CRITICISM, though not always agreeable, is always wholesome when it is well- informed and judicial, and he is wise who tries to profit by it however distasteful the attempt. In this spirit we awaited the criticism of our first number; we had had a perfectly clear conception of our aims, and it will be admitted that our statement of them was not wanting in frankness; we had done our best to embody them in concrete form; to what extent these aims would be appreciated, and how their concrete expression would be received we could not tell. We can now record a reception far more encouraging than we had dared to hope, a reception which leads us to believe that pessimists were wrong, and that there is room in Great Britain for a periodical devoted to the serious study of art. 

Indeed we cannot but recognize that press and public have been more kind to us than we can pretend to deserve. We are conscious yet of many shortcomings, of much that has to be done before our ideal is attained, and we find in our own achievement more to criticize than has been found by most of our critics, nor will we allow their generous appreciations to tempt us to the belief that we have reached finality. But we may find encouragement in the under- standing of our aims that has been shown in the great majority of published opinions, and in the very general recognition of the need and the place for a periodical with just these aims. What is done already is so good of its kind that an attempt to surpass it in its own sphere would be without justification. Our justification is that we are attempting what is not done already by an English periodical, and this has been almost universally recognized. 

Not quite universal, of course, has been the appreciation of which we have spoken. Here and there was shown that curious irritation at scholarship, that strange intolerance of anything not immediately intelligible to the half-educated, which is perhaps peculiar to this country; but the great rarity of this attitude is in itself a proof of the increase among us of artistic knowledge and appreciation. Such criticism we are unable to meet because there is no common ground on which the meeting can take place. To us the history of artistic development is no mere bagatelle, and with the points of scholarship-minute as they may sometimes seem-which are essential to its elucidation we are and must be greatly concerned. Those who resent the treatment of such points we cannot satisfy. But we would ask them to believe that, even if they do not grasp the arguments by which certain conclusions are arrived at, it cannot be assumed that those conclusions are mere airy guesswork. The trained expert in matters of art is not groping in the dark, and though his attributions may seem to the untrained mind merely arbitrary, they are, in fact, inductions from observed phenomena, no more infallible than other inductions, but no more untrustworthy than the inductions of scientific observers from the phenomena with which they are concerned. 

Another criticism which has been made in one or two places comes in a different category; we mean the complaint that, since we are chiefly concerned with ancient art, our scope is narrow. Wide enough, it seems to us, is the scope afforded by a study which includes Praxiteles and Sir Joshua Reynolds. But we would assure those of our friends who have urged this point that we do not underrate the importance of contemporary art, nor, as we have expressly said, do we intend to ignore it. In a sense, it is true, as one writer said, that the art of the present is the most important, but to think that it is of greater intrinsic value than the art of the past seems to us impossible; would that it were otherwise. Moreover, modern art is talked and written about perhaps too much already with very little practical result. The study of ancient art has a practical end, namely, the improvement of modern art, and is, in our opinion, the only means by which that end can be attained. Nothing has rejoiced us more than the approval given to our remarks last month on this point, not only by the great majority of our critics in the press, but also by many artists who recognize our diagnosis of the condition of modern art as being not an at- tack on themselves, but the frank statement of a painful truth. What is wrong? What has brought about the state of things which we deplore, the sameness with its natural re- action of self-conscious originality? Surely it is that the chain of orderly development was broken, and it seems impossible to take up the links. We have been suffering for a century from an outbreak of individualism in art, which has gradually destroyed individuality or converted it into eccentricity. Of cleverness we have enough and to spare, but cleverness is not enough; nay, more, genius itself is not enough. Genius, no doubt, arises independently of conditions and environment, but conditions and environment are important factors in deter- mining whether genius has its full effect or not. Our present conditions are such that a genius may become almost a curse instead of a blessing; his influence is often pernicious instead of being healthy; his followers imitate and exaggerate his faults, and his admirers base their admiration not on the merits which make him an artist, but on the eccentricities in spite of which he is one. The deadly cant of anarchism in art has been preached with fatal effect, and has had its inevitable results-sameness on the one hand and wild eccentricity on the other. The cult of the ugly has led by a natural reaction to the cult of the pretty, and between the two beauty falls to the ground, and art with it. 

There is no remedy save that of going back to first principles by the study of works of art produced when the progress of art was still an orderly evolution and not a succession of disconnected jumps. To that study we shall welcome the contributions of all who have anything to say. Our pages will be open to correspondence on the subjects dealt with in the magazine, and we shall welcome opinion of every kind provided it is of real interest and value and is expressed with a due regard to the courtesies of debate. THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE is the organ of no clique or coterie, and we shall close our pages to no qualified writer; but it is our determination to exclude personalities on the one hand and self-advertisement on the other. ? A word in conclusion on another subject. It will be seen that we begin this month a series of illustrations of various fine works of art with descriptive notes. Some of these belong to private collectors, others are in the possession of dealers of repute. We make no apology for including the latter; some of the finest works of art that find their way to London pass through the hands of the great dealers, often on their way to America, or Berlin, or Amsterdam. As the National Collections now buy very little, since the English Government will find no money for artistic purposes, lovers of art have had for the most part no opportunity of becoming acquainted with works of great interest and importance which pass through London, and we owe it to the courtesy of those through whose hands they pass that we are now able give such an opportunity. Those who write on such works of art do not always pretend to know all about them, and will not always have the time and opportunity find out. In the case of pictures particularly it will not be always possible to attempt attributions, and they will be introduced many cases merely for the sake of discussion and further research. Not the least of the aims that the founders of THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE have set before them is that of providing an arena for the discussion of artistic problems and a medium for the publication of the results of research. It is our earnest hope that it will so be used.