ible. It is only a question of
degree. The greater the art-sense in the person addressed, the more had
better be left to it. Now in Japan the public is singularly artistic.
In fact, the artistic appreciation of the masses there is something
astonishing to us, accustomed to our immense intellectual differences
between man and man. Sketches are thus peculiarly fitting to such a
land.

Besides, there is a quiet modesty about the sketch which is itself
taking. To attempt the complete even in a fractional bit of the cosmos,
like a picture, has in it a difficulty akin to the logical one
of proving a universal negative. The possibilities of failure are
enormously increased, and failure is less forgiven for the assumption.
Art might perhaps not unwisely follow the example of science in such
matters where an exhaustive work, which takes the better part of a
lifetime to produce, is invariably entitled by its erudite author an
Elementary Treatise on the subject in hand.

To aid the effect due to simplicity of conception steps in the Far
Oriental's wonderful technique. His brush-strokes are very few in
number, but each one tells. They are laid on with a touch which is
little short of marvelous, and requires heredity to explain its skill.
For in his method there is no emending, no super-position, no change
possible. What he does is done once and for all. The force of it
grows on you as you gaze. Each stroke expresses surprisingly much, and
suggests more. Even omissions are made significant. In his painting it
is visibly true that objects can be rendered conspicuous by their very
absence. You are quite sure you see what on scrutiny you discover to
be only the illusion of inevitable inference. The Far Oriental artist
understands the power of suggestion well; for imagination always fills
in the picture better than the brush, however perfect be its skill.

Even the neglect of certain general principles which we consider vital
to effect, such as the absence of shadows and the lack of perspective,
proves not to be of the importance we imagine. We discover in these
paintings how immaterial, artistically, was Peter Schlimmel's sad loss,
and how perfectly possible it is to make bits of discontinuous distance
take the place effectively of continuous space.

Far Eastern pictures are epigrams rather than descriptions. They present
a bit of nature with the terseness of a maxim of La Rochefoucault, and
they delight as aphorisms do by their in