_CONCERNING ZEITGEIST._


A certain story is told about Mr. Ruskin, no doubt apocryphal, but at
any rate characteristic. A young lady, fresh from the Abyss of
Bayswater, met the sage one evening at dinner--a gushing young lady, as
many such there be--who, aglow with joy, boarded the Professor at once
with her private art-experiences. "Oh, Mr. Ruskin," she cried, clasping
her hands, "do you know, I hadn't been two days in Florence before I
discovered what you meant when you spoke about the supreme
unapproachableness of Botticelli." "Indeed?" Ruskin answered. "Well,
that's very remarkable; for it took me, myself, half a lifetime to
discover it."

The answer, of course, was meant to be crushing. How should _she_, a
brand plucked from the burning of Bayswater, be able all at once, on the
very first blush, to appreciate Botticelli? And it took the greatest
critic of his age half a lifetime! Yet I venture to maintain, for all
that, that the young lady was right, and that the critic was wrong--if
such a thing be conceivable. I know, of course, that when we speak of
Ruskin we must walk delicately, like Agag. But still, I repeat it, the
young lady was right; and it was largely the unconscious, pervasive
action of Mr. Ruskin's own personality that enabled her to be so.

It's all the Zeitgeist: that's where it is. The slow irresistible
Zeitgeist. Fifty years ago, men's taste had been so warped and distorted
by current art and current criticism that they _couldn't_ see
Botticelli, however hard they tried at it. He was a sealed book to our
fathers. In those days it required a brave, a vigorous, and an original