These formative touches are, at first, rough enough, the transformation being effected, as we have seen, much more by the alchemy of the child's imagination than by the cunning of his hands. Yet, crude as it is, and showing at first almost as much of chance as of design, it is a manifestation of the same plastic impulse which possesses the sculptor and the painter. The more elaborate constructive play which follows--the building with cards and wooden bricks, the moulding with sand and clay, and the first spontaneous drawings--is the direct descendant of this rude formative activity. The kindergarten is, indeed, a kind of smaller art-world where the dramatic and plastic impulses of the child are led into orderly action. In this imitative play we see from the first the artistic tendency to set forth what is characteristic in the things represented. Thus in the unstudied acting of the nursery, the nurse, the coachman, and the rest, are presented by a few broad touches; characteristic actions, such as pouring out the medicine, jerking the reins, being aided by one or two rough accessories, as the medicine bottle or the whip. In this way child's play, like primitive art, shows a certain unconscious selectiveness. It presents what is constant and typical, imperfectly enough no doubt. The same selection of broadly distinctive traits is seen where some individual person, _e.g._, a particular newsboy or gardener, seems to be represented. A similar tendency to a somewhat bald typicalness of outline is seen in the first rude attempts of children to construct, whether with materials like cards or bricks, or with pencil, the semblance of a house, a garden and so forth. As observation widens and grows finer, the first bald representation becomes fuller and more life-like. A larger number of distinctive traits is taken up into the play. Thus the coachman's talk becomes richer, fuller of reminiscences of the stable, etc., and so colour is given to the dramatic picture. Similarly with the products of the plastic impulse. With this more realistic tendency to exhibit the characteristic with something like concrete fulness we see the germ at least of the idealistic impulse to transcend the level of common things, to give prominence to what has value, to touch the representation with the magic light of beauty. Even a small child playing with its coloured petals or its shells will show a rudiment of this artistic feeling for beautiful arrangement. No doubt there are striking variations among children in this respect. Play discloses in many ways differences of feeling and ideas: among others, in the unequal degrees of tastefulness of the play scene. Yet the presence of an impulse, however rudimentary, to produce what has beauty and charm for the eye is a fact which we must recognise.