314 The Evolution of Art. 



have determined a few political postulates which were neces- 

 sary to our existence as a state. We have climbed from the 

 position of a poor relation in the confederacy of the world, 

 to become the arbitrator of the wealthiest nation of Europe. 

 The children of Eubens's genius, repeated by art-processes 

 unknown but a score of years ago, look down from the 

 walls of the humblest peasantry all over the land, the 

 thoughts of all the great poets inspire the rudest people of 

 the frontiers. In whatever waste cavern of the continent 

 the child of genius hides, a ray of light is sure to touch 

 him from the ubiquitous newspaper, for in the advanc- 

 ing army of intelligence at the very front is the column 

 of the press. We have just begun to possess a leisure class, 

 without which, as furnishing art-lovers, no art can nourish. 

 True, our leisure classes are quite often, and sometimes 

 justly, mistaken for loafers, but they are here and have come 

 to stay. They are finding out the charms of Nature and are 

 rapidly possessing themselves of her domain. They have 

 fallen in love with Art and are transferring her treasures 

 from private cloisters to public museums. They have begun 

 to house in seats of learning our masters of letters, and to 

 erect the busts and statues of the sculptors within our pub- 

 lic parks. They are placing in the way of all the people 

 the highest interpretations by art of Nature. Upon the use 

 which they shall make of this opportunity is to depend the 

 destiny of art, and out of this destiny is to emerge the com- 

 ing artist. Greater than Shakespeare's may be the song 

 which is to entrance the peoples of the thousand years to 

 come. Greater, higher, stronger than all the past has 

 known must always be the possibilities of the future. Let 

 no man, surveying the present, dare to boast of its starve- 

 ling products as the best that is in the capacity of men. 

 Rather let us with candor confess that in the unwritten vol- 

 umes of the coming years shall be found the fruitful ne- 

 penthe for the present. Contented, happy, hopeful, may 

 that man or woman well be who shall have listened rever- 

 ently to the lessons of the past, in whom the sublime vision 

 of beauty shall have found loving recognition, and who can 

 with kindling heart and sincere feeling repeat as his own 

 the language of another but little paraphrased : 



" So venerable, so majestic is this living temple of art, this 

 immemorial and yet freshly growing fabric of beauty, that the 

 least of us is happy who hereafter may point to so much as 

 one stone thereof and say, ' The work of my hands is there.' " 



