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HOW TO SHOW PICTURES TO CHILDREN

Pied Piper, for Browning’s poem; Boughton’s John Alden and Priscilla, for Miles Standish; Stothard’s Canterbury Pilgrims for Chaucer’s Prologue. For older classes, Rossetti’s Dream of Dante, illustrating a passage in the Vita Nuora; the same painter’s Blessed Damosel, illustrating his own poem, and Alexander’s Pot of Basil, for Keats’s poem, may be used, the languorous type of beauty in the pictures corresponding to the character of the verse. Two pictures illustrating the moment of Dante’s first seeing Beatrice are by Ary Scheffer, and Holiday. On the whole, the world’s great poetry has not been and indeed cannot be adequately illustrated. The pictures which a teacher can best use in literature study are those illuminating in a general way the subject treated. For instance, in studying the origin of the drama, a flood of light is thrown on the old Mysteries and Miracle Plays by the works of the contemporary Italian painters. The story of the Nativity and of the Saviour’s Passion, first arranged in scenes in the cathedral and later acted in the public squares, was staged, so to speak, just as in the pictures by Giotto and Duccio. Later painters still adhered to the same traditions and a Nativity by Pinturicchio or Luini or the Crucifixion in the Spanish Chapel, Florence, would be excellent illustrative material of this kind. Tennyson’s Idyls of the King are illuminated, but not directly illustrated, by Abbey’s decorations in the Boston Public Library, which follow the Morte d’Arthur more closely than the poet. The statue of King Arthur from Charle-