rallied to it all the youthful. The moral principle of Impressionism has
been absolutely logical and sane, and that is why nothing has been able
to prevent its triumph.

Technically Impressionism has brought a complete renewal of pictorial
vision, substituting the beauty of character for the beauty of
proportions and finding adequate expression for the ideas and feelings
of its time, which constitutes the secret of all beautiful works. It has
taken up again a tradition and added to it a contemporary page. It will
have to be thanked for an important series of observations as regards
the analysis of light, and for an absolutely original conception of
drawing. Some years have been wasted by painters of little worth in
imitating it, and the Salons, formerly encumbered with academic
_pastiches_, have been encumbered with Impressionist _pastiches_. It
would be unfair to blame the Impressionists for it. They have shown by
their very career that they hated teaching and would never pretend to
teach. Impressionism is based upon irrefutable optic laws, but it is
neither a style, nor a method, likely ever to become a formula in its
turn. One may call upon this art for examples, but not for receipts. On
the contrary, its best teaching has been to encourage artists to become
absolutely independent and to search ardently for their own
individuality. It marks the decline of the School, and will not create a
new one which would soon become as fastidious as the other. It will only
appear, to those who will thoroughly understand it, as a precious
repertory of notes, and the young generation honours it intelligently by
not imitating it with servility.

Not that it is without its faults! It has been said, to belittle it,
that it only had the value of an interesting attempt, having only been
able to indicate some excellent intentions, without creating anything