orizing, but of a different kind. It is
not so much the whole physical and psychical cosmos that the German
critic studies as the past history of art in its most recondite phases
and most subtle divergences. Upon this he draws for information as to
the value of the work before him. On the other hand, we shall find
French art-criticism to be almost purely technical.

As the critics differ, so do the criticised by the natural law of
national coherence. An English painter is apt to be primarily an
embodied theory of one sort or another; which theory is more or less
directly connected with his actual work as a painter. A German painting
is apt to be scientifically composed on theory also, but a theory drawn
from the study of art _per se_, not of the whole world external to art.
The work of a Frenchman, like the criticism of his commentator, is
primarily technical.

Because both German work and English work are theoretical compared with
French, I do not wish to imply that technically they are on a par. Aside
from the difference of imaginative power in the two nations, which
renders German conceptions more valuable in every way than contemporary
English ideas, there is a great difference in the technical training of
the two groups of artists. German work often shows technical qualities
as notable as those we find in France, though of another kind. The noble
physical endowment of an artist--that by reason of which, and by reason
of which alone, he _is_ an artist--is twofold: power of eye and power of
hand. By power of the eye I mean simple vision exalted into a special
gift, a special appreciation of line, an ultra delicate and profound
perception of color, and an exact, unconscious memory. This last is not
imagination nor imaginative memory, but an automatic power, if I may so
say, of the retina--as unconscious as is the pianist's memory of his
notes, and as unerring. It is not the power to fix in the mind by
conscious effort the objects before one, and to recall them
deliberately, inch by inch, at any time, but the power, when the brush
pauses trembling for the signal, to put down unerringly facts learned
God knows where, or imagined God knows how. Automatic, I repeat, this
power must be. The tongue might not be able to tell, nor the mind
deliberately to recall in cold blood, what was the depth of blue on a
distant hill or the vagueness of its outlines, or what the anatomical
structure of a mistress's fingers. But the brush