bens are his children and single figures and biblical
scenes, not his _Marie de Medicis_. And what of Rembrandt is so perfect
as his _Saskia with the Pink_ at Dresden? If we have a photograph even
of such a picture as this constantly before us, with a modern picture of
anecdotal interest, no matter how vivid and pleasant that interest may
have been at first, it is not hard to predict which will please us
longest--which will grow to be an element in the happiness of every day,
while the other becomes at last _fade_ and insipid. This even if we
suppose its technical excellence to be great. How, then, shall such
interest take the place of technical excellence?

This modern love of _l'anecdote_ is not exactly the cause perhaps, nor
yet the effect, of the self-consciousness of modern art, but it goes
hand in hand with it: they are manifestations of the same spirit in the
two different spheres of worker and spectator.

But it may be said, If Michael Angelo was self-conscious, it was
because he first caught the infection of modern times. Life, the world,
the nineteenth century, are self-conscious through and through. It is
impossible to be otherwise. It is impossible for a world which has lived
through what ours has, which has recorded its doings and sufferings and
speculations for our benefit, ever to be naive or spontaneous in
anything. Inspiration unsought and unquestioned is a thing of the past.
Study, reflection, absorption, eclecticism,--these are the watchwords of
the future. If this were granted, many would still think it an open
question whether art of the highest kind would in the future be possible
or not. But is by no means necessary to grant it, for we have had in the
most learned and speculative of nations an art in our century--still
surviving, indeed, in our very midst--the growth of which has been as
rapid and the flowering as superb as the growth and bloom of sculpture
in Greece or of painting in Italy. I mean, of course, music in Germany.
And if we think a moment we shall see that its growth was as
unpremeditated, its direction and development as unbiassed by theories,
its votaries as untroubled with self-consciousness, as if they had been
archaic sculptors or builders of the thirteenth century. Bach, Haydn,
Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, what sublime unconsciousness of their
own personality as the personality of artists and as influencing art!
Does Richard Wagner seem at first sight to be a glaring excepti