climbed the cold, white peaks of art.

About music most people are as willing to be humble as I am. If they
cannot grasp musical form and win from it a pure aesthetic emotion, they
confess that they understand music imperfectly or not at all. They
recognise quite clearly that there is a difference between the feeling
of the musician for pure music and that of the cheerful concert-goer for
what music suggests. The latter enjoys his own emotions, as he has every
right to do, and recognises their inferiority. Unfortunately, people are
apt to be less modest about their powers of appreciating visual art.
Everyone is inclined to believe that out of pictures, at any rate, he
can get all that there is to be got; everyone is ready to cry "humbug"
and "impostor" at those who say that more can be had. The good faith of
people who feel pure aesthetic emotions is called in question by those
who have never felt anything of the sort. It is the prevalence of the
representative element, I suppose, that makes the man in the street so
sure that he knows a good picture when he sees one. For I have noticed
that in matters of architecture, pottery, textiles, &c., ignorance and
ineptitude are more willing to defer to the opinions of those who have
been blest with peculiar sensibility. It is a pity that cultivated and
intelligent men and women cannot be induced to believe that a great gift
of aesthetic appreciation is at least as rare in visual as in musical
art. A comparison of my own experience in both has enabled me to
discriminate very clearly between pure and impure appreciation. Is it
too much to ask that others should be as honest about their feelings for
pictures as I have been about mine for music? For I am certain that most
of those who visit galleries do feel very much what I feel at concerts.
They have their moments of pure ecstasy; but the moments are short and
unsure. Soon they fall back into the world of human interests and feel
emotions, good no doubt, but inferior. I do not dream of saying that