member and I
shudder to record it--which actually appeal to the intelligence[37]
and the emotions, to the mind and heart of the spectator. It would be
quite useless for Mr. Whistler to protest--if haply he should be so
disposed--that he never meant to put study of character and revelation
of intellect into his portrait of Mr. Carlyle, or intense pathos of
significance and tender depth of expression into the portrait of his
own venerable mother. The scandalous fact remains, that he has done
so; and in so doing has explicitly violated and implicitly abjured the
creed and the canons, the counsels and the catechism of Japan....

[Note 34: _REFLECTION:_

Because the Bard is blind, shall the Painter cease to
see?

[Illustration]]

[Note 35: _REFLECTION:_

Quite hopeless!

[Illustration]]

[Note 36: _REFLECTION:_

Whereby it would seem that, for the Bard, the lovely is
not necessarily "effective."

[Illustration]]

[Note 37: _REFLECTION:_

The "lovely," therefore, confessedly does not appeal to
the intelligence, emotions, mind, and heart of the Bard
even when aided by the "effective."

[Illustration]]

[Sidenote: _REFLECTION:_

Of course I do mean this thing--though most imprudent
was the saying of it!--for this Art truth the Poet
resents with the people.--June 1888.

[Illustration]]

And when Mr. Whistler informs us that "there never was an artistic
period," we must reply that the statement, so far as it is true, is
the flattest of all possible truisms; for no mortal ever maintained
that there ever was a period in which all men were either good
artists or good judges of art. But when we pass from the positive to
the comparative degree of historic or retrospective criticism, we must
ask whether the lecturer means to say that there have not been times
when the general standard of taste and judgment, reason and
perception, was so much higher than at other times and such periods
may justly and accurately be defined as artistic. If he does mean to
say this, he is beyond answer and beneath confutation; in other words,
he is where an artist of Mr. Whistler's genius and a writer of Mr.
Whistler's talents can by no possibili