entleman and
scholar" undertake the task.

Eloquence alone shall guide them--and the readiest writer or wordiest
talker is perforce their professor.

The Observatory at Greenwich under the direction of an Apothecary! The
College of Physicians with Tennyson as President! and we know that
madness is about. But a school of art with an accomplished
_litterateur_ at its head disturbs no one! and is actually what the
world receives as rational, while Ruskin writes for pupils, and Colvin
holds forth at Cambridge.

Still, quite alone stands Ruskin, whose writing is art, and whose art
is unworthy his writing. To him and his example do we owe the outrage
of proffered assistance from the unscientific--the meddling of the
immodest--the intrusion of the garrulous. Art, that for ages has hewn
its own history in marble, and written its own comments on canvas,
shall it suddenly stand still, and stammer, and wait for wisdom from
the passer-by?--for guidance from the hand that holds neither brush
nor chisel? Out upon the shallow conceit! What greater sarcasm can Mr.
Ruskin pass upon himself than that he preaches to young men what he
cannot perform! Why, unsatisfied with his own conscious power, should
he choose to become the type of incompetence by talking for forty
years of what he has never done!

Let him resign his present professorship, to fill the chair of Ethics
at the university. As master of English literature, he has a right to
his laurels, while, as the populariser of pictures he remains the
Peter Parley of painting.

[Illustration]

_The Art Critic of the "Times"_

[Sidenote: Mr. Tom Taylor's acknowledgment of
presentation copy of Mr. Whistler's "Art and Art
Critics," with "Sans rancune" inscribed upon fly-leaf by
the author.]

"Sans rancune," by all means, my dear Whistler; but you should not
have quoted from my article, of June 6th, 1874, on Velasquez, in such
a way as to give exactly the opposite impression to that which the
article, taken as a whole, conveys.

[Sidenote: _The World_, Jan. 15, 1879.]

I appreciate and admire Velasquez as entirely, and allow me to say, as
intelligently, as yourself. I have probably seen and studied more of
his work than you have. And I maintain that the article you have
garbled in your quotation gives a fair and adequate account of the
picture it deals with--"_Las Meninas_"--and one which any artist w