dollars!" They cannot see the yet quite evident truth that the rank and
file of every land is about equally inartistic. Modern Italy may in the
mass be more lyrical than America, but in either architecture or
painting Italy is simply not to be named with America.

[Illustration: MITCHELL TOWER AND HUTCHINSON COMMONS--UNIVERSITY OF
CHICAGO]

Further, and in the second place, these people never did and never will
look in the right quarters for vital art. A really original artist
struggling under their very noses has small chance of being recognized
by them, the reason being that they are imitative, with no real opinion
of their own. They associate art with Florentine frames, matinée hats,
distant museums, and clever talk full of allusions to the dead. It would
not occur to them to search for American art in the architecture of
railway stations and the draftsmanship and sketch-writing of
newspapers and magazines, because they have not the wit to learn that
genuine art flourishes best in the atmosphere of genuine popular demand.

Even so, with all their blindness, it is unnatural that they should not
see and take pride in the spectacular historical facts which prove their
country to be less negligible in art than they would assert. I do not
mean the existence in America of huge and glorious collections of
European masters. I have visited some of these collections, and have
taken keen pleasure therein. But I perceive in them no national
significance--no more national significance than I perceive in the
endowment of splendid orchestras to play foreign music under foreign
conductors, or in the fashionable crowding of classical concerts.
Indeed, it was a somewhat melancholy experience to spend hours in a
private palace crammed with artistic loveliness that was apparently