precise degree of that person’s value to Art; that to some few, royal patrons presumably, being at an angle of forty-five degrees; while a common amateur of Art is acknowledged by one of five.  Where—­to continue the paraphrase of a pleasant observation upon Mr. George Brummell—­it is a mere question of recognising the fact that a certain person dwells on the same planet with Art “a slight relaxation of the features” is made to suffice.

So!  This profound bow is plainly meant for a particular tribute to one who wears the richest purple.  Lo!  He advances with unclasped hands.  Pleasure beams from his countenance.  Without such as she Art, and dealers, and galleries, and the recorded beauty of the world would perforce pass away.  This entertaining personage, who is the great flurry at art exhibitions, is of the novelists’ dowager Duchess type.  A short, obese, and jovial figure, or dried and withered but imperious distinction, as the case may be.  There is much crackling of fine garments, a brilliant display of lorgnette, and this penetrating and comprehensive royal critical dictum:  “Isn’t that interesting!  So full of feeling.”

Two outstanding features, you mark, of art exhibitions everywhere are here presented.  Is any one who doesn’t know what he is talking about at art exhibitions (and which of us does?) properly equipped for attendance there without this happy esoteric phrase “full of feeling”?  It is safe, or as safe as anything can be, to say about any picture.  It graphically indicates in the speaker delicate sensitivity and emotional responsiveness to Art.  And, most beneficently, it subtly evades anything like the trying ordeal of an analysis of a work of art.  It is, indeed, invaluable.

The other thing is this:  There is no place going which is so well adapted to the exhibition of handsome, fashionable, or eccentric eye-glasses as an art exhibition.  You observe there all that is newest and classy in glasses, and you are insistently invited to admiring study of the art of wearing queer glasses effectively, and of taking them off, letting them bound on their leash, doubling them up, opening them out, and putting them on with a gesture.

The complimentary type to the storied Duchess at art exhibitions is represented by yonder portly blood, in this case a replica of the late King Edward.  The fruitful spectacle of art exhibitions, I think, presents nothing which gives one a more gratifying sense of their dignity and of the imperial character of Art than the presence there of these patently highly solvent, ruddy joweled, admirably tailored, and impressively worldly looking connoisseurs of painting to be seen scrutinising the pictures at close range, in a near-sighted way, and rather grimly, as though somewhat sceptically appraising possibly dubious merchandise.