OPERATION OF VIRILE SENTIMENT 165 



roguery will inevitably impose upon their dupes and 

 their countrymen. 



I wish every honest social reformer would for once 

 in his Hfe go out alone in an open sailing 

 boat, when the wind is blowing a gale and is against 

 a Spring-tide at half level, and the coast is on his lee. 

 He would, if he came back safely, have more respect 

 for those processes of Nature which in his optimistic 

 propaganda on terra firma he so completely ignores. 

 But if he has no other equipment than noble inten- 

 tions and laudable aspirations, he had better remain 

 on the shore until he has substituted for them a stern 

 determination to face the waves, winds, tides, and 

 rocks as realities from which there is no escape. 



But Dr. Cobbett is mistaken in believing that there 

 are no " Sky Blue Philanthropists." They are every- 

 where. Buskin was among them. In the chapter 

 on the " Deteriorative Power of Conventional Art " 

 in " The Two Paths," he contrasted the influence of 

 the " Gilded Temples " of Indian cities upon Indian 

 Art, and of the Craig Ellachie at the western foot 

 of the Grampians upon the Scotch character. 

 "The Art of India," he wrote: "never represents 

 a natural fact. Over the whole spectacle 

 of creation the Indian people have thrown a veil in 

 which there is no rent. For them no star peeps 

 through the blanket of the dark — for them neither 

 their heaven shines nor their mountains rise — for 

 them the flowers do not blossom — for them the 

 creatures of field and forest do not live. They lie 

 bound in the dungeon of their own corruption, en- 



