! THE BOLSHEVIST REVOLUTION T is to be hoped that some day Bolshevism, as a social I theory, to know at an hotel, and gave a party in her honour. Mrs. Croly, Mrs. Leslie, Robert Ingersoll, Nym Crinkle, and Harriet Webb all came in person. The carriages extended many blocks down the street. Several of the young woman's poems were recited; "there was some good music and a tasteful supper." Moreover, each guest, on leaving, was given a piece of ribbon upon which was printed the verse that Mrs. Wilcox so much admired. What more could she have done? And yet the ungrateful creature went off with the barest words of thanks; scarcely answered letters; refused to explain her motives, and stayed in New York with an eminent literary man without letting Mrs. Wilcox know. To this day when I see the occasional gems of beauty which still fall from this poet's pen I feel the old wound ache in my heart. Life, however, always supplies a balm after it has wounded us. . The spring following this experience my husband selected a larger apartment. For by this time Ella Wheeler was Wilcox. precisely what it is, how it is related to Marxism, how far it is original and what the original elements are. Amongst all the views about Bolshevism prevalent in this country we find none that tell us what we want to know. We do not believe that Lenin's one aim is to massacre everybody in Russia except his Red Guards, nor that this wonderful scheme is conceived in the interests of German Imperialism. If we are told that his scheme is to give all the land to the peasants and all the factories to the workmen we want to know-and what then? What is Bolshevism, as a social scheme? Mr. John Reed, like other writers, tells us nothing about it. Bolshevism is, to him, a wonderful dramatic struggle of one Socialist party against every other party in Russia. The struggle is wonderful enough and dramatic enough, but what is it all about? She first met Mr. Wilcox in a jeweller's shop in Milwaukee. He was engaged in the sterling-silver business, and she had run in to ask the time. Ironically enough, she never noticed him. There was Mr. Wilcox, a large, handsome man with a Jewish face and a deep bass voice, doing business with the jeweller, and she never noticed his presence. Out she went again, anxious only to be in time for dinner, and thought no more about it. A few days later a very distinguished-looking letter arrived in a blue envelope. a blue envelope. Might Mr. Wilcox be presented to her? "I knew it was, according to established ideas, bordering on impropriety, yet I so greatly admired the penmanship and stationery of my would-be acquaintance that I was curious to know more of him." They corresponded. Mr. Wilcox's letters were " sometimes a bit daring," but never sentimental; and they were always enclosed in envelopes "of a very beautiful shade,” while the crest on the paper seemed to lead me away from And then the Oriental everything banal and common." paper-knife arrived. This had an extraordinary effect upon her such as had hitherto been produced only by reading" a rare poem, or hearing lovely music, or in the She presence of some of Ouida's exotic descriptions." He went to Chicago and met Mr. Wilcox in the flesh. seemed to her correctly dressed and very cultured in manner as he was-" like a man from Mars." Soon afterwards they were married, and almost immediately Mr. Wilcox, to the profound joy of his wife, expressed his belief in the immortality of the soul. So far as the actual struggle goes, Mr. Reed is admirable. He gives a very vivid picture of the tremendous activity going on in the Smolny Institute, the feverish all-night discussions, the thronged streets of Petrograd, the incessant proclamations, the bewildering thrust and counter-thrust. We feel that we are living through those ten days in October, 1917. We see everybody fighting, but we do not see what they are fighting about. Mr. Reed's attitude is perfectly natural. He believes that Bolshevism, whatever it is, is right, and he finds the tremendous activity very exciting. His book is not an argument or the presentation of a case; it is a picture of events. Nevertheless, certain important generalities do emerge. It appears to be a fact that all Russia was longing for peace. It appears to be a fact that the majority of the workers and soldiers in Petrograd were tired of the Kerensky Government. It appears to be a fact, and a very significant one, that workers' and soldiers' delegates were, on the whole, out of touch with the rank and file. Lenin, on several occasions, found that he could ignore appointed officials and appeal over their heads to the people they were supposed to represent. This fact is significant; it throws a new light, for instance, on the representative character of the Constituent Assembly which was dissolved by the Bolsheviks. Charges of undemocratic procedure brought against the Bolsheviks rest largely on such incidents. If Mr. Reed's report is to be trusted, such procedure was often justified. We see quite clearly, however, that Lenin would in no case have been deterred by theoretical considerations. He is, as he declares, a realist. Even Trotzky was against him on the question of suppressing the bourgeois press, but Lenin listened to no arguments. He waved aside abstract principles regarding the liberty of the press. In his opinion the bourgeois press worked to restore the Cadets to power. In such a case abstract principles were "pedantic." Lenin belongs to the type which is only tolerated when it is successful. Tolerated" is hardly the right word. Both the hatred of his opponents and the admiration of his supporters must be excessive. He cuts too deep for lukewarm emotions. Mrs. Wilcox was now established in New York, the Mr. Reed's book is raw material. We may interpret it which way we please, according to our knowledge or our prejudices. His reports of actual events cannot well be questioned, since he professes to have been an eye-witness, and these events do rule out some statements that have been made respecting the Bolshevist revolution. The terroristic theory, for instance, at least as applied to the period dealt with by Mr. Reed, simply will not work. It is quite obvious that Bolshevism could not have succeeded as it did if it had not appealed to some of the strongest desires of the people. I1 LIONS AND LAMBS SUSAN LENOX. By David Graham Philips. (Appleton. 15s. net.) Now the chief concern of modern American fiction, as far as our knowledge of it goes, is sex. It is not treated humorously, as in France, or intensely, as in England; it is treated seriously. There are many moments when our American cousin makes us feel we are only foolish, inexperienced children as far as this great subject is concerned. We are David and Dora, giving each other bouquets, and laughing and loving, and kissing the little dog and kissing each other, and America is the grim Julia with her "Play on, ye may-flies." But, after all, the cause of Julia's disillusionment was never quite plain, and the reason for America's is right there, to be picked up in the next magazine you open it is the ferocity of man. Make no mistake about it, man, whatever disguise he may affect, however young, husky and brilliant he may be, however old, senile and ugly, from the millionaire downwards, is nothing but a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. It is not his fault; he may resist it; he may put up the most devastating fight while the lights of little old New York burn as brightly as ever; he may read poetry, weep, or, grim-faced, in his revolving chair with telephone attached, before his immense roll-top bureau, he may make a vow, before the photograph of a sweetfaced little woman with white hair, to see this thing through. A lion or a lion manqué he remains. On the other hand, he may not resist it; and then his wildness and capacity for devouring are more terrific than anything Europe has encountered. As is usual in such cases, to get the full fine flavour of the hunting you must sing the innocence and tenderness of the prey. The American young girl-the Bud—the Millionaire's daughter who has never grown up how well we know her! How exquisite she is! how fresh! how new to the light! What a sight, growing and blowing in Momma and Poppa's garden, for the wicked lion as he peeps through a hole in the garden wall! All this the magazine and the novel are founded on. But, after all, they have never done more than treat of one particular example at a time of villainy and innocence. Each American writer has been content with his corner of the hunting field, and disinclined to wander, though all have been united into one great company over the choice of subject, the lamb fleeing the lion. We imagine that Mr. Graham Philips, after a grand survey, has sickened of modern America's typical characters as Tchehov wearied. And so he has given us, in two packed volumes, Susan Lenox. He has taken his time; he has not faltered. There is not a corner of the vast ground, not a pit, not a islmy ditch, not a stinking heap, not a glittering restaurant, that he has left unprobed. Man, the lion, roars, and Susan, sweet, pure, with her white swelling bosom, her TE HE poems included in this volume," Miss Editha Jenkinson, the editor, informs us, "have been carefully selected for their intrinsic beauty, charm of simplicity, and dignity of thought, and may be accepted as thoroughly representative of the finest, most expressive, contemporary English verse." We look at the contents, expecting to see such names as Hardy, De la Mare, W. H. Davies, Nichols, Sassoon, D. H. Lawrence; actually we find a long list headed by Mr. James A. Mackereth, going on with the names of Mr. G. H. Crump, Mr. Tinkler, Miss Marguerite Few, Miss May O'Rourke and the Marquis of Crewe, and ending with the star turn of the anthology, Mr. Theodore Maynard. What a very odd collection of poets! And still wondering what were the principles of selection which guided Miss Jenkinson in her difficult and invidious task, we turn over a page or two and come to a table of sources." The mystery is explained. At the head of the table we read the following words: 'List of Messrs. Erskine Macdonald's Publications . . . from which the Poems [contained in the present volume) have been selected." The four poems that have not appeared in book. published by Messrs. Erskine Macdonald have been printed by Mr. Galloway Kyle in the Poetry Review, a journal issued by the same publishers. The publishers and editor are lucky ir thus being able to compile so stout an anthology culled from the works of so many poets, and all with so little worry about copyright and the other tetters with which commerce has cramped the unhappy muse. " But-and the word should be written in capitals expanding, crescendo, from B to T-would it not have been wiser, would it not have been more truthful and honest, simply to call the book an anthology of verses published by Messrs. Macdonald, without claiming for it that thorough representativeness" of which Jenkinson boasts? She claims in effect that Messrs. Miss Macdonald have a monopoly of English poetical talent, that they have "made a corner" in the national genius. The claim might as reasonably be put forward by the S.P.C.K. or the Rationalist Press or by any other publishing house. And when we come to examine the anthology in detail the claim looks more fantastic and preposterous than ever. From the stately verbiage of these lines to a snowdrop: Pale sweetheart of the youngling year, What joy to find thee nodding here, to such lispings as: How fair and sweet they are! Oh! Hate was very far From God's divine intention When of these He made mention, we find almost nothing in the book that is not minor poetry in the derogatory sense of the word. Contemporary English poetry may not be much to boast of, but why insult it superfluously by saying the present volume is a representative sample of it? LITERARY NOTES Now that the conditions of publication may be presumed to have become a little easier than they were in war-time, it is to be hoped that the Clarendon Press will soon issue the third volume of Mr. Saintsbury's monumental anthology of "Caroline Poets." This final volume will, we understand, contain among other things a reprint of the works of Cleiveland-quite a brilliant luminary compared with such dim poetical stars as Chalkhill, Ayres, Shakerley Marmion and the other minor or minimal poets whose verses filled the first two volumes of the collection. It was Cleiveland who wrote that great poem Scot," in which he speaks of Scotland as A land that brings in question and suspense God's omnipresence, adding: The Rebel Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom, Not forced him wander, but confined him home. And it was Cleiveland who, writing from the beleaguered city of Newark to one of the Roundhead besiegers who had sent in, under a flag of truce, some message concerning a runaway servant-it was Cleiveland who began his letter in reply: "Fourteenthly, brethren..." NINETY YEARS A SERIES of critical and biographical articles entitled "Shades of the Dead" had been running in THE ATHENÆUM in 1829, for some weeks. On the 9th of September the Shade had been Burton of the "Anatomy of Melancholy"; on the 2nd, Gustavus Adolphus. The ninth of these articles, which appears in the issue of September 16, is a warm and eloquent panegyric on Robert Burns: MESSRS. A. & C. BLACK announce two interesting illustrated books for publication this autumn. Mr. W. T. Wood, the well-known member of the Old Water-Colour Society, who served in the balloon-company at Salonica, has collaborated with his company-captain, Mr. A. J. Mann, in a book that should be more homogeneous than such books Another The Salonica Front." usually are, entitled promising collaboration is that of Mr. Martin Hardie, etcher, draughtsman, and Keeper of Prints and Drawings at South Kensington, with Mr. Warner Allen, the war correspondent, in a similar book, Our Italian Front." There is no poetry in the enjoyment of which we keep a more innocent or poetic state of feeling than in reading the lyrics of Burns which exalt even license and riot, and purify evil by the might of his creative gifts. How different is this from the works of Rousseau or even the earlier writings of Byron, in which the reality of evil is ever strong and substantial at the centre, surrounded by a thin gloss and affected verbiage; while in Burns the life and the potency are always to be found in the poetry with which he encircles the hint or incident that serves him as a pretext. The writer goes on to compare Burns with the professors and dilettanti of Edinburgh, and this leads him into an interesting digression on genius and education: AFTER reading the reprint of Mr. Standish O'Grady's version of the Cuculain poems, one is not surprised at the great influence it exerted, on its first appearance, over the minds of Irishmen. The Irish have every reason to be proud of their ancient hero and of his mythological background. We have no satisfactory Anglo-Saxon hero whom we might exalt if we one day became an oppressed nationality. Our Old-English epic is a sorry poem, and our Saxon hero, Beowulf, is a dull and loutish figure, for whom it is impossible to feel any enthusiasm. King Arthur and his knights are naturalized British However, as subjects, but they do not belong to our race. "" TrueDefoe pointed out in good King William's day, the born Englishman" does not exist, so that we may adopt them without scruple. Though education cannot produce genius, education can stifle it, and doubtless has in numberless instances stifled or perverted the genius which has come youthful and hopeful into the hands of the Scotch professors Why are there no great poets among the negro slaves or the American savages, but because their education, the influence, that is, on their minds, of the circumstances in which they are placed, can never permit the development of mental power? It cannot be said that Burns was an example of natural capacity and that the men among whom he found himself at Edinburgh were merely examples of good education; for there is no instance of natural capacity in an entirely unfavourable situation having forced its way to supremacy in thought. Burns was just as much educated as the pupils of Dr. Blair or of Dr. Reid; but he was educated by realities, they by abstractions; and so admirable was the instruction given him by his father, so well had he learnt to attach importance to things instead of words, that his boyhood seems scarcely to have at all suffered from the reading of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding." AMONG certain young Frenchmen it has recently been a La rose, au doux parfum, de qui l'extrait divin, His didactic poem Les Jardins" makes an interesting A curious little article deals with the case of the operasinger Mlle. Heinefetter, who had broken her contract to sing in the princely theatre of the Elector of Cassel to take an engagement in Paris. The poor young lady, it seems, had been guilty by this action of every offence from lèsemajesté to perjury; but, as THE ATHENÆUM points out, her post at Cassel was worth £200 per annum, and the Paris impresarios had offered her £2,000. In these circumstances perjury and lèse-majesté were pardonable. Regardez dans Milton, quand ses puissantes mains Préparent un asile au premier des humains: Le voyez-vous tracer des routes régulières, Contraindre dans leurs cours des ondes prisonnières ? No! Adam and Eve lived in an English park designed a divine gardener. It is amusing to think that by a divine landscape gardener. Blenheim is consciously modelled on paradise. A lively "Letter from Rome describes the interest which was being roused in the learned world by the researches of contemporary Egyptologists: "Everything now yields to hieroglyphicks, and we are anxious for something direct from Champollion, from whom we have not heard since he has been in Egypt. The Newspaper letters are all a fudge and no more than anybody could write without going there." Speaking of the belle arti, the ATHENEUM's Roman correspondent writes : Our countrymen are going on as usual well,-Eastlake and Severn Poor are busily employed in their respective departments. Wyatt, after eleven weeks' confinement from his accident, is recovering, and has just left his room. The admirers of his talent, and these are all who know him, will rejoice to see him once again in his studio. Gibson is engaged in executing a Flora in marble for Durbam; the model is exquisite. Eastlake was to become President of the Royal Academy in 1850. Severn, the friend of Keats and painter of several portraits of the poet, lived in Rome for another fifty years. Wyatt (not to be confused with the neo-Gothic architect of Ashridge and Fonthill Abbey) and Gibson had come to Rome eight or nine years earlier to work in Canova's studio, On the death of the master in 1822, they had transferred their allegiance to Thorwaldsen, who was at that period living and working in Italy. Gibson, it will be remembered, made experiments in coloured sculpture, justifying himself by reference to the practice of the Greeks. The c 1] M IT Science THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION " MEETING For T is quite in accordance with the traditions of the It is In the meeting which has just terminated, on the other hand, it is quite obvious, that the preoccupations of the general public have, in an exceptional degree, determined the subject and character of the most important addresses. The chief public preoccupations are, of course, the war and the position of labour, and much of the time of the British Association audiences was spent in listening to remarks on those two subjects. The shadow of these subjects lay so heavily on the meeting that pure science was somewhat obscured. Scientific discoveries of very great importance have been made during the war, but as they did not bear directly on the war, they did not receive the attention they would doubtless have received in more normal times. obvious that, if the war is to be the determining influence, pure science must suffer; the applications of science found useful in war must be given pride of place. It was fitting, therefore, that this year's President should be a distinguished engineer, able to speak with authority on such matters as sound-ranging devices and aeroplane design. The ingenuity displayed in some of the war-time inventions is indeed high, and it is gratifying to learn that British men of science" eventually produced better war material, chemicals and apparatus of all kinds for vanquishing the enemy, and the saving of our own men, than had been devised by the enemy during many years of preparation planned on the basis of a total disregard of treaties and the conventions of war." Moral sensibility is not a permanent handicap in scientific invention. The Government scheme for aiding scientific research is the direct outcome of the part played by science in the war. So powerful an auxiliary obviously deserves encouragement, and Sir Charles Parsons informs us that the Government has taken "a great experimental step towards the practical realization of Solomon's House The as prefigured by Lord Bacon in the New Atlantis. ' ”’ exploitation of natural resources will be carried on in a more scientific fashion than before-a very important matter for this country, as she is using up her coal much more rapidly than are most other countries. She can hope for but little from her water power as she possesses less than one per cent. of the total water-power of the world. These sources energy are not the only ones, however, that science may learn to deal with. Besides the possibility of tapping the enormous energy contained in the atom we may be able, by sinking very deep shafts, to make use of the energy stored in the lower strata of the earth. The prospects, so far as material progress is concerned, seem reasonably bright, and Sir Charles concludes on a note of optimism. of In the address by Sir Hugh Bell to the Section of Economic Science and Statistics, however, we have the other side an of the picture. The admirable mechanical devices by which millions of tons of metal were shot off in France arouse Sir Charles Parsons' admiration, but Sir Hugh Bell, passing through the scenes of this prodigious display, is reminded of the immense amount of wealth that has been destroyed. It is this that forms the key-note of his address; immense amount of wealth has been irrevocably destroyed. "No juggling with the balance-sheets of the nations of the world will get rid of the fact that many thousands of millions of wealth slowly accumulated in the generations which lived before August, 1914, have been dissipated." That being the case, how is the increased burden on the community to be distributed? Sir Hugh Bell has no complete answer to this question. It looks as if the present relations between Capital and Labour must be somewhat altered, but it is inadvisable to be hasty. The capitalist system is really a very good one, and it is very subtle and complex. Radical changes in this delicate. mechanism may well produce the gravest results. Matters are complicated by the fact that the workers are demanding higher wages and shorter hours. This demand, "rightly understood," is very proper, but it is difficult to see how it can be met without disaster. To think that salvation is to be found in State ownership is to be doomed to disappointment. Salvation, if it may be found, is to be found in increased production. If we are to accept Sir Hugh Bell's assumptions, the outlook is indeed gloomy; we can only hope that his conclusions are not the last word of science on this matter. The other sectional addresses were of more technical interest, although few of them were without reference to the war. Generally speaking, the influence of the war on this meeting of the British Association has not been altogether advantageous. It has emphasized subjects which are, scientifically speaking, of secondary importance, and it has disturbed that atmosphere of serenity which, to many of us, is one of the great attractions of a scientific meeting. Something of the violence of judgment and feeling, characteristic of war-time marred the detachment we like to attribute to scientific men. That they are human we have long known, but that they should be so indistinguishably human is, we confess, a disappointment. We expect them, in their professional capacity, to be a little inhuman, to be severe, remote, scientific. Only so have they any particular claim on our attention. That common part of their humanity which they share with the ordinary prosperous citizen holds no novelty for us. We are sufficiently familiar with what we may call "normal" reactions to the war from over four years of public speeches. Introduced into discourses on science, it sounds sometimes a little inappropriate and always a little dull. S. THE July number of the Journal of the British Science Guild (6d. net) contains, in addition to the usual reports, two important speeches. General Seely's speech is concerned, of course, with aviation problems. He lays great stress on the need of a method which will enable the aviator to determine his position to within a few miles, and expresses his confidence that such a method will shortly be invented. Sir J. J. Thomson's speech is of peculiar interest. After are " a few generalities about the importance of science to manufacturers he goes on." I do not know whether the ladies present have noticed that if you take a piece of woollen cloth in your hand and squeeze it, and then release it, all the creases come out. Take a piece of cotton material and squeeze it, the creases stay." He regards the cause of this difference as a problem of extraordinary interest and states that there millions in its solution. He thinks that a cotton spinner would get great pleasure in conducting this research, and he adds, with unconscious irony, but probably with great truth: " He would also get the reward the artist gets." The rest of his speech was devoted to pointing out the extraordinary ignorance of the General Staff at the War Office on all matters pertaining to science and that such ignorance is very costly to the nation. EDUCATIONAL NOTES FROM THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION IN his remarks before the British Association on The Function of Examinations in Education," Prof. Marcus Hartog outlined an ingenious defence that we do not remember to have met with before: "A man who studies to improve his mind' is liable to be assailed by the temptations to accept lower aims, obsessed by the jeers of his friends and family. But the pursuit of a University career gives his pursuit that businesslike character that cannot fail to impress Mrs. Grundy. Herein lies the use of the Examining University.' We must remark that this is probably true enough of the private student who meanwhile works industriously in his bank or insurance office; but should he make use of his degree to get a living, his salary will merely confirm the Philistines in their contempt. The awful thing is that the unfortunate B.Sc. too often wishes, in later life, that he had listened to the jeers of the Philistines. In the rest of his paper Prof. Hartog praised examinations as providing a training in precision of thought and expression. But, after all, the opponents of examinations do not deny that the system possesses any merit: they point out its numerous and serious defects. Sir Herbert E. Morgan emphasized the importance of education in business and the attractiveness of business to educated men. Business, he said, should be presented more attractively : the flag follows trade," &c. The great need of the day was increased production. Business was fascinating. There was a chance for every young man to place himself on a level with the merchant princes of to-day. Mr. F. S. Preston made the not unfamiliar demand that He asserted both reason and imagination should be educated. that literature should be studied, and somehow considered this identical with "linguistic studies." He thought there was a menace to education from the "Bolshevism" of fanatics, who would destroy the old because it is old. Mr. Sydney Maugham pleaded for a less specialized elementary education in physics and chemistry. He pointed out that these sciences have important bearings on biological studies, but that such aspects are ignored in the present teaching of those subjects. We think this is a fair plea. We are heartily in agreement with the idea that the interconnection of the sciences should be taught from the beginning. The Substance Sir Richard Gregory's valuable paper on and Method of Science Teaching" emphasized the need for a The weak broader and more general teaching of science. Limiting this analysis to the case of painting-which mutatis mutandis may be taken as representative of the other arts we find that these conditions fall into two groups. It may be taken as generally agreed that the aim of the artist is expression. But for the most part painters cannot paint for themselves alone; they have to work for a market. The power, extent and character of expression are therefore not only affected by the artist's mind and temperament (and especially by the power and quality of his vision), but depend on external conditions arising from the demand for works of art. Thus the effects of war upon art are partly psychological, and partly external and economic. Take the latter first. In every age war involves a diversion of human effort from artistic creation. Not only are men actually withdrawn from the practice of art, but the use of national resources for carrying on war diminishes the proportion and probably the absolute amount which can be expended on works of art. Not only does the artist in esse find his occupation gone, and the call made upon him to engage in work directly useful in war; but the creative energy of the artist in posse is directed into channels far remote from art. To some extent, the loss thus caused to the world is counterbalanced by a demand from the State for artistic ability to be used for warlike ends. The military mind has generally recognized the value of appeals through the eye and ear to the emotions; and when, as to-day, war is an affair not of kings and princes, but of nations, this value is increased. Hence during the last five years art has been extensively used for propaganda purposes. Cartoons have reinforced newspapers in telling the public what they ought to think, and in putting a national conception of truth before neutrals; posters by distinguished hands have been put forth to appeal, to advise, to instruct, and to command; and illustration has been used to teach the world at large what war is and how it must be organized. Every journal, hoarding and exhibition shows the extent to which artists have been tied to the wheels of the military machine; and in the case of camouflage an even more intimate use of art for the purpose of war has been achieved. points of the instruction are insufficient attention to the Prof. Gray added to the evidence recently given by Sir J. J. Another side to the State call for the services of artists is the demand for commemorative work on sentimental, propagandist or even on charitable grounds. This demand is supplemented by that of public bodies and private individuals, who ask for commemorative and illustrative work in proportion to the depth of their personal interest in the war. method But war leads not only to a diminution of national resources, but to a redistribution. Every war in history has led to the rise of a more or less uneducated plutocracy, which has profited by ability to supply the munitions of war. From this class comes a large part of the private demand for art during and after the war. Anxious to spend their money in the same way as their intellectual or social superiors, they display a cruder and less intelligent taste. Old masters have soared in price in proportion only to their authenticity, and irrespective of their quality; and in modern work the demand is for the pretty and banal, whose interest (if any) depends on association rather |