"Sir Benjamin, Isabel and I leave town on the 10th, and we shall be so pleased to see you if you will run down to Farley Castle on the following Saturday, and spend the Sunday with us.
"Yours very truly,
"CAROLINE FARLEY."
When Paul arrived at Farley Castle on that blissful and broiling Saturday afternoon, he found a distinguished company drinking tea upon the lawn. The Esdailes were there, with Violet; and there was a Peer and a Cabinet Minister; also Lord Robert Thistletown, a younger son of the Marquis of Wallingford; likewise Miss Ethel Gordon, a celebrated beauty; and one or two others, that merely served as padding.
Lady Farley duly presented Paul to her other guests, and he sat down to be refreshed in (and by) their company.
"That is a capital article of yours on art and education in the current number of The Pendulum, Seaton," remarked Sir Benjamin, after a due discussion of the heat of the weather and the lateness of Saturday trains.
"It is very kind of you to say so," replied Paul, "but I felt it was far too large a subject to be treated in so small a space, and my limits handicapped me a good deal."
"I also read it with much interest," said Lord Wrexham, "though I fear I did not agree with it all. It appears to me that we require education to make us understand art, rather than that art is in itself an education."
Paul shook his head. "Of course education helps us with technique; but I think that art itself is independent of education. The artist, like the poet, is born, not made."
"Then do you mean to say," asked Lord Wrexham, "that the artist of to-day is none the better for the art produced in the centuries that lie behind him?"
"He is a richer man," replied Paul, "but not, I think, a better artist. There is no heritage in art, as there is in science. The artist is complete in himself, without ancestors or successors."