“My glass is not large, but I drink from my glass,” said Alfred de Musset.  Very well! let each one drink from his glass, but observe! it is not necessary that in the true artist all should be individual and peculiar.  It is necessary only that there should exist a degree of individuality, something novel, a distinguishing tone and an artistic physiognomy peculiarly his own.  Servile imitations, plagiarism, stupid adaptations, put to death all art and all poetry.  In literature particularly is such decline most easy.

Hoping that, from what has been said, you have been led more fully to appreciate the advantage of seeing all of the branches of intellectual culture led out of the ruts of routine, away from plagiarism and from disorder and anarchy, one word upon the most distasteful and effectual blight to which art is subject—­the loss of naturalness, viz., affectation.  Can anything be more irritating than an affected actor or singer, caterers to perverted tastes?

In sculpture what is more displeasing than a distorted figure, which aimed at grace and is become a caricature?  Affectation is in the arts the equivalant of sophistry in logic, of the false in morals, of hypocrisy in religion.  It is not extravagant to assume that affectation, being a falsity, an active lie, is a torture to the spirit which perceives it, and a wrong to the honest souls who endure it.  It should be, therefore, for twofold cause, banished without pity from the realm of aesthetics.  Why should the natural, which is the expression of truth, have so great an attraction if affectation—­its enemy and incumbrance—­aroused not our impatience or disdain?

How is it that in children of all classes we find grace, ravishing and inimitable?  It is because in them the accord is perfect between the look, the smile, the gesture and the impression within, of which they are the interpreters—­the adequate signs, as Delsarte would say—­the perfidious flexibility of words never interposing to alter the harmony.

True grace in adults is not that which is studied, nor that which is artistically copied from a badly-chosen type.  Grace is born of itself, the natural fruit of the culture of the mind, of elevated thoughts and noble sentiments.  It is a combination of excellences which come unconsciously to some privileged beings.  To imitate beautiful effects in nature, to surprise their expressions, after having observed and established the relation of cause to effect,—­this is the end to which the discovery of Delsarte would lead us.

As it is difficult for each to find ready at his command the elements for such research, how can we overestimate the great value of establishing schools in which the instruction of students of the great art shall be guided in accordance with the established laws of aesthetics?  The time of greatest necessity is the immediate present, since the voice of the people cries loudly through the press, “Art is decaying and will surely die!”