Nevertheless, if one has gone for some time through a wood full of burrs, some of them are bound to stick. I am afraid that I have left more such burrs in one part and another of my book, than the kind of reader whom I alone wish to please will perhaps put up with. Fortunately, this kind of reader is the best-natured critic in the world, and is long suffering of a good deal that the more consciously scientific will not tolerate; I wish, however, that I had not used such expressions as “centres of thought and action” quite so often. As for the kind of inaccuracy already alluded to, my reader will not, I take it, as a general rule, know, or wish to know, much more about science than I do, sometimes perhaps even less; so that he and I shall commonly be wrong in the same places, and our two wrongs will make a sufficiently satisfactory right for practical purposes. Of course, if I were a specialist writing a treatise or primer on such and such a point of detail, I admit that scientific accuracy would be _de rigueur_; but I have been trying to paint a picture rather than to make a diagram, and I claim the painter’s license “_quidlibet audendi_.” I have done my utmost to give the spirit of my subject, but if the letter interfered with the spirit, I have sacrificed it without remorse. May not what is commonly called a scientific subject have artistic value which it is a pity to neglect? But if a subject is to be treated artistically—that is to say, with a desire to consider not only the facts, but the way in which the reader will feel concerning those facts, and the way in which he will wish to see them rendered, thus making his mind a factor of the intention, over and above the subject itself—then the writer must not be denied a painter’s license. If one is painting a hillside at a sufficient distance, and cannot see whether it is covered with chestnut-trees or walnuts, one is not bound to go across the valley to see. If one is painting a city, it is not necessary that one should know the names of the streets. If a house or tree stands inconveniently for one’s purpose, it must go without more ado; if two important features, neither of which can be left out, want a little bringing together or separating before the spirit of the place can be well given, they must be brought together, or separated. Which is a more truthful view, of Shrewsbury, for example, from a spot where St. Alkmund’s spire is in parallax with St. Mary’s—a view which should give only the one spire which can be seen, or one which should give them both, although the one is hidden? There would be, I take it, more representation in the misrepresentation than in the representation—“the half would be greater than the whole,” unless, that is to say, one expressly told the spectator that St. Alkmund’s spire was hidden behind St. Mary’s—a sort of explanation which seldom adds to the poetical value of any work of art.