is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist. The
real schools should be the streets. There is not, for instance, a single
delicate line, or delightful proportion, in the dress of the Greeks,
which is not echoed exquisitely in their architecture. A nation arrayed
in stove-pipe hats and dress-improvers might have built the Pantechnichon
possibly, but the Parthenon never. And finally, there is this to be
said: Art, it is true, can never have any other claim but her own
perfection, and it may be that the artist, desiring merely to contemplate
and to create, is wise in not busying himself about change in others: yet
wisdom is not always the best; there are times when she sinks to the
level of common-sense; and from the passionate folly of those--and there
are many--who desire that Beauty shall be confined no longer to the bric-
a-brac of the collector and the dust of the museum, but shall be, as it
should be, the natural and national inheritance of all,--from this noble
unwisdom, I say, who knows what new loveliness shall be given to life,
and, under these more exquisite conditions, what perfect artist born? Le
milieu se renouvelant, l'art se renouvelle.

Speaking, however, from his own passionless pedestal, Mr. Whistler, in
pointing out that the power of the painter is to be found in his power of
vision, not in his cleverness of hand, has expressed a truth which needed
expression, and which, coming from the lord of form and colour, cannot
fail to have its influence. His lecture, the Apocrypha though it be for
the people, yet remains from this time as the Bible for the painter, the
masterpiece of masterpieces, the song of songs. It is true he has
pronounced the panegyric of the Philistine, but I fancy Ariel praising
Caliban for a jest: and, in that he has read the Commination Service over
the critics, let all men thank him, the critics themselves, indeed, most
of all, for he has now relieved them from the necessity of a tedious
existence. Considered, again, merely as an orator, Mr. Whistler seems to