The German Emperor, who loves his personal authority to be
felt in every domain, has been lecturing the artistic world of Berlin upon the just limits of originality. He does not like wild departures from the great traditions of art. It is, he said while opening the Emperor Frederick Museum on the 18th inst., in the study of the great old masters that the understanding of art is to he acquired. " The right of genius to draw upon stores of unknown and hidden depths cannot be denied, but it is equally impossible to admit that young artists can be right when they imagine that they can divorce themselves from all tradition and from every school." The words are sensible enough in themselves, but they will deepen the impression in Germany already created by previous utterances that the Court, while it appreciates art, wishes it to be conventional, and will not welcome even genius if it shows a disposition to depart from fixed rules. There must in Prussia be discipline even in painting pictures. One would like a speech from the Emperor on the way the great masters of the Renaissance came into being. Their great- ness consisted in part in departure from all that had gone before them.
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