in his copy, shows that he does not enjoy those relations
in the original--that is to say, that all appreciation of noble design
(which is based on the most exquisite relations of magnitude) is
impossible to him. To give him habits of mathematical accuracy in
transference of the outline of complex form, is therefore among the
first, and even among the most important, means of educating his taste.
A student who can fix with precision the cardinal points of a bird's
wing, extended in any fixed position, and can then draw the curves of
its individual plumes without measurable error, has advanced further
towards a power of understanding the design of the great masters than he
could by reading many volumes of criticism, or passing many months in
undisciplined examination of works of art.

161. Again, it will be found that among amateur students there is almost
universal deficiency in the power of e