h this kind of charity I have
not much sympathy. If one gives away a book, it should be a charming
book--so charming, that one regrets having given it.

Mr. Whistler, for some reason or other, always adopted the phraseology of
the minor prophets. Possibly it was in order to emphasize his well-known
claims to verbal inspiration, or perhaps he thought with Voltaire that
_Habakkuk etait capable de tout_, and wished to shelter himself under the
shield of a definitely irresponsible writer none of whose prophecies,
according to the French philosopher, has ever been fulfilled. The idea
was clever enough at the beginning, but ultimately the manner became
monotonous. The spirit of the Hebrews is excellent but their mode of
writing is not to be imitated, and no amount of American jokes will give
it that modernity which is essential to a good literary style. Admirable
as are Mr. Whistler's fireworks on canvas, his fireworks in prose are
abrupt, violent and exaggerated.

'The decisive events of the world,' as has been well said, 'take place in
the intellect,' and as for Board-schools, academic ceremonies, hospital
wards and the like, they may be well left to the artists of the
illustrated papers, who do them admirably and quite as well as they need
be done. Indeed, the pictures of contemporary events, Royal marriages,
naval reviews and things of this kind that appear in the Academy every
year, are always extremely bad; while the very same subjects treated in
black and white in the _Graphic_ or the _London News_ are excellent.
Besides, if we want to understand the history of a nation through the
medium of art, it is to the imaginative and ideal arts that we have to go
and not to the arts that are definitely imitative. The visible aspect of
life no longer contains for us the secret of life's spirit.

The difficulty under which the novelists of our day labour seems to me to
be this: if they do not go into society, their books are unreadable; and
if they do go into society, they have no time left for writing.

I must confess that most modern mysticism seems to me to be simply a
method of imparting useless knowledge in a form that no one can
understand. Allegory, parable, and vision have their high artistic uses,
but their philosophical and scientific uses are very small.

The object of most modern fiction is not to give pleasure to the artistic
instinct, but rather to portray life vividly for us, to draw attention to
social