So much for the wild races of the present day; but even the Eskimo are equalled in their power of drawing by the men of old times.  In ages so far gone by, that the interval that separates them from our own may be measured in perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, when Europe was mostly icebound, a race who, in the opinion of all anthropologists, was closely allied to the modern Eskimo, lived in caves in the more habitable places.  Many broken relics of that race have been found; some few of these are of bone engraved with flints or carved into figures, and among these are representations of the mammoth, elk, and reindeer, which, if made by an English labourer with the much better implements at his command, would certainly attract local attention and lead to his being properly educated, and in much likelihood to his becoming a considerable artist if he had intellectual powers to match.

It is not at all improbable that these prehistoric men had the same geographical instincts as the modern Eskimo, whom they closely resemble in every known respect.  If so, it is perfectly possible that scraps of charts scratched on bone or stone, of prehistoric Europe, when the distribution of land, sea, and ice was very different to what it is now, may still exist, buried underground, and may reward the zeal of some future cave explorer.

There is abundant evidence that the visualising faculty admits of being developed by education.  The testimony on which I would lay especial stress is derived from the published experiences of M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, late director of the Ecole Nationale de Dessein, in Paris, which are related in his Education de la M. emoire Pittoresque [1] He trained his pupils with extraordinary success, beginning with the simplest figures.  They were made to study the models thoroughly before they tried to draw them from memory.  One favourite expedient was to associate the sight memory with the muscular memory, by making his pupils follow at a distance the outlines of the figures with a pencil held in their hands.  After three or four months’ practice, their visual memory became greatly strengthened.  They had no difficulty in summoning images at will, in holding them steady, and in drawing them.  Their copies [7] were executed with marvellous fidelity, as attested by a commission of the Institute, appointed in 1852 to inquire into the matter, of which the eminent painter Horace Vernet was a member.  The present Slade Professor of Fine Arts at University College, M. Legros, was a pupil of M. de Boisbaudran.  He has expressed to me his indebtedness to the system, and he has assured me of his own success in teaching others in a somewhat similar way.

[Footnote 7:  Republished in an 8vo, entitled Enseignment Artistique.  Morel et Cie.  Paris, 1879.]

Colonel Moncrieff informs me that, when wintering in 1877 near Fort Garry in North America, young Indians occasionally came to his quarters, and that he found them much interested in any pictures or prints that were put before them.  On one of these occasions he saw an Indian tracing the outline of a print from the Illustrated News very carefully with the point of his knife.  The reason he gave for this odd manoeuvre was, that he would remember the better how to carve it when he returned home.