The College itself is a fine example of the value of simplicity and space in architecture. Both without and within, the block of buildings is impressive, this effect being gained by an extreme simplicity of decoration. The most modern methods of heating and ventilating are provided, and there are large sun and air baths.
Completed in the spring of this year, and with accommodation for five hundred students, the settlement stands on high ground about four miles from Dresden, in an open, bracing, healthy spot, with charming walks in all directions. The views are extensive; to the south lie the Erzgebirge, to the south-east Saxon Switzerland, and, in a dip of the nearer hills, Dresden.
Ethel Ingham.
THE VALUE OF EURHYTHMICS TO ART
One of the most marked tendencies of modern aesthetic theory is to break down the barriers that convention has erected between the various arts. The truth is coming to be realized that the essential factor of poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture and music is really of the same quality, and that one art does not differ from another in anything but the method of its expression and the conditions connected with that method.
This common basis to the arts is more easily admitted than defined, but one important element in it—perhaps the only element that can be given a name—is rhythm. Rhythm of bodily movement, the dance, is the earliest form of artistic expression known. It is accompanied in nearly every case with rude music, the object being to emphasize the beat and rhythmic movement with sound. The quickness with which children respond to simple repetition of beat, translating the rhythm of the music into movement, is merely recurrence of historical development.
Words with the music soon follow, and from these beginnings—probably war-songs or religious chants—come song-poems and ultimately poetry as we know it to-day. The still more modern development of prose-writing, in the stylistic sense, is merely a step further.
The development on the other side follows a somewhat similar line. The rhythm of the dancing figure is reproduced in rude sculpture and bas-relief, and then in painting.
