to mere sketches in sculpture,
and painting will diminish to imagery. This end is quickly and readily
reached, so easy and so fatal is the descent in these paths of
decadence.

"All styles are good except the tedious," a well-known critic has said.
Pursuing the import of this thought, we are led to the speedy conclusion
that the _null_ should never enter into competition. Nothing better than
that the condition of priority should exist between diverse styles and
opposite schools; but why strive to institute comparison between a
synthetic idea and the absence of synthesis and idea, between certain
proportions and harmony and the absence of proportion and harmony,
between a style and the absence of style? Whatever the subject and
whatever the mode of treating it, the intelligence of the artist should
always be visible in his work.

I am more and more thoroughly convinced that the theory of Delsarte,
fatal to _simplisme_, is the true theory of art. What can be more
_simpliste_ than impressionalism when viewed as a school? It considers
no law or science, disregards entirely analysis and logic, the Good and
the Beautiful; it is given over to sensation; vague impressions which
are, whatever may be said to the contrary, only the inferior part of
man's faculties, indispensable surely, but that which we have in common
with the animals and little children; very interesting to observe among
animals, a charming grace in children, but a most unimportant factor in
adult existence, particularly in the artist's life, unless it be
governed by the intellect and subject to the sanction of feeling.

_Application of the Law to Painting._

If any art should be given over to impressionalism it seems as if it
should be painting. To see and to transmit what is seen,--is not this
the true office of the painter, his undoubted mission? Yes, on condition
that the artist has the requisites for seeing correctly! And if he rises
to composition, he must also be endowed with a creative intellect, with
a portion of that mental power which will permit him to embrace a
conception synthetically, and to cooerdinate its parts.

Among the impressionalists of our time, there are assuredly painters of
talent; but what talent they possess is, as it were, against their will:
the influence of tradition, the weight of the medium in which they live
unconsciously restrain them. Then, it must be confessed, this
impressionability of the artist has its intrins