to yield to the promptings of their lower nature, were they to hearken to
the Old Man within them, fearful massacres would occur in St. John's
Wood, and Campden Hill, and round Holland House. An alarmed public and a
powerless police would behold vast ladies of wealth, and maidens fair,
and wild critics with eye-glasses speeding, at a furious pace, along
certain roads, pursued by painters armed to the teeth with palette knives
and mahlsticks.

This is what would occur if academicians and others gave way to the
natural passions provoked by criticism and general demeanour on Show
Sunday. But it is a proof of the triumph of civilization that nothing of
this kind occurs. Peace prevails in the street and studio, and at the
end of the day the artist must feel much as the critic does after the
private view at the Royal Academy. The artist has been having a private
view of the public on its good behaviour, and that wild contempt of the
bourgeois which burns in every artist's breast must reach its highest
temperature. However, the holidays are beginning, the working season is
over, and that reflection, doubtless, helps the weary painter through his
ordeal. But his friends also have to bear a good deal if they happen not
to like his performances. They must feign admiration as well as they
may, and the sun of Show Sunday goes down on a world rather glad that it
is well over.

Lord Beaconsfield once said at an Academy dinner that originality was the
great characteristic of English art. So little was he supposed to have
spoken seriously that another, of whose ceasing to perorate there is no
prospect, characterized his criticism in language so strong that it
cannot well be repeated. Let us admit that Lord Beaconsfield was either
mistaken, or that, like the Consul Aulus, "he spake a bitter jest." Our
artists, when they have found their vein, go on working it. They do not