In the throngs that flocked to the opening of the Royal Academy, waiting hours before the doors were opened, fighting and struggling for a foothold on the stairs, eager to be the first to see, though there were weeks of opportunities ahead--in the rare recurrence through the hum of the vast criticising crowd of a word of technical judgment or sober artistic criticism--it was easy to recognize the same spirit that confuses morality with chair-legs, that finds a knocker more "sincere" and "right" than a door-bell, that insists as upon a vital necessity that the heads of all nails should be visible and that all lines should be straight, and would as soon have a shadow on its conscience as in the pattern of wall-paper. Nowhere was decorative art so non-existent a few years ago as in England--nowhere is it so universally dwelt upon to-day. Yet it is easy to see how entirely the revival is a child of theory and books and teachers and rules--how little owing to a spontaneous development of art-instinct in the people, a spontaneous desire for more beauty in their surroundings, a spontaneous knowledge of how it is best to be obtained. The literary and un-painterlike--if I may use such an awkward term--nature of English art is shown perhaps more forcibly in its critics than in artists or public. One is especially struck in reading criticisms of whatever grade with the excessive prominence given to the artist's personality. The work of this year is judged not so much by its excellence as by comparison with the work of last year. A----'s pictures, and B----'s and C----'s and D----'s, are interesting and valuable mainly as showing A----'s improvement, or B----'s falling off, or C----'s unexpected change of theme, or D----'s fine mind and delicate sensibilities.