as nothing that he is, glaring at us here as a patriarch of Canaan,
here beaming as a brigand from the Abruzzi? Popular is he, this
poor peripatetic professor of posing, with those whose joy it is to
paint the posthumous portrait of the last philanthropist who in his
lifetime had neglected to be photographed,--yet he is the sign of
the decadence, the symbol of decay.

For all costumes are caricatures. The basis of Art is not the
Fancy Ball. Where there is loveliness of dress, there is no
dressing up. And so, were our national attire delightful in
colour, and in construction simple and sincere; were dress the
expression of the loveliness that it shields and of the swiftness
and motion that it does not impede; did its lines break from the
shoulder instead of bulging from the waist; did the inverted
wineglass cease to be the ideal of form; were these things brought
about, as brought about they will be, then would painting be no
longer an artificial reaction against the ugliness of life, but
become, as it should be, the natural expression of life's beauty.
Nor would painting merely, but all the other arts also, be the
gainers by a change such as that which I propose; the gainers, I
mean, through the increased atmosphere of Beauty by which the
artists would be surrounded and in which they would grow up. For
Art is not to be taught in Academies. It is what one looks at, not
what one listens to, that makes the artist. The real schools
should be the streets. There is not, for instance, a single
delicate line, or delightful proportion, in the dress of the
Greeks, which is not echoed exquisitely in their architecture. A
nation arrayed in stove-pipe hats and dress-improvers might have
built the Pantechnichon possibly, but the Parthenon never. And
finally, there is this to be said: Art, it is true, can never have