There is nothing musty about the moderns, their canvases are so alive _they scream_. As compared with the subdued tones of an academic exhibition a modern seems like a babel of discordant sounds, but the confusion is more apparent than real. By going day after day one gets accustomed to the newness, the freshness, the strangeness of it all and begins to understand and appreciate the one big, dominant note--_vitality_. * * * * * Then, too, when we say the _first_--and last for most people--impression is one of ugliness, we must not forget [Illustration: DERAIN Forest at Martigues ] that our appreciations are primarily the result of environment and habit, and only secondarily, and with comparatively few, the result of intelligent discipline. We like what we are accustomed to and dislike what we are not accustomed to. Few take the pains to discipline their likes and dislikes. * * * * * Seventy years ago public and critics thought Turner ugly in the extreme. Sixty years ago public and critics thought Millet ugly in the extreme. Fifty years ago public and critics thought Manet ugly in the extreme. Forty years ago public and critics thought Monet ugly in the extreme. Thirty years ago public and critics thought Cézanne ugly in the extreme. Twenty years ago public and critics thought Gauguin ugly in the extreme. Ten years ago public and critics thought VanGogh ugly in the extreme. Today public and critics think the Cubists and nearly all the new men ugly in the extreme. Each decade has its men in art, music, science, literature whose works at first seem ugly, only to win out in the long run. Hence the danger in pronouncing this or that painting ugly; it may seem grotesque and hideous today; thirty years hence it may command thousands from men and museums eager to possess it. That has been the history of many great paintings. * * * * * Still we do have our notions regarding the ugly and the beautiful, and while our notions change and develop year by year they naturally control at each given moment; that is, we cannot say we _think_ a picture or a piece of music is beautiful today because the chances are we will think it beautiful a dozen years hence, any more than we can say we like olives on first tasting them, simply because most people come to like them after a time. To the London public in 1840 the pictures of Turner were absurd. To the Paris public in 1874 the pictures of the Impressionists were ridiculous. To the New York public in 1913 the pictures of the Cubists were grotesque. These several publics were not to blame; they could not help their impressions. They had been brought up on very different picture-food and did not like the taste of the new.