must conform. It is hard to say where the task of the
aesthetician ends, and that of the critic begins; and for
the present, at least, they must often be commingled. But
they are defined by their purposes: the end and aim of one
is a system of principles; of the other, the disposal of a
given work with reference to those principles; and when the
science of aesthetics shall have taken shape, criticism will
confine itself to the analysis of the work into its aesthetic
elements, to the explanation (by means of the laws already
formulated) of its especial power in the realm of beauty,
and to the judgment of its comparative aesthetic value.

The other forms of critical activity will then find their
true place as preliminaries or supplements to the essential
function of criticism. The study of historical conditions,
of authors' personal relations, of the literary "moment,"
will be means to show the work of art "as in itself it really
is." Shall we then say that the method of appreciation, being
an unusually exhaustive presentment of the object as in itself
it really is, is therefore an indispensable preparation for
the critical judgment? The modern appreciator, after the
model limned by Professor Gates, was to strive to get, as it
were, the aerial perspective of a masterpiece,--to present it
as it looks across the blue depths of the years. This is
without doubt a fascinating study; but it may be questioned
if it does not darken the more important issue. For it is
not the object as in itself it really is that we at last
behold, but the object disguised in new and strange trappings.
Such appreciation is to aesthetic criticism as the sentimental
to the naive poet in Schiller's famous antithesis. The virtue