elded against the dishonouring suspicion of not rightly appreciating
pictures, even when the very phrases they use betray their ignorance
and insensibility. Many will avow their indifference to music, and
almost boast of their ignorance of science; will sneer at abstract
theories, and profess the most tepid interest in history, who would
feel it an unpardonable insult if you doubted their enthusiasm for
painting and the "old masters" (by them secretly identified with the
brown masters). It is an insincerity fostered by general pretence. Each
man is afraid to declare his real sentiments in the presence of others
equally timid. Massive authority overawes genuine feeling].

The opinion of the majority is not lightly to be rejected; but
neither is it to be carelessly echoed. There is something noble in the
submission to a great renown, which makes all reverence a healthy
attitude if it be genuine. When I think of the immense fame of Raphael,
and of how many high and delicate minds have found exquisite delight
even in the "Transfiguration," and especially when I recall how others
of his works have affected me, it is natural to feel some diffidence in
opposing the judgment of men whose studies have given them the best
means of forming that judgment--a diffidence which may keep me silent
on the matter. To start with the assumption that you are right, and all
who oppose you are fools, cannot be a safe method. Nor in spite of a
conviction that much of the admiration expressed for the
"Transfiguration" is lip-homage and tradition, ought the non-admiring
to assume that all of it is insincere. It is quite compatible with
modesty to be perfectly independent, and with sincerity to be
respectful to the opinions and tastes of others. If you express any
opinion, you are bound to express your real opinion; let critics and
admirers utter what dithyrambs they please. Were this terror of not
being thought correct in taste once got rid of, how many stereotyped
judgments on books and pictures would be broken up! and the result of
this sincerity would be some really valuable criticism. In the presence
of Raphael's "Sistine Madonna," Titian's "Peter the Martyr," or
Masaccio's great frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel, one feels as if
there had been nothing written about these mighty works, so little does
any eulogy discriminate the elements of their profound effects, so
little have critics expressed their own thoughts and feelings. Yet
every d