Nor is it pictorial art, or decorative art only,
that has been touched by Japanese example of
Incident and the Unique. Music had attained
the noblest form of symmetry in the eighteenth
century, but in music, too, symmetry had since
grown dull; and momentary music, the music of
phase and of fragment, succeeded. The sense
of symmetry is strong in a complete melody --
of symmetry in its most delicate and lively and
least stationary form -- balance; whereas the
leit-motif is isolated. In domestic architecture
Symmetry and Incident make a familiar anti-
thesis -- the very commonplace of rival methods
of art. But the same antithesis exists in less
obvious forms. The poets have sought "irre-
gular" metres. Incident hovers, in the very
act of choosing its right place, in the most
modern of modern portraits. In these we
have, if not the Japanese suppression of minor
emphasis, certainly the Japanese exaggeration
of major emphasis; and with this a quickness
and buoyancy. The smile, the figure, the
drapery -- not yet settled from the arranging
touch of a hand, and showing its mark -- the
restless and unstationary foot, and the unity
of impulse that has passed everywhere like a
single breeze, all these have a life that greatly

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