reat progress in
taste, at least, if not in the production of art, that we can understand
nearly all artistic languages, and that what used to be called classical
art has lost its old superstitious prestige for us. Not only can we
enjoy the art of our own Middle Ages; but many of us can enjoy and
understand just as well the great art of Egypt and China, and can see as
clearly when that art is good or bad as if it were of our own time. We
have, in fact, in the matter of artistic appreciation gained the freedom
of all the ages, and this is a thing that has never, so far as we know,
happened before in the history of the human mind.

But still this freedom of all the ages has not enabled us to produce a
great art of our own. There are some, indeed, who think that it has
hindered us from doing so, that we are becoming merely universal
connoisseurs who can criticize anything and produce nothing. We have the
most wonderful museums that ever were, and the most wonderful power of
enjoying all that is in them, but, with all our riches from the past,
our present is barren; and it is barren because our rich men would
rather pay great prices for past treasures than encourage artists to
produce masterpieces now. If that is so, if that is all that is coming
to us from our freedom of all the ages, there is certainly not progress
in it. Better that we should produce and enjoy the humblest genuine art
of our own than that we should continue in this learned impotence.

But this power of enjoying the art of all ages, though it certainly has
had some unfortunate results, must be good in itself. It is sympathy,
and that is always better than indifference or antipathy. It is
knowledge, and that is always better than ignorance. And we have to
remember that it has existed only for a short time and is, therefore,
not yet to be judged by its fruits. We are still gasping at all the
artistic treasures of the past that have been revealed to us like a new
world; and still they are being revealed to our new perceptions. Only in
the last ten years, for instance, have we discovered that Chinese
painting is the rival of Italian, or that the golden age of Chinese
pottery was centuries before the time of that Chinese porcelain which we
have hitherto admired so much. The knowledge, the delight, is still
being gathered in with both hands. It is too soon to look for its
effects upon the mind of Europe.

But it is not the result of mere barren connoisseurshi