Fulton Collection. Here, again, a modest woman's club which announces a desire to see "everything which illustrates mediæval history," which really, you know, is rather a large order! Or here is a man whose one care is to learn who, loaned each picture, if loaned it be, and especially how much it cost. And here a thrifty pair who want a comprehensive survey of the museum with the least possible expenditure of time.

The problem is to give to each what he wants, and besides that the very best he can be made to take, to show him enough and not too much, to gauge his knowledge so as neither to tell him what he already understands nor to overshoot his comprehension. It requires nice judgment, swift discrimination, tact. People are so deliciously different. One man, fresh from classic lands, scrutinizes every inch of original Greek or Roman marble in the galleries. An hour later comes a group who cry, when steered toward classic sculptures, "Oh, we're just back from Rome. Don't show us anything Roman !" The docent swings between extremesfrom those who query, "Now, really, which is the best painting in the gallery ?" prepared to accept her dictum as if writ upon tables of stone, or, "Do you know every single thing in this museum?" (which she thanks her lucky stars she doesn't) to embattled souls who appear chiefly concerned lest she shall think they stand in need of information. For the next hour she may be busy guiding about some appreciative visitor from whom she gets almost as much as she takes.

I have not asked them, but I stand assured that it was no accident which led the directors of the Metropolitan to choose for this delicate and difficult post a woman. Physically the work makes demands which might better be met by a man. On days when every hour is spoken for, the strain on voice and muscles must be serious. But on the side of personality the woman, quick of perception, adaptable, sensitive, lightly balanced, presents ideal qualifications for such work. At all events, not having personally tested the docentry of Mr. Borden in Boston, one may think so without offense.

Already those enterprising ladies in the Research Department of the Boston

Women's Industrial Union have seized upon docentry as a new profession for college-bred women, and are preparing a leaflet setting forth the requirements for the work. Besides special training in art and pedagogics (for it is teaching of the most artful kind) one would advise them to mention the ability to walk ten miles a day over marble floors and yet look just as interested in the last party as in the first one, and also the possession of a steady head and a fine unconsciousness, since the moment a docent begins to talk to her ten, the other occupants of the gallery instantly "roll up like a snowball," as she says, in their ambition to hear too. To detach her sheep from the goats who have not paid for instruction, to do it gracefully and without giving offense, is a daily and hourly strain on her tact. Good nature, too, might be thrown in, for the public expects so much of a docent and is so unreasonably indignant when it cannot extract from her the entire contents of the encyclopædia! When Miss Fenton was new, the secretary asked her, "Have you been requested yet to recite the dynasties of ancient Egypt, with dates?" She shook her head. "Never mind," he said, soothingly, "you will be."

You

By way of concrete illustration of her method, Miss Fenton, when we had finished talking, took me for a little tour in the galleries. In Boston the aim has been, so far as possible, to allow visitors to lead the way, letting their interest guide them, the docent following to answer questions or offer illuminative comment. At the Metropolitan no attempt is made to veil the agency of the guide. choose the collection or collections you want to see, and she shows you the cream of them. There's nothing remotely pedagogic in her manner (though, being a Wellesley graduate, with special training at the Teachers College and in Europe, to say nothing of practical teaching in the Art Department at Wellesley, she might well betray scholastic hall-marks). Nor does she treat you to an array of bald facts. So easy and unconscious is she that you stroll about with her as with a familiar friend, scarcely realizing that the burden of comment rests with her.

Stopping before a little relief of an Egyptian princess (or was she a goddess?)

with a lotus, she says gleefully: "There, isn't she lovely? The color, I mean". for the relief is exquisitely tinted-" and the naïveté of the pose?" And later, among the Greek marbles: "Here's a fragment you don't want to miss. Just see the beautiful modeling of that back." The back belongs to a headless seated figure (the label suggests it might be Zeus) not more than twelve inches high. You might, particularly if the deadly museum fag had begun to drag at your eyelids, have passed it altogether. Yet it only wants the docent's appreciative word to fire your enthusiasm.

Another moment and she is calling attention to the tremendous expression of action in a larger fragment-parts, from the waist down, of the figure of a fighting Gaul-or to the exquisite delicacy of a relief of a young horseman, or to the magnificent workmanship of a Roman portrait bust which honors the sculptor more than the sitter, betraying, as it does, the brutal, degenerate type of a Roman gentleman of the second century B.C. You see (the moment it is shown you) all that she wants to bring out, yet so gracefully is her work done that you are scarcely aware that she is not echoing your own ideas. Such delicate "docenting " need not startle the self-love of the most sensitive.

We had presently an illustration of the need of docents. Drawing near that prime treasure, the wall-paintings from a villa near Boscoreale, the only Pompeian frescoes out of Italy, unless you count a scrap in the British Museum, we saw not less than six visitors pop into the room, and, darting a bored glance around the place, with an expression which said plainly, "There's nothing here!" pop promptly out again. Yet not. one of them, led round to the entrance to the cubiculum and made to realize that it is the actual painted wall surfaces of a bedchamber buried in 79 A.D., with the warped and twisted grating of the ancient window, but would have experienced some thrill and, whether from the historic impulse or the aesthetic, would have lingered. The self-conducted in hundreds pass it by.

Among the paintings the docent, to show how she works, singled out two canvases by Vermeer. Before the " Girl with

the Water Jug" she paused to note how the sunshine streaming through the casement falls upon the rich blue velvet of the girl's robe, seeming to irradiate the very air till the whole picture is bathed in soft bluish light. And again, in the “Lady Writing," she called attention to a string of pearls on the table which seems to give the key both to the color scheme and to the sentiment of the whole. The pearly tints of the flesh and of the pale yellow satin and ermine, the faint suggestion of pearl shape in the girl's face, and the soft luster of the full brow, glints of pearly light which repeat themselves in the jewel cabinet at her elbow, the ribbons in her hair, the nail-heads in the chair back, all carry out the charming conceit.

In putting all this much more effectively than I have done, Miss Fenton did not once employ the convenient catchword "tone." For it is no part of her ambition to train up pseudo art critics, able to pass the debased coin of cant phrases. She will be perfectly satisfied with making people see.

Perhaps you think the points she made about Vermeer are not very profound. They are precisely such as would prove illuminative to a visitor just getting his eyes open. For the more learned the docent will not lack subtler comments, her chief business in life being to adapt herself to her audience.

So far as she can, she steers her charges toward the more important pictures in the galleries; but if their eyes are caught by some bit of palpable gallery play, she will not drag them away unless the painting be positively bad. For she knows that what genuinely interests them will stick in their minds. Accordingly, whether their choice be a significant picture or a trivial one, she tries to show them how to put themselves in sympathy with the artist, to see why he painted the thing, not looking for dramatic effect when he was playing with sunshine, or for action when he was absorbed in the gleam of copper against brass. Where sentiment and the story interest predominate in a picture, no art-for-art's-sake dogma is allowed to spoil the visitor's pleasure; for, after all, some of the world's greatest pictures have told a great story greatly.

It will be noticed that the docent is not much given to purveying data about

schools and centuries. The museum authorities are not anxious that she should teach the history of art. That may as well be done in a photograph collection as among originals. The docent's concern ends when she has done what she can to put her charges in a position to appreciate what they see.

However, when she faces the other half of her work-that with the public schools-she is confronted with a task of double difficulty. For such of the supervisors and teachers as need her help at all need to be taught not only to see, to appreciate, but how to pass on that appreciation to others. And here she has an enticing opportunity. With all that has been written upon the appreciation of art-most of it fascinating reading to those who already have the clue-I am inclined to the opinion that nothing has yet been said which really helps the man in the dark. It is still a virgin field.

Fearing to rush in with fine words that darken counsel, Miss Fenton is holding back, making as yet but a guarded response to the demand for lectures upon the theory of appreciation which come to her constantly from the teachers in the public schools. The day after I saw her she was to speak to two hundred teachers on the appreciation of the Hudson-Fulton Collection. This under the auspices of the Art League of the Public Education Association. For the most part, however, she is studying the situation at first hand, visiting the schools, talking with teachers and pupils in the course of her daily work among them, and biding her time.

Meanwhile her hands are full of practical work. Classes in history, classes in literature, classes in drawing-all from the high schools, since no work is attempted with the unnumbered hordes of the grammar grades-pour in upon her, eager for light. And to them she opens the resources of the museum, making them free of all that may illustrate, enliven, and make real their every-day school work. These she gathers round her in the class-room in the basement, a classroom fitted with reference library, photographs, and invaluable imported charts, and gives them first an informal talk on the things they are going to see. With true teacher's instinct, she shows them

lantern slides of the very objects they will later find in the gallery, thus assiduously rubbing in every point twice over. Then out they go to the exhibition rooms.

It would be easy to misunderstand what the Metropolitan is doing with these classes in history and literature. It might be supposed to be actuated by a disinterested desire to promote the cause of education in general. The impulse is, however, at bottom æsthetic. When a docent guides about a class interested in Greek drapery from the historic side, you may be sure she does not let it escape without some insight into the beauty of Greek carving of drapery. It is the museum's one chance to train the eyes of school-children to joy in beautiful things; and it is made the most of. Hence the loaning of photographs and lantern slides to the schools, the diligent co-operation with every effort any teacher makes to widen her own artistic horizon. The gain to the more prosaic ends of education is immense. It is none the less incidental.

One sees at once what material awaits classes in Greek and Roman history-coins and marbles, classical jewelry, household utensils; and drawing classes might well be supposed to be studying historic ornament or the elements of design, busying themselves among the photographs or the textiles. Students of English history zigzag from collection to collection, picking out here and there a painting or a bit of furniture or an architectural model or a piece of armor like the little old helmet said to have been worn by Joan the Maid. They pore over the cases of historical medals, and even among the lace find some curious stump-work of the time of Charles I-a wood relief covered with lace stitch bearing the King's emblems: the moth, the caterpillar, and the fountain.

What is to be done for literature classes one does not so readily imagine until one considers that everything concerns literature which concerns life, and that a class studying "The Song of Roland" would find interest in the miniatures of daily occupation in the Duc de Berri's famous "Book of Hours," in photographs of mediæval French castles, or even of mediæval French furniture, all of which help to bring the Middle Ages to life.