‘In the meantime, will you let me have a list of the classes, with the books used in them, and times of required attendance.
‘Dr. Watson has trusted me for the present to arrange the work for his daughter, without reference to any competitive honours or testing examinations. I wish to keep her well at her music, French, and if she cares for it, elementary drawing, with beginning of Latin and the first making out of classic history. What I chiefly need to know is the method of instruction in the music and drawing classes. (Do your seniors touch Greek at all?)
‘I have just been reading an excellent paper by Miss Sophia Beale on Art instruction, in which, however, the general sense and truth of the author’s views are prevented from taking a practical form by her falling into the scarcely in our time avoidable error of supposing that accuracy of drawing can only be taught by the figure.
‘The figure can never be drawn accurately unless life is given to the task. But a triangle, an arch, a cinquefoil, and a wild rose are within the reach of ordinary girlhood’s observation and delineation, to ordinary girlhood’s extreme profit.—Believe me, dear Madam, your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.’
‘Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, March 3, 1887.
‘Dear Miss Beale,—I shall be most thankful if you can find anything in my books that the girls will like to have in the Magazine: the ivied trunks were sent in no high spiritual but lowly practical intent, simply as the sort of models which you can’t cut and bring in for yourselves, and which, once drawn real size, will teach more than all my talking.
‘I think her librarian cares will be ever so good for my wild flower, and am looking out more fine books for her to-day, chiefly a perfect edit, of Scott’s poetry and Heyne’s beautiful Virgil.
‘I am wholly with you in liking Greek better than Latin, but only as added to Latin by clever girls. The entire history of the Catholic Church being in Latin, and half the language of Europe derived from it, I would make every girl who passed through any course of literature begin with understanding her Pater Noster and Te Deum.
‘But I have put a lovely edition of Hesiod aside for next dispatch to the wild librarian.