such an object as a hay-stack existed, unless the sun had lighted that hay-stack, Monet would have chosen another subject. It is not essential or important that Leonardo's Monna Lisa should exactly reproduce the effect of the model, but if no woman had ever breathed in this world the picture never could have been painted. Machen detects his ideal quality of ecstasy raised to the highest degree in Homer, Rabelais, and Cervantes, all men of action and wide experience. He points out, indeed, that one of the principal reasons The Pickwick Papers is not as great as the Odyssey is because Dickens was brought up in Camden Town. It was not carelessly then that Remy de Gourmont called Huysmans an eye, and his dictum that whatever is deeply thought is well written is certainly just. Havelock Ellis adds that whatever is deeply observed is well said. The artist in design, he continues to point out, is by the very nature of his work compelled to observe deeply, precisely, beautifully. He is never able to revolve in a vacuum, or flounder in a morass, or run after a mirage. So, when he takes up his pen, by training, by acquired instinct, he still follows with the new instrument, deeply, precisely, beautifully, the same mystery of nature.
The musician, whose art is the most mystic, the most profound, the most "ecstatic" of any, sim-
