As a sculptor in clay Jean Carriès stands as high as Della Robbia; in details—in forming lips and cheeks—far higher than the latter; and, as a decorator, no one can be compared with him, not even Bernhard de Palissy—to mention a name by which his rank may be estimated. Carriès is not a man of to-day, and fashion lies far below the height on which he works. The wretched æsthetic-babbling coteries of the period cannot get hold of him, or make use of him for the senseless but furiously bellowed catchwords peculiar to the polemics of the day. He is not a modernist, not a classic, not an impressionist; he is not this, he is not that, but, he is, quite simply, himself. He works up what he has learnt in his own person; he invents his own, and always gives himself. He creates from his own soul, without looking to right or left. In him there is no school, no tendency, and no straining, but only feeling, personality, and the service of beauty. Yet it is through these great artistic natures, which belong to no time, that the line of development in art proceeds, and not through the pitiful _homunculi_, whom Faust caricatures artificially engender in advertisement-retorts. XVI WORKS OF ART AND ART CRITICISMS During the last years the relation of public opinion to works of art has been repeatedly discussed, and on each occasion with great warmth. The discussion, in the main, is concerned with two questions which are independent even if they are connected with each other, viz.: Has the public a right to judge a work of art, or must it renounce its own opinion and simply bow before the verdict of specialists? Have not all, or, at any rate, many, works of art that have subsequently gained undisputed recognition by the world, been strongly opposed and rashly rejected on their first appearance in public? In 1899 intellectual Berlin was excited about a pertinent question. Professor Franz Stuck, the Munich painter, had obtained a commission for a wall-painting for the German House of Parliament. When the artist sent in his sketch, there came a shriek of most unpleasant astonishment from the judging committee of the Reichstag, and a member, Dr Lieber, expressed in public session, in very strong language, his absolutely unmixed feelings in respect of the work. The Munich friends of the insulted artist, to their credit, made common cause for him. They published an armour-clad protest, in which they characterised the members as “laymen unable to judge,” and reproached them with impertinence because they “thought they understood everything better than learned specialists did.” I expressed my views then in the _Deutsche Revue_ of this opposition between specialists and laymen in plastic art, and I ask permission to repeat here in brief the essential part of my arguments.