was lately an
insuperable difficulty.

[Footnote 3: _Objectively_ and _subjectively_ are terms somewhat too
metaphysical; but they are so indispensable to accurate thinking that
we are inclined to show them some indulgence; and, the more so, in
cases where the mere position and connection of the words are half
sufficient to explain their application.]

It is indeed a pitiable spectacle to any man of sense and feeling, who
happens to be really familiar with the golden treasures of his own
ancestral literature, and a spectacle which moves alternately scorn
and sorrow, to see young people squandering their time and painful
study upon writers not fit to unloose the shoes' latchets of many
amongst their own compatriots; making painful and remote voyages after
the drossy refuse, when the pure gold lies neglected at their feet.
Too often he is reminded of a case, which is still sometimes to be
witnessed in London. Now and then it will happen that a lover of art,
modern or antique alike, according to its excellence, will find
himself honoured by an invitation from some millionnaire, or some
towering grandee, to 'assist,' as the phrase is, at the opening of a
case newly landed from the Tiber or the Arno, and fraught (as he is
assured) with the very gems of Italian art, inter-mingled besides
with many genuine antiques. He goes: the cases are solemnly disgorged;
adulatory hangers on, calling themselves artists, and, at all events,
so much so as to appreciate the solemn farce enacted, stand by
uttering hollow applauses of my Lord's taste, and endeavouring to play
upon the tinkling cymbals of spurious enthusiasm: whilst every man of
real discernment perceives at a glance the mere refuse and sweeping of
a third-rate _studio_, such as many a native artist would disdain to
turn out of his hands; and antiques such as could be produced, with a
month's notice, by cart-loads, in many an obscure corner of London.
Yet for this rubbish has the great man taken a painful tour; compassed
land and sea; paid away in exchange a king's ransom; and claims now on
their behalf, the very humblest homage of artists who are taxed with
the basest envy if they refuse it, and who, meantime, cannot in
sincerity look upon the trumpery with other feelings than such as the
potter's wheel, if (like Ezekiel's wheels) it were instinct with
spirit, would entertain for the vilest of its own creations;--culinary
or 'post-culinary' mugs and jugs. We, the writers of