Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/179

 are still in Italy a number of more or less youthful men of letters, many secondary professors in secondary schools, and a few journalists with a smattering of philosophy, who really attribute great importance to Benedetto Croce and his Æsthetics. That book, published ten years ago, has reached its fourth edition, and is considered, by those to whom I have referred, as the unbreakable table of artistic law, as the most refined and exquisite essence of European thought, as the eternal gospel of all criticism. In their eyes Croce is the one licensed guide of the present generation, the perpetual dictator of our culture, the high and mighty