Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

Tennyson bade Lady Clara Vere de Vere employ, in what is now called philanthropy, the hours which might drag wearily with her if she desisted from playing with hearts. He recognised the fact that women who — through no fault of their own, be it remembered — are born to no very distinct duties, must have some occupation to fill their minds and lives, or they will infallibly take to some form of mischief. No doubt it is a gain that so much should now be almost universally acknowledged. The question of finding wise and fruitful work for the many women, married or single, who have time and heart and brain insufficiently occupied, still remains, whether we like it or not, one of the burning questions of the day. But the experience of the last twenty years has shown — I think, beyond dispute — that the late Laureate's solution of the difficulty is not a satisfactory one. Far be it from me to cast discredit on the noble work which has been done, and is still being done, among the poor of London and other great cities; but in the opinion of all who have thought on the subject, and, still more, of those who have had practical experience of it, there is no channel from which the activity of amateurs should be more carefully diverted. The long apprenticeship, the severe application, the entire self-devotion, to the exclusion of other occupa- tions, which distinguish the professional from the amateur, should be required before people are allowed to deal with burning social questions, to tamper with the lives of others, to risk pauperising individuals by indis- AMATEUR ARTISTS 309 criminate charity, or, as is continually the case with visiting in hospitals, to stir up unintentionally class hatred by injudicious interference. It is a growing opinion that almost all such work requires, not zeal and intel- ligence alone, but the whole time and individual energies of those who devote themselves to it. Not all who can give these are endowed by Nature and education with the qualities which render them capable of being useful in that line. Five-and-twenty or thirty years ago, serious education for women of the leisured class was hardly thought of. The teaching of domestic economy, as well as all real mental training, was neglected in favour of superficial accomplishments. It was then far more common to meet with the young lady whose aesthetic impulses found vent in flower-painting and landscape art than it is in the present day. Mr. Euskin's teaching, the constant read- ing of art criticism — above all, the more thorough ground- ing now insisted upon in every branch of education — has opened girls' minds and increased their diffidence. They have a far more widespread and intelligent interest in art, but the actual number of amateur workers has greatly diminished. These influences, by educating the taste and increasing the knowledge of a large section of the public, have combined to deter those who in former days would have been only too ready to dabble in water- colours. They are now withheld by an exaggerated sense of the difficulties of the undertaking, or by a consciousness that they lack time or opportunity to learn to any purpose. Unfortunately this diffidence principally affects the more sensitive and poetical of the young people. For the sake of these, and just because en- couragement is needed, I wish to point some of the reasons why their courage should not fail.