sion of whom is her boast, what then is she?

This great immorality, centring in the irreproachable days of the
Exhibition of 1851, or thereabouts--the pleasure in this particular form
of human disgrace--has passed, leaving one trace only: the habit by which
some men reproach a silly woman through her sex, whereas a silly man is
not reproached through his sex. But the vulgarity of which I have
written here was distinctively English--the most English thing that
England had in days when she bragged of many another--and it was not able
to survive an increased commerce of manners and letters with France. It
was the chief immorality destroyed by the French novel.

THE POINT OF HONOUR

Not without significance is the Spanish nationality of Velasquez. In
Spain was the Point put upon Honour; and Velasquez was the first
Impressionist. As an Impressionist he claimed, implicitly if not
explicitly, a whole series of delicate trusts in his trustworthiness; he
made an appeal to the confidence of his peers; he relied on his own
candour, and asked that the candid should rely upon him; he kept the
chastity of art when other masters were content with its honesty, and
when others saved artistic conscience he safeguarded the point of honour.
Contemporary masters more or less proved their position, and convinced
the world by something of demonstration; the first Impressionist simply
asked that his word should be accepted. To those who would not take his
word he offers no bond. To those who will, he grants the distinction of
a share in his responsibility.

Somewhat unrefined, in comparison with his lofty and simple claim to be
believed on a suggestion, is the commoner painter's production of his
credentials, his appeal to the sanctions of ordinary experience, his self-
defence against the suspicion of making irresponsible mysteries in art.
"You can see for yourself," the lesser man seems to say to the world,
"thus things are, and I render them in such manner that your intelligence
may be satisfied." This is an appeal to average experience--at the best
the cumulative experience; and with the average, or with the sum, art
cannot deal without derogation. The Spaniard seems to say: "Thus things
are in my pictorial sight. Trust me, I apprehend them so." We are not
excluded from his counsels, but we are asked to attribute a certain
authority to him, master of the craft as he is, master of that art of
seeing pictorially which i