ind no grounds stated for
this assumption and can suppose only that what is changing with great
rapidity is conceived to be alive; yet I know nothing more productive of
rapid changes than putrefaction.

Do not be deceived. This is not vital art, it is decadent and corrupt.
True art has always been the expression by the artist of the ideals of
his time and of the world in which he lived--ideals which were his own
because he was a part of that world. A living and healthy art never has
existed and never can exist except through the mutual understanding and
co-operation of the artist and his public. Art is made for man and has a
social function to perform. We have a right to demand that it shall be
both human and humane; that it shall show some sympathy in the artist
with our thoughts and our feelings; that it shall interpret our ideals
to us in that universal language which has grown up in the course of
ages. We have a right to reject with pity or with scorn the stammerings
of incompetence, the babble of lunacy, or the vaporing of imposture. But
mutual understanding implies a duty on the part of the public as well as
on the part of the artist, and we must give as well as take. We must be
at the pains to learn something of the language of art in which we bid
the artist speak. If we would have beauty from him we must sympathize
with his aspiration for beauty. Above all, if we would have him
interpret for us our ideals we must have ideals worthy of such
interpretation. Without this co-operation on our part we may have a
better art than we deserve, for noble artists will be born, and they
will give us an art noble in its essence however mutilated and shorn of
its effectiveness by our neglect. It is only by being worthy of it that
we can hope to have an art we may be proud of--an art lofty in its
inspiration, consummate in its achievement, disciplined in its strength.

II

JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET

Jean Francois Millet, who lived hard and died poor, is now perhaps the
most famous artist of the nineteenth century. His slightest work is
fought for by dealers and collectors, and his more important pictures,
if they chance to change hands, bring colossal and almost incredible
prices. And of all modern reputations his, so far as we can see, seems
most likely to be enduring. If any painter of the immediate past is
definitively numbered with the great masters, it is he. Yet the popular
admiration for his art is based on a I mi