* * * * *

There are those also, sombre of mien, and wise with the
wisdom of books, who frequent museums and burrow in crypts;
collecting--comparing--compiling--classifying--contradicting.

Experts these--for whom a date is an accomplishment--a hall mark,
success!

Careful in scrutiny are they, and conscientious of
judgment--establishing, with due weight, unimportant
reputations--discovering the picture, by the stain on the
back--testing the torso, by the leg that is missing--filling folios
with doubts on the way of that limb--disputatious and dictatorial,
concerning the birthplace of inferior persons--speculating, in much
writing, upon the great worth of bad work.

True clerks of the collection, they mix memoranda with ambition, and,
reducing Art to statistics, they "file" the fifteenth century, and
"pigeon-hole" the antique!

* * * * *

Then the Preacher "appointed"!

He stands in high places--harangues and holds forth.

Sage of the Universities--learned in many matters, and of much
experience in all, save his subject.

Exhorting--denouncing--directing.

Filled with wrath and earnestness.

Bringing powers of persuasion, and polish of language, to
prove--nothing.

Torn with much teaching--having naught to impart.

Impressive--important--shallow.

Defiant--distressed--desperate.

Crying out, and cutting himself--while the gods hear not.

Gentle priest of the Philistine withal, again he ambles pleasantly
from all point, and through many volumes, escaping scientific
assertion--"babbles of green fields."

* * * * *

So Art has become foolishly confounded with education--that all should
be equally qualified.

Whereas, while polish, refinement, culture, and breeding, are in no
way arguments for artistic result, it is also no reproach to the most
finished scholar or greatest gentleman in the land that he be
absolutely without eye for painting or ear for music--that in his
heart he prefer the popular print to the scratch of Rembrandt's
needle, or the songs of the hall to Beethoven's "C minor Symphony."

Let him have but the wit to say so, and not feel the admission a proof
of inferiority.

Art happens--no hovel is safe from it, no Prince may depend upon it,
the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about, and puny efforts
to make it universal end in quaint comedy, and coarse farce.

This is as it should be--