CHAPTER NINETEEN

_Art_

The history of the theatre leads us once more back to Puritan New England. Every one knows that the Puritan regarded the theatre as the very temple of vice, and the former association of the theatre and the bar-room—a tradition that came from England—naturally failed to make public opinion more favourable. In the year 1750 theatrical productions were entirely forbidden in Boston. One theatre was built in 1794, and a few others later, but the public feeling against demoralizing influences of the stage so grew that one theatre after another was turned from its profane uses and made over into a lecture hall or something of the sort. In 1839 it was publicly declared that Boston should never again have a theatre. Nevertheless by 1870, it had five theatres, and to-day it has fifteen. Other cities have always been more liberal toward the theatre, and in the city of New York, since 1733, ninety-five theatres have been built, of which more than thirty are still standing to-day and in active operation. Thus the Puritan spirit seems long since to have disappeared, and the backwardness of the drama seems not to be connected with the religious past of the country. But this is not the case.

Let us survey the situation. There is certainly no lack of theatres, for almost every town has its “opera house,” and the large cities have really too many. Nor is there any lack of histrionic talent; for, although the great Shakespearian actor, Edwin Booth, has no worthy successor, we have still actors who are greatly applauded and loved—Mansfield, Sothern, Jefferson, Drew, and Gillette; Maude Adams, Mrs. Fiske, Blanche Bates, Henrietta Crosman, Julia Arthur, Julia Marlowe, Ada Rehan, Nance O’Neill, and many others who are certainly sincere artists; and the most brilliant actors of Europe, Irving and Tree, Dusé, Bernhardt, Sorma, and Campbell come almost every year to play in this country. The American’s natural versatility gives him a great advantage for the theatrical career; and so it is no accident that amateur theatricals are nowhere else so popular, especially among student men and women. The equipments of the stage, moreover, leave very little to be desired, and the settings sometimes surpass anything which can be seen in Europe; one often sees marvellous effects and most convincing illusions. And these, with the American good humour, verve, and self-assurance, and the beauty of American women, bring many a graceful comedy and light opera to a really artistic performance. The great public, too, is quite content, and fills the theatres to overflowing. It seems almost unjust to criticise unfavourably the country’s theatres.

But the general public is not the only nor even the most important factor; the discriminating public is not satisfied. Artistic productions of the more serious sort are drowned out by a great tide of worthless entertainments; and however amusing or diverting the comedies, farces, rural pieces, operettas, melodramas, and dramatized novels may be, they are thoroughly unworthy of a people that is so ceaselessly striving for cultivation and self-perfection. Such pieces should not have the assurance to invade the territory of true art. And, although the lack of good plays is less noticeable, if one looks at the announcements of what is to be given in New York on any single evening, it is tremendously borne home on one by the bad practice of repeating the plays night after night for many weeks, so that a person who wants to see real art has soon seen every production which is worth while. In this respect New York is distinctly behind Paris, Berlin, or Vienna, although about on a level with London; and in the other large cities of America the situation is rather worse. Everywhere the stage caters to the vulgar taste, and for one Hamlet there are ten Geishas.

It cannot be otherwise, since the theatre is entirely a business matter with the managers. Sometimes there is an artist like the late Daly, who is ready to conduct a theatre from the truly artistic point of view, and who offers admirable performances; but this is an expensive luxury, and there are few who will afford it. It is a question of making money, and therefore of offering humorous or sentimental pieces which fill the theatre. There is another fact of which the European hardly knows; it is cheaper to engage a company to play a single piece for a whole year with mechanical regularity than to hire actors to give the study necessary to a diversified repertoire. After many repetitions, even mediocre actors can attain a certain skill, while in repertoire only good actors are found at all satisfactory, and the average will not be tolerated by the pampered public. Then, too, the accessories are much cheaper for a single piece.

Now, in a town of moderate size, one piece cannot be repeated many nights, so that the companies have to travel about. The best companies stay not less than a week, and if the town is large enough, they stay from four to six weeks. These companies are known by the name of the piece which they are presenting, or by the name of the leading actor, the “star.” The theatre in itself is a mere tenantless shell. In early fall the whole list of companies which are to people its stage through the next thirty weeks is arranged. In this way, it is true that the small city is able to see the best actors and the newest pieces. Yet one sees how sterile this principle is by considering some of the extreme cases. Jefferson has played his Rip Van Winkle and almost nothing else for thirty years; and the young people of Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston would be very unhappy if he were not to come in this rôle for a couple of weeks every winter. And he has thus become several times a millionaire.

But the business spirit has not stopped with this. The hundreds of companies compete with one another, so that very naturally a theatrical trust has been formed. The syndicate of Klaw, Erlanger & Frohman was organized in 1896 with thirty-seven leading theatres in large cities, all pledged to present none but companies belonging to the syndicate, while, in return, the syndicate agreed to keep the theatres busy every week in the season. The favourite actors and the favourite companies were secured, and the independent actors who resisted the tyranny found that in most of the large cities only second-rate theatres were open to them. One after another had to give in, and now the great trust under the command of Frohman has virtually the whole theatrical business of the country in its hands. The trust operates shrewdly and squarely; it knows its public, offers variety, follows the fashions, gives the great mimes their favourite rôles, pays them and the theatre owners well, relieves the actors from the struggle for promotion, and vastly amuses the public. It is impossible to resist this situation, which is so adverse to art.

All are agreed that there is only one way to better matters. Permanent companies must be organized, in the large cities at first, to play in repertoire. And these must be subsidized, so as not to be dependent for their support on the taste of the general public. Then and then only will the dramatic art be able to thrive, or the theatre become an educational institution, and so slowly cultivate a better demand, which in the end will come to make even the most eclectic theatre self-supporting. So it has always been on the European Continent; princes and municipalities have rivalled with one another to raise the level of dramatic art above what it would have to be if financially dependent solely on the box-office. In the United States there is certainly no lack of means or good will to encourage such an educational institution. Untold millions go to libraries, museums, and universities, and we may well ask why the slightest attempt has not been made to provide, by gift or from the public treasury, for a temple to the drama.

It is just here that the old Puritan prejudice is still felt to-day. The theatre is no longer under the ban of the law, but no step can be taken toward a subvention of the theatre. Most taxpayers in America would look with disfavour on any project to support a theatre from public funds. Why a theatre more than a hotel or restaurant? The theatre remains a place of frivolous amusement, and for that reason no millionaires have so far endowed a theatre. Men like Carnegie know too well that the general mass of people would blame them if they were to give their millions to the theatre, as long as a single town was still wishing for its library or its college.

The history of music in America has shown what can be attained by endowment—how the public demand can be educated so that even the very best art will finally be self-supporting. The development of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which is still the best musical organization in the country, is thoroughly typical. It was realized that symphony concerts, like the best given in Germany, would not be self-supporting, in view of the deficient musical education of the country. In 1880 Boston had two symphony orchestras, but both were of little account. They were composed of over-busied musicians, who could not spare the time needed for study and rehearsals. Then one of the most liberal and appreciative men of the country, Henry Lee Higginson, came forward and engaged the best musicians whom he could find, to give all their time and energy to an orchestra; and he himself guaranteed the expenses. During the first few years he paid out a fortune annually, but year by year the sum grew less, and to-day Boston so thoroughly enjoys its twenty-four symphony concerts, which are not surpassed by those of any European orchestra, that the large music-hall is too small to hold those who wish to attend. This example has been imitated, and now New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities have excellent and permanent orchestras.

Likewise various cities, but especially New York, enjoy a few weeks of German, French, and Italian opera which is equal to the best opera in Europe, by a company that brings together the best singers of Europe and America. In the case of opera the love of music has prevailed over the prejudice against the theatre. Extraordinarily high subscriptions for the boxes, and a reduced rental of the Metropolitan Opera House, which was erected by patrons of art, have given brilliant support to the undertaking. Without going into questions of principle, an impartial friend of music must admit that even the performances of Parsifal were artistically not inferior to those of Bayreuth, and the audience was quite as much in sympathy with the great masterpiece as are the assemblages of tourists at Bayreuth. The artistic education proceeding from these larger centres is felt through the entire country, and there is a growing desire for less ambitious but permanent opera companies.

The symphony and the opera are not the only evidences of the serious love of music in America. Every large city has its conservatory and its surplus of trained music teachers, and almost every city has societies which give oratorios, and innumerable singing clubs, chamber concerts, and regular musical festivals. Even the concerts by other soloists than that fashionable favourite of American ladies, Paderewski, are well attended. And these are not new movements; opera was given in New York as early as 1750, and the English opera of the eighteenth century was followed in 1825 by Italian opera. Also Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New Orleans early developed a love for music.

Boston has been the great centre for oratorio. The Händel and Haydn Society dates from 1810, and in 1820 a great many concerts were given all through the East, even in small towns. And the influence of the musical Germans was strongly felt by the middle of the century. The Germania Orchestra of Boston was founded in 1848, and now all the Western cities where German influences are strong, such as Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis, are centres of music, with many male choruses and much private cultivation of music in the home.

The churches, moreover, are a considerable support to music. The Puritan spirit disliked secular music no less than the theatre; but the popular hymns were always associated with the service of God, and so the love for music grew and its cultivation spread. Progress was made from the simplest melodies to fugue arrangements; organs and stringed instruments were introduced; the youth was educated in music, and finally in the last century church worship was made more attractive by having the best music obtainable. And thus, through the whole country, chorus and solo singing and instrumental skill have been everywhere favoured by the popular religious instinct.

So much for the performance of music. Musical composition has not reached nearly such a high point. It is sufficient to look over the programmes of recent years. Wagner leads among operatic composers, then follow Verdi, Gounod, and Mozart; Beethoven is the sovereign of the concert-hall, and The Messiah and The Creation are the most popular oratorios. Sometimes a suspicion has been expressed that American composers must have been systematically suppressed by the leading German conductors like Damrosch, Seidl, Gericke, Thomas, and Paur. But this is not remotely true. The American public is much more to be blamed; for, although so patriotic in every other matter, it looks on every native musical composition with distrust, and will hardly accept even the American singer or player until he has first won his laurels in Europe.

Still, there has been some composition in America. There were religious composers in the eighteenth century, and when everything English was put away at the time of the Revolution, the colonists replaced the psalm-tunes which they had brought over with original airs. Billings and his school were especially popular, although there was an early reaction against what he was pleased to call fugues. The nineteenth century brought forth little more than band-master music, with no sign of inspiration in real orchestral or operatic music. Only lately there have stepped into the field such eminent composers as MacDowell, Paine, Chadwick, Strong, Beech, Buck, Parker, and Foot. Paine’s opera of “Azara,” Chadwick’s overtures, and MacDowell’s interesting compositions show how American music will develop.

More popular was a modest branch of musical composition, the song in the style of folk-songs. America has no actual folk-songs. The average European imagines “Yankee Doodle” to be the real American song, anonymous and dreadful as it is, and in diplomatic circles the antiquated and bombastic “Hail Columbia” is conceived to be the official hymn of America. The Americans themselves recognize neither of these airs. The “Star Spangled Banner” is the only song which can be called national; it was written in 1814 to an old and probably English melody. The Civil War left certain other songs which stir the breast of every patriotic American.

On the other hand, folk-songs have developed in only one part of the country—on the Southern plantations—and with a very local colouring. The negro slaves sang these songs first, although it is unlikely that they are really African songs. They seem to be Irish and Scotch ballads, which the negroes heard on the Mississippi steamboats. Baptist and Methodist psalm-tunes and French melodies were also caught up by the musical negroes and modified to their peculiar melody and rhythm. A remarkable sadness pervades all these Southern airs.

Many song composers have imitated this most unique musical product of the country. In the middle of the century Stephen Foster rose to rapid popularity with his “Old Folks at Home,” which became the popular song, rivalled only by “Home Sweet Home,” which was taken from the text of an American opera, but of which the melody is said to have originated in Sicily. There are to-day all sorts of composers, some in the sentimental style and others in the light opera vein, whose street tunes are instantly sung, whistled and played on hurdy-gurdies from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and, worst of all, stridently rendered by the graphophones, with megaphone attachments, on verandahs in summer. There are composers of church hymns, of marches _à la_ Sousa, and writers of piano pieces by the wholesale. All serious musicians agree that the American, unlike the Englishman, is decidedly musically inclined, but he is the incontestable master of only a very modest musical art—he can whistle as nobody else.

Unlike American music, American paintings are no longer strange to Europe. In the art division of the last Paris Exposition Americans took their share of the honours, and they are highly appreciated at most of the Berlin and Munich picture shows. Sargent and Whistler are the best known. Sargent, as the painter of elegant ladies, prosperous men, and interesting children, has undoubtedly the surest and most refined gift with his brush of any son of the New World. When, a few years ago, a large exhibition of his works was brought together in Boston, one felt on standing before that gathering of ultra-polite and almost living humanity, that in him the elegant world has found its most brilliant, though perhaps not its most flattering, transcriber. Whistler is doubtless the greater, the real sovereign. This most nervous of all artists has reproduced his human victims with positively uncanny perspicacity. Like Henry James, the novelist, he fathoms each human riddle, and expresses it intangibly, mysteriously. Everything is mood and suggestion, the dull and heavy is volatilized, the whole is a sceptical rendering in rich twilight tones.

America is proud of both artists, and still one may doubt whether the art of the New World would be justly represented if it sent across the ocean only these two pampered and somewhat whimsical artists. Firstly, in spite of much brilliant other work, they are both best known as portraitists, while it becomes plainer every day that landscape painting is the most typical American means of expression. The profound feeling for nature, which pervades American poetry and reflects the national life and struggle therewith, brings the American to study landscape. Many persons think even that if American artists were to send ever so many easel pictures across the ocean, the artistic public of Europe would still have no adequate judgment of American painting, because the best talent is busied with the larger pieces intended for wall decoration. The great number of monumental buildings, with their large wall surfaces and the desire for ambitious creations, attract the American to-day to wall-painting. And they try to strengthen the national character of this tendency by a democratic argument. The easel picture, it is said, is a luxury designed for the house of the wealthy and is, therefore, decadent, while the art of a nation which is working out a democracy must pertain to the people; and therefore just as early art adorned the temples and churches, this art must adorn the walls of public buildings, libraries, judicial chambers, legislatures, theatres, railway stations and city halls. And the more this comes to be the case, the less correct it is to judge the pinctile efforts of the time by the framed pictures that come into the exhibitions. Moreover, many of the more successful painters do not take the trouble to send any of their works across the ocean.

Sargent and Whistler also—and this is more important—speak a language which is not American, while the country has now developed its own grammar of painting, and the most representative artists are seldom seen in Europe. In painting, as in so many other branches, the United States has developed from the provincial to the cosmopolitan and from the cosmopolitan to the national, and is just now taking this last step. It is very characteristic that the untutored provincial has grown into the national only by passing through a cosmopolitan stage. The faltering powers of the beginner do not achieve a self-conscious expression of national individuality until they have first industriously and systematically imitated foreign methods, and so attained a complete mastery of the medium of expression.

At first the country, whose poor population was not able to pay much attention to pictures, turned entirely to England. West and Copley are the only pre-Revolutionary Americans whose pictures possess any value. The portraits of their predecessors—as, for instance, those in Memorial Hall at Harvard—are stiff, hard, and expressionless. Then came Gilbert Stuart at the end of the eighteenth century, whose portraits of George and Martha Washington are famous, and who showed himself an artistic genius and quite the equal of the great English portraitists. John Trumbull, an officer in the Revolutionary Army, who lived at the same time, was still more important for the national history by his war pictures, the best of which were considerably above contemporary productions. The historical wall-paintings which he made in 1817, for the Capitol at Washington, are in his later and inferior manner. They seem to-day, like everything which was done in the early part of the century to decorate the Capitol, hackneyed and tiresome. And if one goes from the Capitol to the Congressional Library, which shows the condition of art at the end of the nineteenth century, one feels how far the public taste of Trumbull’s time was from appreciating true art. Portraiture was the only art which attained tolerable excellence, where, besides Stuart, there were Peale, Wright, and Savage. Then came the day of the “American Titian,” Allston, whose Biblical pictures were greatly praised for their brilliant colouring.

Hitherto artists had gone to England to study or, indeed, sometimes to Italy. In the second third of the century they went to Düsseldorf; they painted American landscapes, American popular life, and historical pictures of American heroes, all in German fashion. They delighted in genre studies in the Düsseldorf manner, and painted the Hudson River all bathed in German moonlight. While the popular school was still painting the world in blackish brown, the artistic secession began at about the time of the Civil War. Then artists began to go to Paris and Munich, and American painting developed more freely. It was a time of earnest, profound, and independent study such as had so far never been. The artist learned to draw, learned to see values, and, in the end, to be natural. The number of artists now began to increase, and to-day Americans produce thousands of pictures each year, and one who sees the European exhibitions in summer and the American in winter does not feel that the latter are on a much lower level.

Since Allston’s time the leaders in landscape have been Cole, Bierstadt, Kensett, and Gifford; in genre, Leslie, Woodville, and particularly Mount; in historical painting, Lentze and White; and in portraiture, Inman and Elliott. The first who preached the new doctrine of individuality and colour was Hunt, and in the early seventies the new school just graduated from Paris and Munich was bravely at work. There are many well-known names in the last thirty years, and it is a matter rather of individual choice what pictures one prefers of all the large number. Yet no one would omit George Inness from the list, since he has seen American landscapes more individually than any one else. Besides his pictures every one knows the marines of Winslow Homer, the street scenes of Childe Hassam, the heads of Eaton, the autumn forests of Enneking, the apple trees in spring-time of Appleton Brown, the delicate landscapes of Weir and Tryon, the wall pictures of Abbey, Cox, and Low, Gaugengigl’s little figure paintings, Vedder’s ambitious symbolism, the brilliant portraits of Cecilia Beaux and Chase, the women’s heads of Tarbell, the ideal figures of Abbot Thayer, and the works of a hundred other American artists, not to mention those who are really more familiar in London, Paris, and Munich than in America itself.

Besides the oil pictures, there are excellent water-colours, pastelles, and etchings; and, perhaps most characteristic of all, there is the stained glass of La Farge, Lathrop, the late Mrs. Whitman, Goodhue, and others. The workers in pen-and-ink are highly accomplished, of whom the best known is Gibson, whose American women are not only artistic, but have been socially influential on American ideals and manners. His sketches for Life have been themselves models for real life. Nor should we forget Pennell, the master of atmosphere in pen-and-ink.

Sculpture has developed more slowly. It presupposes a higher understanding of art than does painting; and, besides that, the prudishness of the Puritan has affected it adversely. When John Brazee, the first American amateur sculptor, in the early part of the nineteenth century, asked advice of the president of the New York Academy of Arts, he was told that he would better wait a hundred years before practicing sculpture in America. The speech admirably showed the general lack of interest in plastic art. But the impetuous pressure toward self-perfection existing in the nation shortened the century into decades; people began to journey through Italy. The pioneers of sculpture were Greenough, Powers, Crawford, and Palmer, and their statues are still valued for their historical interest. The theatrical genre groups of John Rogers became very popular; and Randolph Rogers, who created the Columbus bronze doors of the Capitol, was really an artist. Then came Storey, Ball, Rinehart, Hosmer, Mead, and many others with works of greater maturity. Squares and public buildings were filled with monuments and busts which, to be sure, were generally more interesting politically than artistically, and which to-day wait patiently for a charitable earthquake. And yet they show how the taste for plastic art has slowly worked upward.

More recent movements, which are connected with the names of Ward, Warner, Partridge, French, MacMonnies, and St. Gaudens, have already left many beautiful examples of sculpture. Cities are jealously watchful now that only real works of art shall be erected, and that monuments which are to be seen by millions of people shall be really characteristic examples of good art. More than anything else, sculpture has at length come into a closer sympathy with architecture than perhaps it has in any other country. The admirable sculptural decorations of the Chicago World’s Fair, the effective Dewey Triumphal Arch and the permanent plastic decorations of the Congressional Library, the more restrained and distinguished decorations of the Court of Appeals in New York City, and of many similar buildings show clearly that American sculpture has ended its period of immaturity. Such a work as St. Gaudens’s Shaw Memorial in Boston is among the most beautiful examples of modern sculpture; and it is thoroughly American, not only because the negro regiment marches behind the mounted colonel, but because the American subject is handled in the American spirit. These men are depicted with striking vigour, and the young hero riding to his death is conceived with Puritan sobriety. Vigorous and mature is the American, in plastic art as well as in poetry.

The development of architecture has been a very different one. A people must be housed, and cannot stay out of doors until it has learned what is beautiful in architecture. People could wait for poetry, music, and painting while they were busy in keeping off the Indians and felling the forests; but they had to have houses at once. And since at that time they had no independent interests in art, they imitated forms with which they had been familiar, and everywhere perpetuated the architectural ideas of their mother country. But the builder is at a disadvantage beside the painter, the singer, and the poet, in that when he imitates he cannot even do that as he will, but is bound down by climate, by social requirements, and especially by his building material. And when he is placed in new surroundings, he is forced to strike out for himself.

Although the American colonist remained under the influence of English architecture, his environment forced him in the first place to build his house of wood instead of stone as in England, and in wood he could not so easily copy the pattern. It had to be a new variation of the older art. And so architecture, although it more slavishly followed the mother country than any other art, was the earliest to strike out in some respects on an independent course. It borrowed its forms, but originated their applications; and while it slowly adopted new ideas of style and became gradually free of European styles, it became free even earlier in their technical application, owing to the new American conditions. More than any other feature of her civilization, American architecture reveals the entire history of the people from the days when the Puritans lived in little wooden villages to the present era of the sky-scraper of the large cities; and in this growth more than in that of any other art the whole country participates, and specially the West, with its tremendous energy, which is awkward with the violin-bow and the crayon but is well versed in piling stone on stone.

In colonial days, English renaissance architecture was imitated in wood, a material which necessitated slender columns and called for finer detail and more graceful lines than were possible in stone. One sees to-day, especially in the New England States, many such buildings quite unaltered; and the better of these in Salem, Cambridge, and Newport are, in spite of their lightness, substantial and distinguished as no European would think possible in so ordinary a material as wood. Large, beautiful halls, with broad, open staircases and broad balusters, greet the visitor; large fireplaces, with handsomely carved chimney-pieces, high wainscotings on the walls and beautiful beams across the ceilings. The more modest houses show the same thing on a smaller scale. There was this one style through the whole town, and its rules were regarded as canonical. In certain parts of the country there were inconspicuous traces of Spanish, French, and Dutch influence, which survive to-day in many places, especially in the South, and contribute to the picturesqueness of the architectural whole.

After the Revolutionary period, people wished to break with English traditions, and the immigration from many different countries brought a great variety of architectural stimulation. A time of general imitation had arrived, for in architecture also the country was to grow from the provincial to the national through a cosmopolitan stage. At the end of the eighteenth century, architecture was chiefly influenced by the classic Greek. Farmhouses masqueraded as big temples, and the thoughtless application of this form became so monotonous that it was not continued very long in private houses. Then the Capitol at Washington was begun by Latrobe and finished by the more competent Bulfinch, and it became the model for almost all state capitols of the Union. Bulfinch himself designed the famous State House of Massachusetts, but it was the Puritan spirit of Boston which selected the austere Greek temple to typify the public spirit. The entire century, in spite of many variations, stood under this influence, and until recently nobody has ventured to put up a civil structure in a freer, more picturesque style.

Many of these single state capitols built during the century, such as the old one at Albany, are admirable; while the post-offices, custom-houses, and other buildings dedicated to federal uses have been put up until recently cheaply and without thought. Lately, however, the architect has been given freer play. Meanwhile taste had wandered from the classic era to the Middle Ages, and the English Gothic had come to be popular. The romantic took the place of the classic, and the buildings were made picturesque. The effect of this was most happy on church edifices, and about the middle of the century Richard Upjohn, “the father of American architecture,” built a number of famous churches in the Gothic style.

But in secular edifices this spirit went wholly to architectural lawlessness. People were too little trained to preserve a discipline of style along with the freedom of the picturesque. And even more unfortunate than the lack of training of the architect, who committed improprieties because uncertain in his judgment, there was the tastelessness of the parvenu patron, and this particularly in the West. Then came the time of unrest and vulgar splurge, when in a single residential street palaces from all parts of the world were cheaply copied, and just as in Europe forgotten styles were superficially reproduced. The Queen Anne style became fashionable; and then native colonial and Dutch motives were revived.

This period is now long past. The last twenty-five years in the East and the last ten years in the West have seen this tasteless, hap-hazard, and ignorant experimenting with different styles give place to building which is thoughtful, independent, and generally beautiful; though, of course, much that is ugly has continued to be built. Architecture itself has developed a careful school, and the public has been trained by the architects. Of course, many regrettable buildings survive from former periods, so that the general impression to-day is often very confused; but the newer streets in the residential, as well as the business, portions of cities and towns display the fitting homes and office buildings of a wealthy, independent, and art-loving people. In comparison with Europe, a negative feature may be remarked; namely, the notable absence of rococo tendencies. It is sometimes found in interior decorations, but never on exteriors.

The positive features which especially strike the European are the prevalence of Romanesque and of the sky-scrapers. The round arch of the Romans comes more immediately from southern France; but since its introduction to America, notably by the architectural genius Richardson, the round arch has become far more popular than in Europe, and has given rise to a characteristic American style, which is represented to-day in hundreds of substantial buildings all over the country. There is something heavy, rigid, and at the same time energetic, in these great arches resting on short massive columns, in the great, pointed, round towers, in the heavy balconies and the low arcades. The primitive force of America has found its artistic expression here, and the ease with which the new style has adapted itself to castle-like residences, banks, museums, and business houses, and the quickness with which it has been adopted, in the old streets of Boston as in the newer ones of Chicago and Minneapolis, all show clearly that it is a really living style, and not merely an architectural whim.

The Romanesque style grew from an artistic idea, while the sky-scraper has developed through economic exigencies. New York is an island, wherefore the stage of her great business life cannot be extended, and every inch has had to be most advantageously employed. It was necessary to build higher than commercial structures have ever been carried in Europe. At first these buildings were twenty stories high, but now they are even thirty. To rest such colossal structures on stone walls would have necessitated making the walls of the lower stories so thick as to take up all the most desirable room, and stone was therefore replaced by steel. The entire structure is simply a steel framework, lightly cased in stone. Herewith arose quite new architectural problems. The subdivision of the twenty-story façade was a much simpler problem than the disposal of the interior space, where perhaps twenty elevators have to be speeding up and down, and ten thousand men going in and out each day. The problem has been admirably solved. The absolute adaptation of the building to its requirements, and its execution in the most appropriate material—namely, steel and marble—the shaping of the rooms to the required ends, and the carrying out of every detail in a thoroughly artistic spirit make a visit to the best office buildings of New York an æsthetic delight. And since very many of these are now built side of one another, they give the sky-line of the city a strength and significance which strike every one who is mature enough to find beauty in that to which he is not accustomed. When the problem had once been solved, it was natural for other industrial cities to imitate New York, and the sky-scraper is now planted all over the West.

American architecture of to-day is happily situated, because the population is rapidly growing, is extraordinarily wealthy, and seriously fond of art. An architect who has to be economical, must make beauty secondary to utility. In the western part of the country, considerable economy is often exercised and mostly in the very worst way. The pretentious appearance of the building is preserved, but the construction is made cheap; the exterior is made of stucco instead of stone, and the interior finish is not carved, but pressed. This may not, after all, be so much for the sake of economy, as by reason of a deficient æsthetic sense. People who would not think of preferring a chromo-lithograph to an oil-painting do not as yet feel a similar distinction between architectural materials. For the most part, however, the buildings now erected are rich and substantial. The large public and semi-public buildings, court-houses and universities, state capitols and city halls, libraries and museums are generally brilliant examples of architecture. The same is true of the buildings for industrial corporation, offices, banks, hotels, life-insurance companies, stock-exchanges, counting-houses, railway stations, theatres and clubs, all of which, by their restrained beauty, inspire confidence and attract the eye. These are companies with such large capital that they never think of exercising economy on their buildings. The architect can do quite as he likes. New York has a dozen large hotels, each one of which is, perhaps, more splendid in marble and other stones than any hotel in Europe; and while Chicago, Boston, and other cities have fewer such hotels, they have equally handsome ones.

The fabulously rapid and still relatively late growth of handsome public buildings in the last decade is interesting from still another point of view. It reveals a trait in the American public mind which we have repeatedly contrasted with the thought of Europe. American ambitions have grown out of the desire for self-perfection. The American’s own person must be scrupulously, neatly, and carefully dressed, his own house must be beautiful; and only when the whole nation, as it were, has satisfied the needs of the individual can æsthetic feeling go out to the community as a whole—from the individual persons to the city, from the private house to the public building. It has been exactly the opposite on the European Continent. The ideal individual was later than the ideal community. Splendid public buildings were first put up in Europe, while people resided in ugly and uninviting houses.

There was a period in which the American did not mind stepping from his daily bath, and going from his sumptuous home immaculately attired to a railway station or court-house which was screamingly hideous and reeking with dirt. And similarly there was a time in which the Germans and the French moved in and out of the wonderful architectural monuments of their past in dirty clothing, and perhaps without having bathed for many days. In Germany the public building has influenced the individual, and eventually worked toward beautifying his house. In America the individual and the private house have only very slowly spread their æsthetic ideals through the public buildings. The final results in both countries must be the same. There is exactly the same contrast in the ethical field; whereas in Germany and France public morals have spread into private life, in America individual morals have spread into public life. As soon as the transition has commenced it proceeds rapidly.

In Germany few private houses are now built without a bathroom, and in America few public buildings without consideration for what is beautiful. The great change in railway stations indicates the rapidity of the movement. Even ten years ago there were huge car-sheds in the cities, and little huts in country districts, which so completely lacked any pretensions to beauty that æsthetic criticism was simply out of place. Now, on the contrary, most of the large cities have palatial stations, of which some are among the most beautiful in the world, and many railway companies have built attractive little stations all along their lines. As soon as such a state of things has come about, a reciprocal influence takes place between the individual and the communal desire for perfection, and the æsthetic level of the nation rises daily. So, too, the different arts stimulate one another. The architect plans his work from year to year more with the painter and sculptor in mind, so that the erection of new buildings and the growth and wealth of the people benefit not merely architecture, but the other arts as well.

Still other factors are doing their part to elevate the artistic life of the United States. And here particularly works the improved organization of the artistic professions. In former times, the true artist had to prefer Europe to his native home, because in his home he found no congenial spirits; this is now wholly changed. There is still the complaint that the American cities are even now no Kunststädte; and, compared with Munich or with Paris, this is still true. But New York is no more and no less a Kunststädte than is Berlin. In all the large cities of America the connoisseurs and patrons of art have organized themselves in clubs, and the national organizations of architects, painters, and sculptors, have become influential factors in public life; and the large art schools with well-known teachers and the studios of private masters have become great centres for artistic endeavour. A general historical study of architecture has even been introduced in universities, and already the erection of a national academy of art is so actively discussed that it will probably be very soon realized. Certainly every American artist will continue to visit Europe, as every German artist visits Italy; but all the conditions are now ripe in America for developing native talent on native soil.

The artistic education of the public is not less important nor far behind the professional education of the artist. We have discussed the general appreciation of architecture, and the same public education is quietly going on in the art museums. Of course, the public art galleries of America are necessarily far behind those of Europe, since the art treasures of the world were for the most part distributed when America began to collect. And yet it is surprising what treasures have been secured, and in some branches of modern painting and industrial art the American collections are not to be surpassed. Thus the Japanese collection of pottery in Boston has nowhere its equal, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York leads the world in several respects. Modern German art is unfortunately ill represented, but modern French admirably. Here is a large field open for a proper German ambition; German art needs to be recognized much more throughout the country. It must show that American distrust is absolutely unjustified, that it has made greater artistic advances than any other nation, and that German pictures are quite worthy of a large place in the collections.

There are many extraordinary private collections which were gathered during the cosmopolitan period that the nation has gone through. Just as foreign architecture was imitated, so the treasures of foreign countries in art and decoration were secured at any price; and owing to the great wealth, the most valuable things were bought, often without intelligent appreciation, but never without a stimulating effect. One is often surprised to find famous European paintings in private houses, often in remote Western cities; and the fact that for many years Americans have been the best patrons of art in the markets of the world, could not have been without its results. At the height of this collecting period American art itself probably suffered: a moderately good French picture was preferred to a better American picture; but all these treasures have indirectly benefited native art, and still do benefit it, so much that the better artists of the country are much opposed to the absurd protective tariff that is laid on foreign works of art. The Italian palace of Mrs. Gardner in Boston contains the most superb private collection; but just here one sees that the cosmopolitan period of collection and imitation is, after all, merely an episode in the history of American art. An Italian palace has no organic place in New England, although the artistic merits of the Gardner collection are perhaps nowhere surpassed.

The temporary exhibitions which are just now much in fashion have, perhaps, more influence than the permanent museums. Every large city has its annual exhibitions, and in the artistic centres, one special collection comes after another. And the strongest general stimulation has emanated from the great expositions. When the nation visited Philadelphia in 1876, the American artistic sense was just waking up, and the impetus there started was of decisive significance. It is said that the taste for colour in household decoration and fittings, for handsome carpets and draperies, came into the country at that time. When Chicago built its Court of Honour in 1893, which was more beautiful than what Paris could do seven years later, the country became for the first time aware that American art could stand on its own feet, and this æsthetic self-consciousness has stimulated endeavour through the entire nation. In Chicago, for the first time, the connection between architecture and sculpture came properly to be appreciated; and, more than all else, the art of the whole world was then brought into the American West, and that which previously had been familiar only to the artistic section between Boston and Washington was offered to the masses in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri. Chicago has remained since that time one of the centres of American architecture, and the æsthetic level of the entire West was raised, although it is still below that of the Eastern States. And once more, after a very short pause, St. Louis is ambitious enough to try the bold experiment which New York and Boston, like Berlin and Munich, have always avoided. The World’s Fair at St. Louis will surely give new impetus to American art, and especially to the artistic endeavour of the Western States.

If a feeling for art is really to pervade the people, the influence must not begin when persons are old enough to visit a world’s fair, but rather in childhood. The instruction in drawing, or rather in art, since drawing is only one of the branches, must undertake the æsthetic education of the youth in school. It cannot be denied that America has more need of such æsthetic training of children than Germany. The Anglo-Saxon love of sport leads the youth almost solely to the bodily games which stimulate the fancy much less than the German games of children, and other influences are also lacking to direct the children’s emotional life in the road of æsthetic pleasure. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the problem has been well solved in America. The American art training in school, say on the Prang system, which more than 20,000 teachers are using in class instruction, is a true development of the natural sense of beauty. The child learns to observe, learns technique, learns the value of lines and colours, and learns, more than all, to create beauty. In place of merely copying he divides and fills a given space harmoniously, and so little by little goes on to make small works of art. Generations which have enjoyed such influences must look on their environment with new eyes, and even in the poorest surroundings instinctively transform what they have, in the interests of beauty.

Corresponding to these popular stimulations of the sense of beauty is the wish to decorate the surroundings of daily life, most of all the interior; even in more modest circles to make them bright, pleasing, and livable, whereas they have too long been bare and meaningless. The arts and crafts have taken great steps forward, have gotten the services of true artists, and accomplished wonderful results. The glittering glasses of Tiffany and many other things from his world-famous studios are unsurpassed. There are also the wonderfully attractive silver objects of Gorham, the clay vases of the Rockwood Pottery, objects in cut-glass and pearl, furniture in Old English and Colonial designs, and much else of a similar nature. And for the artistic sense it is more significant and important that at last even the cheap fabrics manufactured for the large masses reveal more and more an appreciation of beauty. Even the cheap furniture and ornaments have to-day considerable character; and no less characteristic is the general demand, which is much greater than that of Europe, for Oriental rugs. The extravagant display of flowers in the large cities, the splendid parks and park-ways such as surround Boston, the beautification of landscapes which Charles Eliot has so admirably effected, and in social life the increasing fondness for coloured and æsthetic symbols, such as the gay academic costumes, the beautiful typography and book-bindings, and a thousand other things of the same sort, indicate a fresh, vigorous, and intense appreciation of beauty.

While such a sense for visible beauty has been developed by the wealth and the artistic instruction of the country, one special condition more has affected not only the fine arts but also poetry and literature. This is the development of the national feeling, which more than anything else has stimulated literary and artistic life. The American feels that he has entered the exclusive circle of world powers, and must like the best of them realize and express his own nature. He is conscious of a mission, and the national feeling is unified much less by a common past than by a common ideal for the future. His national feeling is not sentimental, but aggressive; the American knows that his goal is to become typically American. All this gives him the courage to be individual, to have his own points of view, and since he has now studied history and mastered technique, this means no longer to be odd and freakish, but to be truly original and creative. He is now for the first time thoroughly aware what a wealth of artistic problems is offered by his own continent, by his history, by his surroundings, and by his social conditions. And just as American science has been most successful in developing the history, geography, geology, zoölogy, and anthropology of the American Continent, so now his new art and literature are looking about for American material.

His hopes are high; he sees indications of a new art approaching which will excite the admiration of the world. He feels that the great writer is not far off who will express the New World in the great American novel. Who shall say that these hopes may not be realized to-morrow? For it is certain that he enjoys an unusual combination of favourable conditions for developing a world force. Here are a people thoroughly educated in the appreciation of literature and art—a people in the hey-day of success, with their national feeling growing, and having, by reason of their economic prosperity, the amplest means for encouraging art; a people who find in their own country untold treasures of artistic and literary problems, and who in the structure of their government and customs favour talent wherever it is found; a people who have learned much in cosmopolitan studies and to-day have mastered every technique, who have absorbed the temperament and ambitions of the most diverse races and yet developed their own consistent, national consciousness, in which indomitable will, fertile invention, Puritan morals, and irrepressible humour form a combination that has never before been known. The times seem ripe for something great.