passages of sublime thought, of tender piety, of lyrical poesy,
has proved beyond all cavil his delicacy of sentiment, his exquisite
niceness in matters of taste, his reverence for what is chaste and
beautiful, should at times be so deplorably unfaithful to his better
instincts, so forgetful of the close and inseparable alliance between
restraint and elegance. What can be weaker or uglier, more unbecoming an
artist, more becoming a fish-wife, than his description of Lochner's
picture of the Virgin: "The neck of a heifer, and flesh like cream or
hasty-pudding, that quivers when it is touched;" or of the picture of
St. Ursula's companions, by the same hand: "Their squab noses poking out
of bladders of lard that did duty for their faces;" not to speak of the
characterization of a "Sacred Heart" too revolting to reproduce? Surely
when, after having reviled M. Tissot almost personally, he describes his
works as painted with "muck, wine-sauce, and mud," it is difficult not
to answer with a _tu quoque_ as far as this word-painting is
concerned--difficult not to see here some morbid and "frightful appetite
for the hideous" struggling with the healthy appetite for better things.

However lame and ridiculous an artist's utterance may be, yet there is a
certain reverence sometimes due to what he is endeavouring to say, and
even to his desire to say it. We do not think it very witty or tasteful
or charitable to laugh at a man because he stammers; still less do we
overwhelm him with the coarsest abuse. One may well shudder at most
presentments of the Sacred Heart, but even apart from all consideration
for the artist, a certain reverence for the idea there travestied and
unintentionally dishonoured, should forbid our insulting what after all
is so nearly related to that idea, and in the eyes of the untaught very
closely identified with it.

But an occasional trespass of this kind, however offensive, is not
enough to detract materially from the value of so much that is
meritorious; nor again will that outspoken treatment of delicate topics
(less observable in _The Cathedral_ than in _En Route_), which makes the
book undesirable for many classes of readers, prevent its due
appreciation on the part of others--unless we are going to put the
Sacred Scriptures on the Index. In this vexed question, M. Huysman takes
what seems the more robust and healthy view, but he appears to be quite
unaware how many difficulties it involves; and consequ