Conservative's Consolations
ism. They were not doctrinaires. The peace they disturbed was only the peace of immobility. But they were drunk with new wine. Their strength lay in their courage and their candour; their weakness in the not unnatural assumption that they were expressing the finalities of art.
Defenders they had in plenty. No pioneer can escape from the hardship of vindication. Years before, Baudelaire had felt it incumbent upon himself, as a professional mutineer, to support the "fearless innovations" of Manet. Zola, always on the lookout for somebody to attack or to defend, was equally enthusiastic and equally choleric. Loud disputation rent the air while the world sped on its way, and lesser artists discovered, to their joy, what a facile thing it was to produce nerve-racking novelties. In 1892, John La Farge, wandering disconsolately through the exhibitions of Paris, wondered if there
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