not guiltless of some confusion of thought, lately recommended to the
veneration of the present times "those past ages with their store of
experience." Doubtless, as the posterity of their predecessors our
predecessors had experience, but, as our ancestors, none--none.
Therefore, if they were a little reverend our own posterity is right
reverend. It is a flippant and novelty-loving humour that so flatters
the unproved past and refuses the deference due to the burden of years
which is ours, which--grown still graver--will be our children's.




SYMMETRY AND INCIDENT


The art of Japan has none but an exterior part in the history of the art
of nations. Being in its own methods and attitude the art of accident,
it has, appropriately, an accidental value. It is of accidental value,
and not of integral necessity. The virtual discovery of Japanese art,
during the later years of the second French Empire, caused Europe to
relearn how expedient, how delicate, and how lovely Incident may look
when Symmetry has grown vulgar. The lesson was most welcome. Japan has
had her full influence. European art has learnt the value of position
and the tact of the unique. But Japan is unlessoned, and (in all her
characteristic art) content with her own conventions; she is local,
provincial, alien, remote, incapable of equal companionship with a world
that has Greek art in its own history--Pericles "to its father."

Nor is it pictorial art, or decorative art only, that has been touched by
Japanese example of Incident and the Unique. Music had attained the