Hundreds of schoolmasters and schoolmistresses who could not write one
tolerable line of criticism, will stand up in front of classes by the
hour together and issue judgments on books, pictures, and all that is
comprised under the name of art. Think of it! Here is your great
artist, your great exceptional mind groping in the darknesses beneath
the surface of life, half apprehending strange elusive things in those
profundities, and striving--striving sometimes to the utmost verge of
human endeavour--to give that strange unsuspected mystery expression,
to shape it, to shadow it in form and wonder of colour, in beautiful
rhythms, in phantasies of narrative, in gracious and glowing words. So
much in its essential and precious degree is art. Think of what the
world must be in the wider vision of the great artist. Think, for
example, of the dark splendours amidst which the mind of Leonardo
clambered; the mirror of tender lights that reflected into our world
the iridescent graciousness of Botticelli! Then to the faint and faded
intimations these great men have left us of the things beyond our
scope, comes the scholastic intelligence, gesticulating instructively,
and in too many cases obscuring for ever the naive vision of the child.
The scholastic intelligence, succulently appreciative, blind,
hopelessly blind to the fact that every great work of art is a
strenuous, an almost despairing effort to express and convey, treats
the whole thing as some foolish riddle--"explains it to the children."
As if every picture was a rebus and every poem a charade! "Little
children," he says, "this teaches you"--and out comes the platitude!

Of late years, in Great Britain more particularly, the School has been
called upon to conquer still other fields. It has become apparent that
in this monarchy of ours, in which honour is heaped high upon money-
making, even if it is money-making that adds nothing to the collective
wealth or efficiency, and denied to the most splendid public services