thoroughness, truthfulness. In his characteristically suggestive comment
upon the Japanese artist Hokusai, Mr. John La Farge gives an interesting
account of the training established and enforced in the school of the
Kanos, a family of painters which survived the vicissitudes of more than
four centuries. The course of study in a Kano school covered at least ten
years, and the average age of graduation was thirty. The rules of conduct
were rigid; the manner of life simple to the point of bareness; the
discipline of work severe and unbroken. During the first year and a half
of study the pupil devoted his entire time to copying certain famous works
in the possession of the school; making, in the first instance, a copy
from the picture set before him, and then reproducing his own copy again
and again until every stroke and detail was thoroughly comprehended and
mastered. In the course of eighteen months sixty pictures were studied
with this searching thoroughness; the secrets of skill in each were
uncovered, the sources of beauty or power discerned; and the eye and hand
of the pupil gained intelligence, quickness, penetration. Month after
month passed in what seemed to be a monotony of mechanical imitation; but
in this arduous and literal reproduction of the skill of others was laid
the sure foundations of individual skill. This devout attention to methods
secured for a considerable number of men a technical expertness for which
we look, as a rule, only in the work of the greatest artists. The result
of this training was not mechanical skill, but truth and freshness of
observation. The signature of the artist in question reveals not an
imitative but an original nature, not a faculty absorbed in accuracy but
in passion for expression: "Hokusai, the Old Man Crazy about Painting."

The arduous patience of these Oriental students of painting bore its fruit
in a tradition of skill which was in itself an immense stimulus to the
aspiring and ambitious; it established standards of craftsmanship which
made the possession of expert knowledge a necessity on the part of every