nted by the
hand, and the supply was necessarily limited to the demand, and a china in
which there was always something more or less pretty, was turned out; but
now thousands, millions of plates are made more than we want, and there is
a commercial crisis; the thing is inevitable. I say the great and the
reasonable revolution will be when mankind rises in revolt, and smashes the
machinery and restores the handicrafts.

* * * * *

Goncourt is not an artist, notwithstanding all his affectation and
outcries; he is not an artist. _Il me fait l'effet_ of an old woman
shrieking after immortality and striving to beat down some fragment of it
with a broom. Once it was a duet, now it is a solo. They wrote novels,
history, plays, they collected _bric-a-brac_--they wrote about their
_bric-a-brac_; they painted in water-colours, they etched--they wrote
about their water-colours and etchings; they have made a will settling that
the _bric-a-brac_ is to be sold at their death, and the proceeds
applied to founding a prize for the best essay or novel, I forget which it
is. They wrote about the prize they are going to found; they kept a diary,
they wrote down everything they heard, felt, or saw, _radotage de vieille
femme_; nothing must escape, not the slightest word; it might be that
very word that might confer on them immortality; everything they heard, or
said, must be of value, of inestimable value. A real artist does not
trouble himself about immortality, about everything he hears, feels, and
says; he treats ideas and sensations as so much clay wherewith to create.

And then the famous collaboration; how it was talked about, written about,
prayed about; and when Jules died, what a subject for talk for articles; it
all went into pot. Hugo's vanity was Titanic, Goncourt's is puerile.

And Daudet?

Oh, Daudet, _c'est de la bouillabaisse_.

* * * * *

Whistler, of all artists, is the least impressionist; the idea people have
of his being an impressionist only proves once again the absolute inability
of the public to understand the merits or the demerits of artistic work.
Whistler's art is absolutely classical; he thinks of nature, but he does
not see nature; he is guided by his mind, and not by his eyes; and the best
of it is he says so. Oh, he knows it well enough! Any one who knows him
must have heard him say, "Painting is absolutely scientific; it is an exact
scienc