diagrams, roughly and hurriedly outlined by mere beginners or untalented novices? Never! Do we not the rather take infinite pains to secure the brightest, the truest, and the best maps, diagrams, and illustrations which shall have been produced by our finest experts or specialists in their respective departments?
Why then, in a subject that pertains to every man's daily life, is it suggested to offer nothing but second- or third-rate models, the creations in great part of ignorant, inexperienced, or unqualified individuals for our children to imitate? A system of this kind will inevitably lower the standard of penmanship and begin a decline in the art of caligraphy; for the removal of an established and high standard, and the substitution of an imperfect and inferior standard, can only be followed by one result, and that a fatally disastrous one.
Further, the advantage of seeing a Master (even a good writer) write a copy on the blackboard is almost purely chimerical, for unless the line is a small hand copy the chalk will not and does not make the strokes thin and thick to meet the exigencies of the writing, and the strokes have to be painted or thickened by repeated applications of the crayon, which utterly destroys the analogy between the two acts. Then the teacher does not hold the chalk as the pupil holds the pen, nor does he write the Copy through in the same way that they are instructed to do. He is standing, they are sitting; He writes or draws, erases, reproduces, repeats, repairs, thickens, and revises the whole after being once traced, they are forbidden to do any of these things: where is the similarity or the help? After the most elementary stages there exists no necessity whatever for this particular kind of Blackboard instruction. It is not the setting of a Copy nor the seeing of a Copy written that is needed, but explanation and illustration of the Copy after it has been written. The Conclusion is irresistible looking at the question from every standpoint; that the absence of a Perfect Model and the substitution of a Hybrid having all possible degrees of disparity to an artistic and scientific original, must be fraught with consequences fatal to any satisfactory development of the science and art of handwriting. Contrast the
