This is not the painter's art of painting. In minds like that of Mr. Ruskin, the destiny thus given to painting would be certainly one of the noblest and most useful of functions, but it has the fault of being impossible. No more could music, while agitating my nerves according to the laws of harmony, teach me at the same time as from the chair of a professor. No, never, however shocking it may sound in or out of studios, never has truth in the ordinary sense of the word been the end of art. The value of a painting as a means of making us know the nature of realities shall have nothing in common with its value as a work of art. Truth is not the pictorial essence of a painting; it is, on the contrary, the manner or means of the painting's addressing ordinary intelligence; all the general powers that the artist has in common with other men, but which faculties and powers do not constitute his artistic side, that part of himself which he tries to please, to represent, to disengage, to assert in his painting. He may, of course, because his profession is partly a profession or art of sight, teach how to see—how to see better and farther and more delicately; but this is only incidental, and is good so far as it does not injure or detract from his own special duty. Of course he should not shock or annoy the most intelligent part of our intelligence, so that our other instincts that meet his may not be troubled in their peaceful enjoyment. Therefore, according to time and place, in one way for the mediæval mind, in another for the Oriental, in another for us of to-day, it is advisable that he conform somewhat to the general knowledge that composes the vague ideas of a public; that he do not contradict too squarely scientific exactness that is fairly familiar. But nothing can be falser than to measure his merit by the instruction he gives us. In the first place, if what he does is a lesson of observation, the effort to understand it is so much to detract from the spectator's emotion. Secondly, if a painter wishes to teach he will no longer be carried away by his special emotions, the one thing in which he is stronger than we. He cannot, even if he wishes—and this will explain the cause of certain blunders that have astonished us. It is for the scientific, the religious mind to remove our ignorances and correct our moral defects; it is not the duty of the artistic mind. No more than when I am dead and have found the Reality, now vaguely seen in this world of appearances, should I expect of the divine who may preach my funeral sermon to try to decide what may have been my errors in the technique of the art of painting.