“It’s a complicated matter.  The representative English bourgeois is a hypocrite in essence, but is perfectly serious in his judgment of the man next door; and the latter characteristic has more weight than the former in determining his life.  Puritanism has aided the material progress of England; but its effect on art!  But for it, we should have a school of painters corresponding in greatness to the Elizabethan dramatists.  Depend upon it, the democracy will continue to be Puritan.  Every picture, every book, will be tried by the same imbecile test Enforcement of Puritan morality will be one of the ways in which the mob, come to power, will revenge itself on those who still remain its superiors.”

Marsh was not altogether pleased at finding his facile eloquence outdone.  In comparing himself with Elgar, he was conscious of but weakly representing the tendencies which were a passionate force in this man with the singularly fine head, with such a glow of wild life about him.  He abandoned the abstract argument, and struck a personal note.

“However it may be in the future, I grant you the artist has at present no scope save in one direction.  For my own part, I have fallen back on landscape.  Let those who will, paint Miss Wilhelmina in the nursery, with an interesting doll of her own size; or a member of Parliament rising to deliver a great speech on the liquor traffic; or Mrs. What-do-you-call-her, lecturing on woman’s rights.  These are the subjects our time affords.”

Mallard eyed with fresh curiosity the gentleman who had “fallen back on landscape.”

“What did you formerly aim at?” he inquired, with a sort of suave gruffness.

“Things which were hopelessly out of the question.  I worked for a long time at a ‘Death of Messalina.’  That was in Rome.  I had a splendid inspiration for Messalina’s face.  But my hand was paralyzed when I thought of the idiotic comments such a picture would occasion in England.  One fellow would say I had searched through history in a prurient spirit for something sensational; another, that I read a moral lesson of terrible significance; and so on.”

“A grand subject, decidedly!” exclaimed Elgar, with genuine enthusiasm, which restored Marsh to his own good opinion.  “Go on with it!  Bid the fools be hanged!  Have you your studies here?”

“Unfortunately not.  They are in Rome.”

Mallard delivered himself of a blunt opinion.

“That is no subject for a picture.  Use it for literature, if you like.”

The inevitable discussion began, the discussion so familiar nowadays, and which would have sounded so odd to the English painters who were wont to call themselves “historical,” Where is the line between subjects for the easel and subjects for the desk?  What distinguishes the art of the illustrator from the art of the artist?