Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-headed stuff I ever saw on a human stage that thing last night--as far as the story and acting went--and of all the affected, sapless, soul-less, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tuneless, scrannelpipiest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest as far as its sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember, in my life by the stopping of any sound, not excepting railroad whistles, as I was by the cessation of the cobbler’s bellowing; even the serenader’s caricatured twangle was a rest after. As for the great “Lied,” I never made out where it began or where it ended except by the fellow’s coming off the horse block. From which the inference is not unwarranted that Wagner did not please Ruskin! * * * * * Opposed to all movements in art and life is the _academic_ mind, fed on learning, steeped in tradition, hence conservative. The term is not here used in a reproachful sense; on the contrary, the philosopher lays stress upon the value of the academic in progress; it is the element that preserves; it is the mass upon which humanity rests; it is the old and stable; it is the past upon which the future is built; it is the essential groundwork of new thought and new effort. * * * * * The life of the individual passes from the enthusiasms, the radicalisms of youth to the serene and self-satisfied outlook of old age which instinctively opposes novelty and change--the academic attitude. Youth makes friends with every chance acquaintance, age shuns the strange. We are all Impressionists and Futurists at some times in our lives, but we tend to petrify. Sclerosis of the _arteries_ is bad, but nothing compared with sclerosis of the _emotions_. We not only tend to become petrified as we grow older, but even in our youth we have our petrified sides, our hard spots. However progressive we may be in certain directions we are sure to be stubbornly conservative in others. The man who laughs at a cubist picture may be a cubist--that is, an innovator--in his profession or business. The man who is a conservative in religion may be a radical in politics, and _vice versa_. As a matter of fact most of the followers of Lloyd George in England are the greatest sticklers for the inerrancy and the literal interpretation of the Scriptures, while most of the hide-bound conservatives are exceedingly tolerant toward “modernism” and “higher criticism” in the church.