representations; but as I have never learned perspective, my drawings often wobble. This defect in my education often troubles me in my architectural designs, for perspective is a useful science, albeit landscape-painters sometimes neglect it. In sculpture there is less need for it, unless in making bas-reliefs with a distant background. What I know of perspective is by instinct. When I was young, I had an antipathy to geometry, believing it was a cold science that hindered enthusiasm. I have had perforce to acquaint myself with it, since all I do is based on geometry. Life itself is geometrical, a truth I only came to recognize later. The geometry I practise, however, is a geometry of my own, which is, no doubt, pretty close to the other. I am like the peasant that does not know arithmetic. He reckons in a way peculiar to himself.

VII.

To say what has been my own progress in the study and comprehension of the Gothic would be in detail impossible for me. The study has unquestionably influenced my sculpture, giving me more flexibility, more depth, more life in my modelling. This can be seen in my figures, which have become more mysterious, owing to the more perfect chiaroscuro. Not that I could point in particular to one or another of my productions as an instance of the modification. The influence has entered into my blood, and has grown into my being.

VIII.

The Gothic is not the Gothic because of the period in which it was developed, but because of the manner of seeing of the period. You enter a cathedral. You find it full of the mysterious life of the forest; and the reason of it is that it reproduces that life by artistic compression, so that the rock, the tree-Nature, in fine is there; an epitome of Nature. It is a mistake to imagine that the religious conceptions of the time were able to bring forth these masterpieces, any more than the religious conceptions of today are responsible for the ugliness of our modern structures. The ancient edifices gained their beauty through the faithful study of Nature practised by the Gothic sculptors. Their only ideal was the vision they had of her; quite as much as the Greeks, they drew from her all their power; and, in like manner, I find my inspiration in my model. The charm of the subject comes from that. I am opposed to the doctrine which holds that the

idea leads, that it ennobles the work. I believe rather that it is the strength resulting from labor which adds to the idea. Of itself, our idea is poor. This theory may seem commonplace; but, at any rate, it better explains the hundreds and hundreds of splendidly artistic buildings-churches and abbeys as well as cathedrals that came into existence during the Gothic period, many of them hidden away in country nooks which need exploring for these treasures to be discovered. Compared with similar Italian edifices they are much superior. In fact, the Gothic in Italy is less developed, too, as regards the number of its buildings. There, painting and sculpture have been more separated from architecture, and exist more for themselves; especially worthy of mention are the painted windows and tapestry. In France, also, there is no lack of beautiful windows and tapestry; and what adds to the value of them is their being really part of the Gothic interior they adorn. Ruskin has written well on these things; I believe it was his book which brought so many English-speaking people to visit them. We have writers of our own to-day, Huysmans among others, who introduce descriptions of them into their literature; but one does not get much benefit by reading them. A visit to the church is more profitable, or, failing this, to a museum like the Trocadero, where plaster reproductions of some fine specimens of Gothic architecture may be seen. The stained-glass windows painted in recent times make little or no impression on us, because the tones are false. Those of the Gothic period raise one to the heavens. They are copied from the flowers of the field, not from imagination; and the men that painted them pored over the tints and shades of the plants and blossoms they had under their eyes, until they had succeeded in reproducing them exactly as they saw them. I insist on this point, for it is Nature that is celestial. They who give us windows now proceed in another way.

In order to reform our present stereotyped methods of art, we want a second Renascence. For a long time I hoped that in a near future this might be; but I have ceased hoping to-day. It would require a catastrophe capable of overturning and changing everything. Of course, I am speaking of what is likely to happen in the next twenty-five or fifty years. Life is eternal; and, sooner or later, things must alter for the better. But so far, in our modern architecture, I see nothing that gives encouragement.

We have intelligent men who are sufficiently educated. They copy everything; they ferret out the style of Nineveh, as well as the styles of Louis XIV and Louis XV; but what they produce is without soul, without art, and is insignificant. They repeat, but only as the parrot does. For long years, we have done nothing but turn out from our colleges young men stuffed with useless scientific lumber; and they very quickly lose it all, and there is nothing to take its place. This is not to be wondered at when throughout Europe there is such a neglect of art in our education. It may be replied to me that the inventions of science compensate for the deficiency; but these inventions are almost exclusively, if not quite, a mere increase in the power of the bodily senses and faculties; the telegraph in that of the tongue, the telephone in that of the ear, the railway in that of the legs, the photographic science in that of the eye; and these inventions leave in ignorance the more intellectual part of the individual. Your portrait can be taken, your voice boxed up; this is extraordinary; but the soul which commands, the god which is in the head, is forgotten.

And yet the means for altering this state of things is near at hand, is beneath our eyes. We have still the same Nature that inspired those anonymous sculptors to give us the Gothic; we still have a sufficient number of Gothic masterpieces intact-so many epitomes of Nature, as I have said-to show what can be done by the man who starts with his vision open to her teaching.

I make no fetish of the Gothic sculpture. I do not claim for it what it does not possess. A contrast to the Greek,—a complement of it-inferior to it in some respects, superior to it in others, it is one of the most wonderful phenomena that the genius of our race has manifested. And if we are to advance in art beyond the stationary position we occupy at this moment, we shall only do so by a thorough comprehension and appreciation of the beauties and qualities that are peculiar to it.*

AUGUSTE RODIN.

Dictated by M. Rodin to a stenographic reporter, and translated from the French by Frederick Lawton, M.A., author of the Life and Work of Auguste Rodin." (Grant Richards, London, 1904.)

SHOULD COLLEGE STUDENTS STUDY?

BY CHARLES F. THWING, LL.D., PRESIDENT OF WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY AND ADELBERT COLLEGE.

A COMMITTEE of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University recently made a report regarding the amount and the quality of the work done "in satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts." Among the conclusions reached by the Committee is, that "the average amount of study" is "discreditably small."*

The basis of this conclusion lies in the replies made by no less than seventeen hundred and fifty-seven students to letters of inquiry sent by the Committee. The replies indicate that the average amount of work done by the undergraduate in a course which represents three hours of lectures or of recitation each week is less than three and a half hours a week outside the lecture-room. The usual studies taken by the Harvard student represent four courses of three hours each a week. In preparation for the duties involved in each of these four courses of three hours each, every man, on the average, spends about three and a half hours. In other words, the ordinary student, in addition to twelve hours spent every week in the presence of the instructor, gives fourteen hours to study. Twenty-six hours, therefore, each week, represent the formal scholastic labor of the student.

The figures concerning the more than seventeen hundred men show that a few spend not over one hour a week in preparation for a course of three hours, and that a few devote to preparation between seven and eight hours. The lower extreme is covered by twenty-one, and the upper by twenty-nine, students. The number who spend between one and two hours is forty times greater than the number who spend not over one; and the number who spend be*“Harvard Graduates' Magazine," June, 1904, page 619.

tween two and three hours in preparation for a course is about three times the number of those who spend two hours or less. The men who devote from five to six hours to a course are somewhat less than one-half those who spend less than two hours.

The comment of the Committee upon this condition is significant: "Such an amount of work the Committee regards as far too small. That there is intellectual activity in Harvard College no one who knows its students can doubt; and, in spite of many interests besides study, much of this activity is exercised in college work. Yet it is clear that a great many undergraduates do not study so much as is necessary for the full benefit of a college education."

The conclusion and the commentary are impressive. Harvard College has come to be generally recognized as having secured a leadership in American education. At the last Commencement, her great President said: "Harvard University has already a perfectly secure past. That, gentlemen, is a treasure laid up where neither moth nor rust can corrupt. The past is safe. Again, the present is sure; we need not for a moment imagine that the influence of Harvard, its power over the young men, its power in the community at large, is diminishing or to diminish. The present, too, is safe. This is the first university of the land, and we say unanimously we mean it shall stay so." The question, therefore, is somewhat significant, whether, under the condition which, in the opinion of Professor Briggs, chairman of the Committee, and of his associates, obtains at Harvard College, it will be possible for Harvard to maintain that intellectual and scholastic leadership which now, by common consent, belongs to her.

Yet, be it said, the situation at Harvard is more open to defence than the statement of the Committee would seem to allow. For it is easy to argue that college represents opportunity, as well as duty. Men who go to college at the age of eighteen, and who receive high intellectual training for three or four years, ought to have wisdom enough to know what they want, and strength enough to get what they want, from such conditions as Cambridge embodies and offers. If these men want the education which is derived from hard intellectual toil,-the education of thinking,—they ought to have a chance to get it. If they want the education which is the result of large and general learning,-the education of culture,-they should also find the doors of knowl