Page:An introduction to linear drawing.djvu/16

 INTRODUCTION.

elementary treatise on Drawing, adapted to the use of common schools, can not but be well received. Besides the professions which make the art of drawing their particular study, anatomists, naturalists, mechanicks, travellers, and indeed all persons of taste and genius, have need of it, to enable them to express their ideas with precision, and make them intelligible to others.

Notwithstanding the great utility of this branch of education, it is a lamentable fact, that it is seldom or never taught in the publick schools, although a very large proportion of our children have no other education than these schools afford. Even in the private schools where drawing is taught, it is too generally the case that no regard is paid to.the geometrical principles on which the art depends. The translator appeals to experience when he asserts, that not one in fifty of those who have gone through a course of instruction in drawing, can do more than copy such drawings as are placed before them. Being ignorant of the certain rules of the art, (and they are the most certain because mathematical) they are always in leading strings, and, unless endowed with uncommon genius, never originate any design, and rarely attempt to draw from nature. It is to remedy this defective mode of teaching, that the