In the case of Turner the discrepancy is not only of space, however. In diction, as well, all relative values are thrown to the winds. In the criticism of Turner we find English patriotism at its high-water mark. We read that “the range of his powers was so vast that he covered the whole field of nature and united in his own person the classical and naturalistic schools.” Even this palpable overstatement could be forgiven, since it has a basis of truth, if a little further we did not discover that Turner’s _Crossing the Brook_ in the London National Academy is “probably the most perfect landscape in the world.” In this final and irrevocable judgment is manifest the supreme insular egotism which characterizes nearly all the art articles in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. This criticism, to take merely one example, means that _Crossing the Brook_ is more perfect than Rubens’s _Landscape with Château de Stein_! But the Encyclopædia’s summary of Turner’s genius surpasses in flamboyant chauvinism anything which I have yet seen in print. It is said that, despite any exception we may take to his pictures, “there will still remain a body of work which for extent, variety, truth and artistic taste is like the British fleet among the navies of the world.” Here patriotic fervor has entirely swallowed all restraint. Over a page is devoted to Constable, in which we are informed that his “vivid tones and fresh color are grafted upon the formulæ of Claude and Rubens.” This type of criticism is not rare. One frequently finds second-rate English artists compared not unfavorably with the great artists of other nations; and it would seem that the English painters add a little touch of their own, the imputation being that they not seldom improve upon their models. Thus Constable adds “vivid tones and fresh colors” to Rubens’s formula. Another instance of this kind is to be found in the case of Alfred Stevens, the British sculptor, not the Belgian painter. (The latter, by the way, though more important and better-known, receives less space than the Englishman.) The vigorous strength of his groups “recalls the style of Michelangelo, but Stevens’s work throughout is original and has a character of its own.” I do not deny that Stevens imitated Michelangelo, but, where English artists are concerned, these relationships are indicated in deceptive phraseology. In the case of French artists, whose biographies are sometimes written by unbiased critics, the truth is not hidden in dictional suavities. Imitation is not made a virtue.