s evident to sight.

Meanwhile, amid this gabble of 'sects and schisms,' this disputation
which makes a simple mind take refuge in the epigram attributed to Swift
on Handel and Bononcini,[234] criticism and popular intelligence have
been unanimous upon two points, first, in manifesting a general dislike
for Italian art after the date of Raphael's third manner, and a
particular dislike for the Bolognese painters; secondly, in an earnest
effort to discriminate and exhibit what is sincere and beautiful in
works to which our forefathers were unintelligibly irresponsive. A
wholesome reaction, in one word, has taken place against academical
dogmatism; and the study of art has been based upon appreciably better
historical and aesthetical principles.

[Footnote 234:
'Strange that such difference should be
'Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee.']

The seeming confusion of the last half-century ought not, therefore, to
shake our confidence in the possibility of arriving at stable laws of
taste. Radical revolutions, however salutary, cannot be effected without
some injustice to ideals of the past and without some ill-grounded
enthusiasm for the ideals of the moment. Nor can so wide a region as
that of modern European art be explored except by divers pioneers, each
biassed by personal predilections and peculiar sensibilities, each
liable to changes of opinion under the excitement of discovery, each
followed by a coterie sworn to support their master's _ipse dixit_.

The chief thing is to obtain a clear conception of the mental atmosphere
in which sound criticism has to live and move and have its being. 'The
form of this world passes; and I would fain occupy myself only with that
which constitutes abiding relations.' So said Goethe; and these words
have much the same effect as that admonition of his 'to live with steady
purpose in the Whole, the Good, the Beautiful.' The true critic must
divert his mind from what is transient and ephemeral, must fasten upon
abiding relations, _bleibende Verhaeltnisse_. He notes that one age is
classical, another romantic; that _this_ swears by Giotto, _that_ by the
Caracci. Meanwhile, he resolves to maintain that classics and romantics,
the Caracci and Giotto, are alike only worthy of regard in so far as
they exemplify the qualities which bring art into the sphere of abiding
relations. One writer is eloquent for Fra Angelico, another for Rubens;
the one has personal sympathy for the Fiesola