erect individual tastes and distastes into articles of faith, that we are confidently told that such a writer or such a form of art is hopelessly antiquated, and that such another is accepted by the right-minded. But this dogmatism is invariably an expression of individual taste, and has no real substance and no permanence. The change cannot but be salutary if, as we believe, it is in the main an effect of the expansion of the area of knowledge. The class of intelligent readers is now so greatly enlarged that the legislation of academies and the verdict of coteries reach comparatively but a little way; readers think for themselves more than they did of old; and if the public taste is less disciplined than formerly, it is in less danger of being biassed in one direction. It may be added that the armistice between the classic and romantic schools, consequent upon the proved inability of each to subdue the other, has demonstrated the impossibility of any infallible æsthetic criterion. Men disputed what this criterion might be, and different conceptions of it prevailed in different ages, but the existence of some definite standard entitled to exact conformity was questioned by none. Now it is generally recognised that men are born classicists or romanticists, as they have been said to be born Platonists or Aristotelians, and that the right course for every author is to cultivate his powers in whatsoever direction Nature has assigned to them, and for every reader to strive to appreciate excellence whencesoever it comes. The result is life, spirit, energy, but a commotion as of tossing billows, which may or may not eventually settle down into the calm of an accepted theory of art.
We cannot speak in Italy more than elsewhere of any
