Born experimentalists like Monet or Sorolla y Bastida-I regret having to name living painters, but their efforts are so typical of the newer schools of thought that my remarks would be pointless without such aid-evince an extraordinary insight and analytical power; but an unrelieved [267] army of experimentalists in paint, like the locusts in Egypt, would too easily exhaust the already narrowing field ; and, moreover, many of these attempts at the impossible are technically unsound. Their problems appear to be solved while their paint is fresh, and when that goes nothing worthy remains; for these solutions are in the nature of studies, with no real æsthetic foundation. Indeed, there is little more of this essential, which should form the base of every true picture, than is to be found in the average snapshot photograph.

The narrowing of artistic effort into a single groove is the outcome of a reaction from sentimentality, and an abuse of subjective interest divorced from those æsthetic purposes to which every other should be subsidiary in the conceiving of a work of art. But this violent reaction, like all that is revolutionary, tends to exaggeration. There is little discrimination, and far too much iconoclasm, in the revolting spirit who rushes headlong to the other side. Time invariably sobers the spirit that ostentatiously dissociates itself from the powers that were, and proclaims in its every constituent that henceforth it has no connection with them, and is blind to the lesson of history. Time finds for us a middle course, which it had been wiser for us to steer for from the first. Your hat will be longer serviceable in a fast-moving age, if it is not built on the lines of the latest mode in hats ; and provided you [268] keep yourself green, which you may do by laying for yourself a thorough foundation and a varied resourcefulness, you will not fail to move quietly along with the flowing current.

If you are born to be a pioneer and can direct the ebb and flow of artistic thought, advice is unnecessary; but make sure that nature, and not the fashion, has made you one.

There are few things more depressing than the sight that meets one on the walls of some continental exhibitions, where the decadent spirit of revolt-anarchy is the fitter word-excites the would-be famous to make little fireworks of their own with their private and special brand of matches, on the chance that the fermenting critic may be impressed by the glare ; unfortunately he not rarely is, and so the contagion rages, and sanity is voted commonplace.

Should you ever be fascinated by what appears " over-strange," first ask and assure yourself that what is there is technically sound and workmanlike. There may be to you no ordinary criterion by which to judge it. It may be none the worse for that. But in its way is it decorative ? Has no one of its qualities been bought at the expense of any other essential quality? If it deal with humanity, does its humanity tally with the experiences of observant human beings? Then, however strange the work may seem to you, it deserves serious consideration. A narrow judgment is a right-of-way with fields, blooming and [269] rich with prejudices on either side, and there is no limit to their acreage if the judgment be only narrow enough.

This brings one to the question at which I hinted in discussing the Correggio pictures : the proclivity to apply to modern work a standard of criticism or appreciation totally different from that applied to the works of the older masters.

With a man of catholic judgment who is not a propagandist for his own or any particular school, all is equally considered. His knowledge of the history of art, of the spirit of the ages, of the influences of environment, is naturally bound up in his criticisms ; but even these adjuncts are little needed, except in the case of works that mark the developing of artistic effort. All others stand or fall by reason of their merit or want of it, irrespective of extrinsic reflections. Even the respectful awe that bids us be reticent before the works of the greatest, cannot prevent a feeling of preference for one or other among several products of a master's hand, for no man's works are all equal in merit. One is more happily conceived, better drawn or handled, more harmonious hi colour, and so on ; and, as the French say, Le mieux est l´ennemi du bien, the greater excellency of the one points to the relative weaknesses in the others. And with the craftsman this selecting need not, as with the " man in the street " or the inexperienced, be due to bias or mood, but to a [270] grasp of the varied attainments that go to the making of a work of art.

Be on your guard against the petty-minded, who would have you admire one type at the cost of others. His is a sort of narrow exclusiveness- " blinkers " worn by the half learned in the presence of what is modern, and taken off before the works of the past. Young people who are carried off their feet by the enthusiasm of the moment feel sure that what they are enthusing over is right, and the rest, of course, wrong-and not only wrong, but a negligible quantity. Quaintly enough, these same men can run from a Holbein to a Rembrandt, from a Velazquez to a Titian, from a Van Eyck to a Watteau, and are perfectly content that an old mansion can have many windows letting in the light, but a new house only one at a time ; the others must have their shutters closed. Nor are the young the only sinners. There is an able book written on Velazquez which no doubt you will and should read, and you will better understand the aims of that master. But the writer was fired with a desire to explain through the work of Velazquez the aims of a certain school of impressionists. He was perfectly at liberty to espouse any appealing cause, and with all the more force when that cause was little understood and was attacked by those accustomed to the old, and chary about accepting the new. But there was small need for this writer himself to belittle the old that [271] is sincere and fine, by way of lauding the attributes of another, however great that other is. To make a bonfire of the Venetians and Flemings, wherewith to light up with a brighter light the achievement of Velazquez and lesser men who sought inspiration from him, is not justifiable. Velazquez gams nothing by such special pleading, and the advocate of a cause loses the sympathy of his tribunal.

A want of the sense of proportion is one to which we are all prone, and I cite this merely as an instance of what you may be tempted to do in your partisanship for the last of your discoveries. As you proceed you will find that there is no finality for many years of these last and only loves. Successive periods of such infidelities are but a phase of your evolutionary growth, from the grub to the chrysalis stage, out of which you may fly with wings of your own. Let this thought make you tolerant. Know beforehand that your fancy of to-day will give place to a new one to-morrow, and that a wide outlook is not achieved or expected without long experience, and then only with improving practice, " a rubbing of minds " with the most capable advisers, a reading of all upon which you can lay your hands that is written by acknowledged judges, a cultivating of the broadest sympathies, and then perhaps, after an apprenticeship to such training and influence for about twenty years, you may arrive at what may be called an [272] independent judgment. Meanwhile, look askance at the verdicts pronounced by the immature who, like yourself, are yet to pass through the stress and storm inseparable from intellectual growth.