s the beginning and not far from the end--not
far short of the whole--of the art of painting. So little indeed are we
shut out from the mysteries of a great Impressionist's impression that
Velasquez requires us to be in some degree his colleagues. Thus may each
of us to whom he appeals take praise from the praised: he leaves my
educated eyes to do a little of the work. He respects my responsibility
no less--though he respects it less explicitly--than I do his. What he
allows me would not be granted by a meaner master. If he does not hold
himself bound to prove his own truth, he returns thanks for my trust. It
is as though he used his countrymen's courteous hyperbole and called his
house my own. In a sense of the most noble hostship he does me the
honours of his picture.

Because Impressionism with all its extreme--let us hope its
ultimate--derivatives is so free, therefore is it doubly bound. Because
there is none to arraign it, it is a thousand times responsible. To
undertake this art for the sake of its privileges without confessing its
obligations--or at least without confessing them up to the point of
honour--is to take a vulgar freedom: to see immunities precisely where
there are duties, and an advantage where there is a bond. A very mob of
men have taken Impressionism upon themselves, in several forms and under
a succession of names, in this our later day. It is against all
probabilities that more than a few among these have within them the point
of honour. In their galleries we are beset with a dim distrust. And to
distrust is more humiliating than to be distrusted. How many of these
landscape-painters, deliberately rash, are painting the truth of their
own impressions? An ethical question as to loyalty is easily answered;
truth and falsehood as to fact are, happily for the intelligence of the
common conscience, not hard to divide. But when the _dubium_ concerns
not fact but artistic truth, can the many be sure that their
sensitiveness, their candour, their scruple, their delicate equipoise of
perceptions, the vigilance of their apprehension, are enough? Now
Impressionists have told us things as to their impressions--as to the
effect of things upon the temperament of this man and upon the mood of
that--which should not be asserted except on the artistic point of
honour. The majority can tell ordinary truth, but should not trust
themselves for truth extraordinary. They can face the general judgem