ground; and they are surely none the worse if they still
feel rather more of the meaning of the colours. It may be said that
they retain their childish illusion about _their_ Albert Memorial.
I confess I cannot manage to regard Palestine as a place where a
special curse was laid on those who can become like little children.
And I never could understand why such critics who agree
that the kingdom of heaven is for children, should forbid it
to be the only sort of kingdom that children would really like;
a kingdom with real crowns of gold or even of tinsel.
But that is another question, which I shall discuss in another place;
the point is for the moment that such people would be quite as much
surprised at the place of tinsel in our lives as we are at its place
in theirs. If we are critical of the petty things they do to glorify
great things, they would find quite as much to criticise (as in
Kensington Gardens) in the great things we do to glorify petty things.
And if we wonder at the way in which they seem to gild the lily,
they would wonder quite as much at the way we gild the weed.

There are countless other examples of course of this principle
of self-criticism, as the necessary condition of all criticism.
It applies quite as much, for instance, to the other great complaint
which my Kensington friend would make after the complaint about
paltry ornament; the complaint about what is commonly called backsheesh.
Here again there is really something to complain of; though much of
the fault is not due to Jerusalem, but rather to London and New York.
The worst superstition of Jerusalem, like the worst profligacy
of Paris, is a thing so much invented for Anglo-Saxons that it might
be called an Anglo-Saxon institution. But here again the critic
could only really judge fairly if he realised with what abuses
at home he ought really to compare this particular abuse abroad.
He ought to imagine, for example, the feelings of a religious
Russian peasant if he really understood all the highly-coloured
advertisements covering High Street Kensington Station.
It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money
as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is
the rich asking for more money. A man would be annoyed if he found
himself in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats
for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, "Give me money."
Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as s