THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE ECHO CHAMBER. Reader responses at OpinionJournal are always a treat, but when the article to which readers respond has nothing to do with the usual conservative boilerplate, they often become transcendent. The Met's Philippe de Montebello offers a nice, if slightly overcooked, explanation of the relevance of museums -- "unlike historical facts and events, works of art exist not only in the present, but also in the past, the past that transmitted them to us... the ultimate assurance of renewal and survival," etc. Lots of uplift, no apparent politics.

Only four replies are posted, but they are choice. One allows that museums are alright "as long as no taxpayer money goes to the support of these institutions, which are valued by a very tiny slice of the electorate, this writer excluded. I now get all the culture I could possibly need from the Internet..." The next decries "revisionism": "Last year I visited a museum in my area where I found a lengthy written account of how the Europeans who came to the New World destroyed the continent with their guns and disease. There was not one mention of anything positive that they brought--not one." She suggests that the offending museologists relocate to "a Third World country that would be more to their liking."

The third recasts the discussion in terms of the Almighty: "Respectfully, regardless of their splendor and craft, artifacts are not sufficient for us to maintain our faith in mankind. Such faith has always been debatable. Christians say it's misplaced; rightly so, I believe. And, respectfully, these artifacts also do not reflect the ultimate assurance of renewal and survival." Guess What does?

Finally, my very favorite:

If everything is art, as seems to be the current contention, then nothing is art. It follows then that everywhere is a museum, so nothing is a museum.

OpinionJournal is in its way a work of art, or at least a piece of work: a fully-realized universe with its own logic, and where the characters are, to use E.M. Forster's terms, round: that is, their behavior is consistent without being predictable; indeed, they are capable of delightful surprises. I am always glad to meet them on the page, and wish that they could be induced to remain there.