This hypothetical volume is a fair parallel of an annual exhibition of paintings. In such an exhibition the number of works of art, the true, inevitable expression of a new message, is relatively small. The most celebrated and most popular painters are not necessarily by that fact great artists, or indeed artists at all. Contemporary judgment is notoriously liable to go astray. The gods of one generation are often the laughing stock of the next; the idols of the fathers are torn down and trampled under foot by the children. Some spirits there have been of liberal promise who have not been able to withstand the demands made upon them by early popular approval. Such is the struggle and soul's tragedy which is studied convincingly in Mr. Zangwill's novel, "The Master." No assault on the artist's integrity is so insidious as immediate favor, which in its turn begets the fatal desire to please. To the "successful" painters, however, are for the most part accorded the places of honor on academy walls. The canvases of these men are seen first by the visitor; but they are not all. There are other pictures which promise neither better nor worse. Here are paintings of merit, good in color and good in drawing, but empty of any meaning. Scattered through the exhibition are the works of a group of able men, imitating themselves, each trying to outdo the others by a display of cleverness in solving some "painter's problem" or by some startling effect of subject or handling. But it is a sad day for any artist when he ceases to find his impulse and inspiration either in his own spirit or in nature, and when he looks to his fellow craftsmen for the motive of his work. Again, there are pictures by men who, equipped with adequate technical skill, have caught the manner of a master, and mistaking the manner for the message it was simply intended to express, they degrade it into a mannerism and turn out a product which people do not distinguish from the authentic utterances of the master. The artist is a seer and prophet, the channel of divine influences: the individual painter, sculptor, writer, is a very human being. As he looks over these walls, clamorous of the commonplace and the commercial, the seeker after what is good and true in art realizes how very few of these pictures have been rendered in the spirit of love and joy. The painter has one eye on his object and one eye on the public; and too often, as a distinguished actor once said of the stage manager whose vision is divided between art and the box office, the painter is a one-eyed man.