angles, is dangerously near the methods. that in days now happily gone or going -by, have ground into so many minds a life-long distaste for a literature that had been simply parsed to death. "Making a school-art of that which the poets did only teach by a divine delightfulness," was one of the things against which Sir Philip Sidney strove in his Defense of Poesy, and we are going far towards rendering imperative a like defense of the "delightful teaching" of the painters. It

Millet himself say. "See," his brother Pierre tells us he would exclaim, as he watched the peasants at their work, "all their movements count. There is nothing done uselessly. Notice, too, how well the light strikes them, and absorbs all the little details, till there remains only the stronger accents of shade which define here and there the luminous masses," "See the grand movements," he would say again, "of the men who lift the sheaves on their pitchforks, to give them to those

who are on the stacks. It is astonishing, towards the approach of night, how grand everything on the plain appears, especially when we see figures thrown out against the sky. Then they look like giants." Put beside "The Gleaners," now, as many more of Millet's pictures as you can, and see or rather feel-in all of them this grandeur of their lines, this splendid massing of the luminous against the dark, this absolute absorption of all save the significant. Those are the things to feel in such a picture as "The Gleaners"-to feel by giving up one's self to their influence as one yields to the spell of the depths of light, the boundless lines, of ocean or the sky. Take Millet's word for it, not mine. "Oh, how I wish," he wrote of his painting of a shepherd keeping watch over his flock by night-"how I wish I could make those who see my work feel the splendors and the terrors of the night. One ought to be able to make the people hear the songs, the silences and murmurings of the air. They should feel the infinite." And shall we not, instead of shutting up the figures in all manner of imaginary squares and ovals, allow the sweep and majesty, the spaciousness and freedom to speak to us in their own way, as Millet wished they should?

Jules Breton, whose "tall, sunburnt girls," as he described them, "with the heat of the day still held amid the tangles of their hair * * ** with their sickles, on which the cool glow of the sky shone like moonlight," may be with such suggestiveness compared with Millet's -Jules Breton, in his Vie d'un Artiste, points out that the earlier French painters had not "associated the life of man with the life of things, or made their figures alive with all the ambient vibrations, participants of all the phenomena of earth and sky; they had not made them breathe. their natural element, the air." But "what would I not give," writes Millet of another painting he was working at, "to bathe it in space as I see it in my memory! Oh, aërial spaces which made me dream when I was a child, will I never be allowed even to suggest you?" He does suggest them-with all their mystery, with all that endless fascination which

haunts horizon lines across broad lowland reaches and becomes to us the interpreter of the largeness, the dignity, the simplicity of things we have passed, here on our Indiana plains, "perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see."

"Art was given us for that;

God uses us to help each other so,
Lending our minds out."

And if "The Gleaners," and "The Sower," and "The Shepherdess" do nothing else for the children in our schools than silently to pass on down to them the lesson that Theocritus taught Millet, I believe they will have done their work. "As for myself," he writes, * * "the reading of Theocritus proves to me that one is never so Greek as in painting one's own impressions, no matter where they were received, and Burns proves it also. It makes me wish more ardently than ever to express some of the things of my own home, the home where I lived." If we ever have a national art, it will be when we learn that as I believe we now are learning it; when to us as to Millet, in Théophile Gautier's words, "Sowing reaping, grafting are holy acts, having their own beauty and nobility."

No wonder, then, that Walt Whitman spent "two rapt hours" before "The Sower" the grandest figure in its movement, one is tempted to believe, since Michelangelo--and wrote that evening: "If for nothing else, I should dwell on my brief Boston visit for opening to me the new world of Millet's pictures. Will America ever have such an artist out of her own gestation, body, soul?" For there is something of what we like to think of as belonging to our own truest national ideals, something that Lincoln would have loved--I scarcely know how else to give the touchstone that I mean-in Millet's work. "I have avoided (as I always do with horror) everything that can verge on the sentimental," he writes of his "Woman Going to Draw Water." "I wanted her to do her work good-naturedly and simply, without thinking anything about it as if it were a part of her daily labor, the habit of her life." Work simply done, without thinking sentimentally

about it-there is a dignity in that to whose appeal our Anglo-Saxon blood responds instinctively; and pictures like. "The Gleaners"-I should have chosen "The Sower," were it only more easily accessible have the virility of Burns" "A Man's a Man for a' That." And that is better in our schools, a thousand times, than all mere prettiness.

"Some tell me that I deny the charms of the country," he wrote in 1863 about "The Man with a Hoe." "I find much more than charms. I find infinite glories. I see as well as they do the little flowers of which Christ said that Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. I see the halos of dandelions, and the sun, which spreads out beyond the world its glory in the clouds. But I see as well, in the plain, the steaming horses at work, and in a rocky place a man, all worn out, whose han!" you have heard since morning, and who tries to straighten himself a moment and breathe. The drama is surrounded by beauty." ""Thou shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy brow,' he had written in 1850. "Is this the gay, jovial work some people would have us believe in? But, nevertheless, to me it is true humanity and great poetry." And is it not worth while to remember, as Millet's work can not but bring it to our mind, that to the greatest of all teachers, the sower going forth to sow, and the shepherd whose voice the sheep know as he leads them out, and the workers in the fields white to the harvest, were true humanity and great poetry, too?

Just one thing more. Virgil-whose line: "It is the hour when the great shadows descend toward the plain," hovered continually before the boy's imagination; the Bible-some of whose sentences he

used to say he looked upon as gigantic monuments; Michelangelo-of whom he wrote recalling the first time he visited the Louvre: "Here I first touched the heart and heard the speech of him who has so haunted me all my life"-these were the three profoundest moulding influences on his work. And may not Millet's own large touch and grand simplicity in some like manner stamp itself upon our children's minds? For as Mr. Gilder well has said: "For largeness, for intensity of expression, for sanity and healthfulness of tone, for Biblical majesty and elevation, and for the sense of beauty, Millet must be set apart with such natures as those of Giotto, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt." And it is good sometimes to breathe their ampler air.*

Hanover, Indiana.

"In Scribner's Monthly, running from September, 1880, through January, 1881 (Vols. XX and XXI), is the abridged translation of Sensier's "Jean François Millet -Peasant and Painter.' Here are found Millet's charming recollections of his childhood and youth, letters full of his own invaluable criticism of his works, much of the best contemporary French criticism-in a word, a revelation of the man that nobly supplements a study of his works. (And may I say again that it is tho teacher's study, not the pupil's, except indirectly, with which the present series of papers is concerned.) In the Century Magazine for January, 1893 (Vol. XLV), is "The Story of Millet's Early Life-Told by His Younger Brother" (Pierre Millet), and in the Century for April, 1894 (Vol. XLVII), is "Millet's Life at Barbizon," also by Pierre Millet. Next in value to Sensier's "Life," perhaps, comes Edward Wheelwright's "Personal Recollections of Jean François Millet" in the Atlantic Monthly for September, 1876 (Vol. XXXVII), which Mantz, who completed Sensier's Life," says is "one of the most complete and personal studies of Millet that have been published." Of interest, too, are Wyatt Eaton's "Recollections of Jean François Millet." in the Century Magazine for May, 1889 (Vol. XXXVIII), especially for Millet's delightful drawings for his children and grandchildren, of Little Red Riding Hood, the Ogre, etc. Theodore Child's article on Millet, in the Atlantic for October, 1887 (Vol. LX), is devoted to showing that it is mainly the literary interest which his pictures have, to which answer is made by Walter Cranston Larned ("Millet and Recent Criticism"). in Scribner's Magazine for September, 1890 (Vol. VIII). In Scribner's Magazine for May and June, 1890 (Vol. VII, are articles by T. H. Bartlett on "Barbizon and Jean François Millet." Will Low-who, like Wheelwright and Eaton, knew Millet at Barbizon- has an article in McClure's Magazine for May, 1896, which I have not seen.

A plea for sanity is always in order. Among the trainers of youth it should ever be pertinent. Physical, intellectual and moral soundings are characteristics reasonably required as the results of school training. The particular phases of unsoundness with which I shall deal at present are those pertaining to our theory and practice as professional pedagogues. Though I am quite sure that in many cases our practice is much sounder than our theory-greatly to the advantage of the children under our care.

PUPIL GOVERNMENT.

The recent movement for self-government, or pupil government, is a case in point. For various reasons, many high schools and some grammar schools have turned over the government of the school wholly or in part to the students themselves. This, in my judgment, is mainly if not altogether a mistake. The most important function of the school is to train up law-abiding citizens-to make young men and women responsive to legitimate control and obedient to properly constituted authority. At the age of twenty-one the state permits the young man to have a voice in governmental affairs, and the experience of the past has not indicated that the age limit is too high.

The custom of student control, at least to a large extent, is almost universal among the colleges. The faculty, with all the simulation of the politician, announces to crude boys of seventeen to twenty that "the discipline of this institution is very liberal; the students are expected to control themselves, very largely, subject, of course, to the oversight of the faculty" (which last means little, if anything). Any protest against such college government is met by the stereotyped answer from the officials, that "when a boy goes to college he is no longer a boy, but a young man, who knows what he wants and is capable of governing himself." The fact that their every-day experience with

college boys belies this claim justifies the suspicion that student control signifies inability in the faculty to control.

The bounden duty of the grammar school, the high school and the college, as well as the primary school, is to teach the boys and girls how to govern by teaching them first how to obey, to fit them for future governing by showing them first the necessity for obedience. Solon, the lawgiver of the Greeks, said: "He who has learned to obey will know how to command."

THE CULTURE EPOCH THEORY

Was hailed with delight by the radicals. As soon as it had the support of a great name or two, undiscriminating young teachers everywhere hastened to "recognize" that every child at some stage of his growth is a savage-a bit of importtant information that could have been gained from any member of the said child's family. Immediately they laid in a supply of bows and arrows, spear heads, war clubs, wampum and turkey feathers, and proceeded with great zeal to "cultivate" his savage instincts, to develop his half brutal nature, and to make him the best possible specimen of aborigine.

Discerning teachers saw the kernel of truth in the theory but did not forget that the purpose of the school is to civilize these savages. They therefore made use of their knowledge of the semi-savage nature in finding ways to appeal to the intellect and aspirations of these young barbarians and so lift them out of the shadows of savagery into the full sunlight of civilized manhood.

SPECIALIZATION.

Under the leadership of some of the college presidents, many young men and young women have rushed into specialization before they have had a solid foun

Portions of the President's inaugural address before the Indiana State Teachers' Association, Indianapolis, December 26, 1900.

dation for special work. It must be conceded that all knowledge is so related that a considerable amount of what is commonly called general knowledge and culture must be had as a sufficient foundation for intelligent specialization. This amount is certainly not less than that provided by the ordinary high school course. In my judgment no specializing should be permitted in the high school or in the first two years of the college course. When

the bachelor's degree is required as the basis of specialization, it will be greatly to the advantage of the general public and will elevate the standing and increase the efficiency of our professions. Then "quack," "shyster," "pettifogger," and "sky pilot" will no longer be the popular epithets bestowed upon our physicians, teachers, lawyers and ministers. Then the American professions will no longer be characterized by superficiality and empiricism. Many a bright college boy has developed into a narrow, conceited, onesided man because of immature specialization.

ELECTIVES.

Disconnected election is an outgrowth of specializaton. The normal, sound mind can do fairly good work in all the subjects of study. The mind that can not cope with the facts and principles of language, literature, history, the arts, mathematics, natural science, etc., with reasonable success is abnormal. Granting that such a mind be found, a rational method would seem to dictate that a course of treatment be followed which would tend to lessen its defects and to strengthen its weaknesses, the result being a wellrounded, robust mind.

The prevailing course just now, however, seems to be very different, at least in the higher institutions of learning. Assuming that every mind is an abnormal one, it proceeds to coddle and cultivate the abnormality through election and specialization, until the result, instead of being a well balanced and well informed intellect which should be the ideal of school education-is a mind ill-developed and out of poise.

Before a student has completed a thorough high school course, he is in no condition to decide what he shall study. He has neither the knowledge, the training nor the maturity of mind to make intelligent election; and surely his education. ought not to be controlled by caprice. He is safest in following the guidance of his teachers. "Shall not a boy be permitted to make the most of his special talent?" Certainly; but let him first find what special talent he has. "If he lacks talent for certain subjects, shall he be denied the privilege of concentrating his mind. upon those subjects for which he has an aptitude?" Certainly not; but "lack of talent" for a subject very often proves to be simply disinclination to study it. Is it not strange that one's "talents" should serve him well and efficiently until he gets into the high school, and then, suddenly some of them desert him? Manifestly the university, not the high school, is the place for election and specialization.

EXAMINATIONS.

For several years the outcry against school examinations has been vociferous. The mere mention of examination is sufficient to throw Col. Parker and many others into violent hysterics. Yet, when the student desires to enter a higher educational institution, especially if he desires to take advanced work or work that shall count toward a degree, he is confronted by a very well defined formal examination. Though they cry out against the examination, they have not yet developed a plan which they themselves will trust for finding out what a student knows or what he can do. If he wants to enter the civil service he must pass an examination. Your Uncle Samuel doesn't know any better way.

If a student really knows, what better method can be devised for finding out this fact than to propound a proper and definite question and to let him give his precise answer, orally or in writing, with sufficient deliberation. If he really has power, what better test than to set him an appropriate and definite problem, and with