aken; otherwise chairs, as such, depend very
much upon exact dimensions for their proportions. This chair is at
Exning in Suffolk.

[Illustration: FIG. 52.]

Now we shall suppose that you are going to make many such sketches
both in museums and in country churches or houses. You will find some
too elaborate for drawings in the time at your disposal, in which case
you should obtain a photograph, if possible, making notes of any detail
which you wish particularly to remember--such, for instance, as the
carved chest shown in Plate I. The subject, St. George and the Dragon,
is given with various incidents all in the one picture. This is a
valuable and suggestive piece of work to have before you, as the manner
in which the pictorial element has been managed is strikingly
characteristic of the carver's methods, and well adapted to the
conditions of a technique which has no other legitimate means of dealing
with distant objects. The king and queen, looking out of the palace
windows, are _almost_ on the same scale as the figures in the
foreground; the walls of the houses, roofs, etc., have apparently quite
as much projection as the foreground rocks--distance is inferred rather
than expressed. The very simple construction, too, is worth noting. It
is practically composed of three boards, a wide one for the picture, and
two narrower ones for ends and feet.

The object in making these sketches should be mainly to collect a
variety of ideas which may brighten the mind when there is occasion to
use its inventive faculties. Suggestive hints are wanted; rarely will it
be possible, or wise, to repeat anything exactly as you see it. These
sketches, if made with care, and from what Constable used to call
"breeding subjects," will give your fancy a very necessary point of
vantage, from which it may hazard flights of its own.

As much of our knowledge must necessarily be gained from museums, and as
they now form such an important feature of educational machinery, I
think it will be well to devote a word or two of special notice to the
drawbacks which accompany their many advantages. This I propose to do in
the following chapter.

CHAPTER XVI

MUSEUMS

False Impressions Fostered by Fragmentary Exhibits--Environment as
Important as Handicraft--Works Viewed as Records of
Character--Carvers the Historians of their Time.

A new world of commerce and machinery, having slain and forgotten a past
race of artist