The news is spread that there will be an exhibition of pictures held in Srinagar in September.  Every second person is a—­more or less—­heaven-born artist out here, so there promises to be no lack of exhibits.  I dreamed a dream last night, and in my dream I was walking along the bund and came upon an elderly gentleman laying Naples yellow on a canvas with a trowel.  The river was smooth and golden, and reflected the sensuous golden tones of the sky.  Trees arose from golden puddles, half screening a ziarat which, upon the glowing canvas, appeared remarkably like a village church.  “How beautiful!” I cried, “how gloriously oleographic!” and the painter, removing a brush from his mouth, smiled, well pleased, and said, “I am a Leader among Victorian artists and the public adores me!” and I left him vigorously painting pot-boilers.  Then in a damp dell among the willows of the Dal I found a foreigner in spectacles, and the light upon his pictures was the light that never was on sea or land; but through a silvery mist the willows showed ghostly grey, and a shadowy group of classic nymphs were ringed in the dance, and I cried “O Corot! lend me your spectacles.  I fain, like you, would see crude nature dimmed to a silvery perpetual twilight.”  And Corot replied:  “Mon ami moi je ne vois jamais le soleil, je me plonge toujours, dans les ombres bleuatres et les rayons pales de l’aube.”

Then upward I fared till, treading the clear heights, I found one frantically painting the peaks and pinnacles of the mountains in weird stipples of alternate red and blue.

“Great heavens!” I exclaimed, “what disordered manner is this!”

The artist glanced swiftly at me, and said disdainfully:  “I am a modern of the moderns, and if you cannot see that mountains are like that, it is your fault—­not mine.  Go back, you stand too close.”

And as I went back I looked over my shoulder, and, truly, the flaring rose-colour had blended amicably with the blue, and I admitted that perhaps Segantini was not so mad as he looked.

A little lower down a stout Scotchman painted a flowery valley.  The flowers were many and bright, but not so garish as they appeared to him, and I hinted as much; but he scorned my criticism.

“Mon,” he shouted, “I painted the Three Graces, an’ they made me an Academeesian.  I painted a flowery glen in the Tyrol (dearie me, but thae flowers cost me a fortune in blue paint), and it was coft for the Chantry Bequest, and hoo daur you talk to me?”

Then I departed hurriedly and came upon four men, two of them with long beards, and all with unkempt hair, laboriously depicting a blue pine, needle by needle, and every one in its proper place.  I asked them if theirs was not a very troublesome way of painting.

They looked at one another with earnest blue eyes, and remarked that here was evidently a Philistine who knew not Cimabue and cared not a jot for Giotto; and the first said:  “Sir, methinks he who would climb the golden stairs should do so step by step;” and the second said, sadly:  “We are but scapegoats, truly, being cast forth by the vindictive Victorians of our day.”