[Illustration: MODERN ÆSTHETICS (Ineffable Youth goes into ecstasies over an extremely Old Master--say, Fra Porcinello Babaragianno, A.D. 1266-1281?) MATTER-OF-FACT PARTY: "But it's such a repulsive _subject_!" INEFFABLE YOUTH: "'Subject' in art is of no moment! The _Picktchah_ is beautiful!" MATTER-OF-FACT PARTY: "But you'll own the _Drawing's_ vile, and the _Colour's_ beastly!" INEFFABLE YOUTH: "I'm Cullah-blind, and don't p'ofess to understand D'awing! The _Picktchah_ is beautiful!" MATTER-OF-FACT PARTY (_getting warm_): "But it's all out of _Perspective_, hang it, and so abominably _untrue to Nature_!" INEFFABLE YOUTH: "I don't care about Naytchah, and hate Perspective. The _Picktchah_ is _most_ beautiful!" MATTER-OF-FACT PARTY (_losing all self-control_): "But, dash it all, man, where the _dickens_ is the _beauty_, then?" INEFFABLE YOUTH (_quietly_): "In the Picktchah!" _Total defeat of Matter-of-fact Party._] It is true that _Punch_ makes some reservations in his "Moral":-- Critics are full of "cussedness," omniscience sometimes slips, And even triune Oracles may chance to miss their tips. But his sympathies undoubtedly remain with the critics, and he virtually identifies himself with Philistia in the plea of the Philistine in the following year:-- Take away all your adornments æsthetical, Plates of blue china and bits of sage green, Though you may call me a monster heretical, I can't consider them fit to be seen. Etchings and paintings I loathe and abominate, Grimly I smile at the name of Burne-Jones, Hating his pictures where big chins predominate-- Over lean figures with angular bones. Buy me what grinning stage rustics call "farniture," Such as was used by our fathers of old; Take away all your nonsensical garniture, Tapestry curtains and borders of gold, Give me the ancient and solid mahogany, Mine be the board that will need no repairs, Don't let me see, as I sit at my grog, any Chippendale tables or spindle-legged chairs. Hang up a vivid vermilion wall-paper, Covered with roses of gorgeous hue, Matching a varnished and beautiful hall-paper, Looking like marble so polished and new. Carpets should all show a floral variety, Wreaths intermingling of yellow and red; So, when it enters my home, will Society Say, here's a house whence æsthetics have fled. [Sidenote: _Belabouring Burne-Jones_] The "Lay of the Private View" at the Grosvenor Gallery in May, 1881, forms a useful supplement to Gilbert and Sullivan's _Patience_, produced a fortnight before the verses appeared:--