on any work of mine. How then their opinion of it can be matter of public knowledge, or on what ground the damning charge of "mutual admiration" can be sustained, it passes the modest range of my weak imagination to conceive. Nor can it figure to itself anything more pitiful and despicable than a society of authors, artists, or critics held together by a contract for the exchange of reciprocal flattery, except a society of the same kind whose bond of union should be a compact of detraction, a confederacy of malignities, an alliance for the defamation of men more honoured than its members. On the other hand, it may be reasonably assumed, or at least it may plausibly be alleged, that a writer whose interest or whose admiration is confined to the works of a single school or the effects of a particular style in art can claim no higher place or worthier office than that of herald or interpreter to a special community of workmen. If, however, my critical writing should be found liable to this charge, it will at least be admitted that the circle which confines my interest and limits my admiration is a tolerably wide one. I have not unfrequently found myself accused of lax and undiscriminating indulgence in too catholic and uncritical a taste, too wide and erratic a range of inconsistent sympathies, by men whose ways of work lay so far apart that they seemed to me as unable to estimate each other aright as I to withhold from the work of either the tribute of my thanks. It is impossible, I have been told, that any man of fair culture and intelligence can sincerely and equally admire at the same time the leaders or the followers of such
