public activities, derive ultimately from his initiative.  It is he who asserts the continuity of art and illustrates its dignity.  The stewardship of art is manifold, but no one has a clearer right to that honourable title.  “Private vices, public virtues,” I hear a cynical reader murmur.  So be it.  I am ready to stand with the latitudinarian Mandeville.  The view makes for charity.  I only plead that he who covets his neighbour’s tea-jar—­I assume a desirable one, say, in old brown Kioto—­shall be judged less harshly than he who covets his neighbour’s ox.