Amateurs-Want of occupation-Work amongst the poor-Music and drawing-Ruskin's teaching-Technical skill-Natural and acquired talent -Leaving home-Water-colours versus oils.

Drawing and gardening are so intimately connected, and being able to draw is such a preparation to the study of gardening, that I have thought it worth while to bring in here part of an article I wrote last year (1896) in the 'National Review.'In it I tried to set down some observations on the subject of amateur art, having myself had a life-long experience of it, of its great joys and its many heart-burning disappointments and difficulties. The increased taste for art and many other causes have tended during the last twenty years to diminish the number of those who draw for pleasure alone; whereas public opinion and family pride, which once thought starvation and beggary more honourable than work, now no longer prevent our sons and daughters from earning their bread as professional artists, musicians, or actors. But it is not to these that I wish to allude. They have found their vocation; their course is clear. I am speaking of the amateur proper, common enough a generation ago. Nine-tenths of the amateurs are women, and it is upon amateur art as an occupation for women that I wish to insist. I am more and more convinced of the importance to a girl of having an interest in life over and above her affections and the trifling domestic duties that may come in her way. If not, the time will come when, either as a young married woman whose husband's duties keep him absent during most of the day, or as one whom accident or choice has withheld from marriage, she will feel that desoeuvrement which drives so many women into frivolity and folly, and sinks many more into ill-health and fretful misery.

Tennyson bade Lady Clara Vere de Vere employ, in what is now called philanthropy, the hours which might drag wearily with her if she desisted from playing with hearts. He recognised the fact that women who-through no fault of their own, be it remembered-are born to no very distinct duties, must have some occupation to fill their minds and lives, or they will infallibly take to some form of mischief. No doubt it is a gain that so much should now be almost universally acknowledged. The question of finding wise and fruitful work for the many women, married or single, who have time and heart and brain insufficiently occupied, still remains, whether we like it or not, one of the burning questions of the day. But the experience of the last twenty years has shown-I think, beyond dispute-that the late Laureate's solution of the difficulty is not a satisfactory one. Far be it from me to cast discredit on the noble work which has been done, and is still being done, among the poor of London and other great cities; but in the opinion of all who have thought on the subject, and, still more, of those who have had practical experience of it, there is no channel from which the activity of amateurs should be more carefully diverted. The long apprenticeship, the severe application, the entire self-devotion, to the exclusion of other occupations, which distinguish the professional from the amateur, should be required before people are allowed to deal with burning social questions, to tamper with the lives of others, to risk pauperising individuals by indiscriminate charity, or, as is continually the case with visiting in hospitals, to stir up unintentionally class hatred by injudicious interference. It is a growing opinion that almost all such work requires, not zeal and intelligence alone, but the whole time and individual energies of those who devote themselves to it. Not all who can give these are endowed by Nature and education with the qualities which render them capable of being useful in that line.

Five-and-twenty or thirty years ago, serious education for women of the leisured class was hardly thought of. The teaching of domestic economy, as well as all real mental training, was neglected in favour of superficial accomplishments. It was then far more common to meet with the young lady whose aesthetic impulses found vent in flower-painting and landscape art than it is in the present day. Mr. Buskin's teaching, the constant reading of art criticism-above all, the more thorough grounding now insisted upon in every branch of education-has opened girls' minds and increased their diffidence. They have a far more widespread and intelligent interest in art, but the actual number of amateur workers has greatly diminished. These influences, by educating the taste and increasing the knowledge of a large section of the public, have combined to deter those who in former days would have been only too ready to dabble in water-colours. They are now withheld by an exaggerated sense of the difficulties of the undertaking, or by a consciousness that they lack time or opportunity to learn to any purpose. Unfortunately this diffidence principally affects the more sensitive and poetical of the young people. For the sake of these, and just because encouragement is needed, I wish to point some of the reasons why their courage should not fail. It seems to me that there is much profit and enjoyment to be derived from an occupation which brings into the home none of the irritation so often produced by the piano or violin. Music, no doubt, not merely in cases of real talent, but also when only ordinary proficiency is attained, is the most sociable of hobbies. It brings other musical people to the house, and gives far more pleasure to those among non-performers who like it, if more annoyance to those who do not, than drawing. Many natures, however, have the temperament of genius without its creative power, and I doubt very much whether music gives the same vent and the same satisfaction to these which even a slight taste for drawing affords when cultivated. There is a rare delight in the exercise of creative power, however limited; and this pleasure is given by drawing, even at its most elementary stage. What was a piece of white paper has something on it, and you have put it there. It has also the great advantage that it can be practised at all times and in all places-when travelling, at the dull seaside lodging, in town, or at the empty or sad backwater times of life that everyone experiences. Its danger to each individual is the same as that of all other pleasures and occupations to which we give our hearts, it encourages selfish absorption. But everything has its reverse side; and I am sure that, to the person with no ear for music and no taste for independent study in science or literature, drawing may prove a lasting delight, a source of peace and content, a stimulus to moral and intellectual growth. The occupation, to those who have learnt to love it, causes time to fly on the wings of pleasure; it adds new interest and zest to life, opening the eyes to a whole world of beauty which has hitherto lain unknown or unnoticed. Balzac said: 'The genius of observation is almost the whole of human genius.'If this aphorism is not comprehensively true, it serves at least to prove how life is enriched, even for the stupid, by cultivating observation; and yet how many go through life without it! As one branch of 'the genius of observation,'the artistic pursuit educates the taste in the highest sense of that much-abused word. It increases immensely the appreciation of works of art, both ancient and modern. It often leads to a reasoned study of the history of art, its interesting evolution, and its biographical and critical literature. Besides these, to come to more homely matters and the most feminine side of a woman's life-namely, the management of her dress and the decoration of her house-the knowledge of colour and the study of form will make both these more beautiful and less commonplace. They will also give her assurance to free herself from the often tasteless tyrannies of the dressmaker and the upholsterer.