Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/114

 is discarded. When carving, and gilding, and painting have done their best to make it the very image of reality, the mind of the child, unconsciously, but in fact, resents the officiousness of the artist, who has encroached so far upon its own province; and it turns with fondness (often to the wonder of by-standers) to the most misshapen symbol of man, or dog, or house, or horse, or cart, and, by the very means of the glaring imperfections of this image, finds scope for the exercise of its own creative and imaginative powers.

It is confessed that there are some children so vulgar in their tastes, and so inert in mind, as to prefer always what is most staring in colour, and what leaves nothing to be done, or to think of, but vacantly to gaze upon the gorgeous idol of their mindless delight. It is otherwise with those whose natural endowments are such as to render education in any degree hopeful.

The principle of the human mind we are now speaking of, and which, if well understood, may be turned to great account in various ways, is clearly exhibited in the instance of the pleasure taken by children in pictorial representations. Even the most observant children (I am speaking of an early age) take little notice of a highly-finished and deep-toned picture, although the subject may be both familiar and pleasing. Upon the elaborate canvass the child sees only what he can see elsewhere, and with the accompaniment of motion in the objects; and to him, the merit of imitation in the picture is as nothing. Moreover, be-sides the disadvantage of the ambiguous distribution of light and shade in a finished picture, which more or less perplexes the contour of objects, there is, to the child’s eye, an optical inconvenience in looking at a picture, which the adult, by use, has become insensible of, but which, so long as it continues, is very annoying. In looking at objects at various distances, we learn, very early, so to adjust