work has always become vulgar, common and uninteresting. Modern
tapestry, with its aerial effects, its elaborate perspective, its broad
expanses of waste sky, its faithful and laborious realism, has no beauty
whatsoever. The pictorial glass of Germany is absolutely detestable. We
are beginning to weave possible carpets in England, but only because we
have returned to the method and spirit of the East. Our rugs and carpets
of twenty years ago, with their solemn depressing truths, their inane
worship of Nature, their sordid reproductions of visible objects, have
become, even to the Philistine, a source of laughter. A cultured
Mahomedan once remarked to us, "You Christians are so occupied in
misinterpreting the fourth commandment that you have never thought of
making an artistic application of the second." He was perfectly right,
and the whole truth of the matter is this: The proper school to learn art
in is not Life but Art.--_The Decay of Lying_.




THE INFLUENCE OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS ON CLIMATE


Where, if not from the Impressionists, do we get those wonderful brown
fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas-lamps and
changing the houses into monstrous shadows? To whom, if not to them and
their master, do we owe the lovely silver mists that brood over our
river, and turn to faint forms of fading grace curved bridge and swaying
barge? The extraordinary change that has taken place in the climate of
London during the last ten years is entirely due to a particular school
of Art. You smile. Consider the matter from a scientific or a
metaphysical point of view, and you will find that I am right. For what