SECRETARY'S REPORT. 335 



Rut still tlio idea is forced upon us that it is the people, after 

 all, who support these great establishments, and that it is only 

 a comparatively few of those who have to pay for these magnifi- 

 cent collections who can derive any benefit from them. The 

 poor peasant who tills the soil on the continent of Europe has 

 little time to spend in looking at fine pictures. Of the whole 

 population of a great kingdom how many can go up to the 

 capital even, to say nothing of the time required to derive any 

 benefit from a cabinet of fine arts when there. The Germans 

 often wonder at the fact that we have not with us splendid art 

 collections like theirs, and infer that our people are far behind 

 them in the love of the beautiful. But so far is this from 

 being true that it is not too much to say that in those things 

 that indicate refinement, taste and cultivation, in our houses, 

 both in the cities and in the country, we are more than a cen- 

 tury ahead of them. Most of our common class, of houses, 

 in large towns especially, are furnished or arranged so as to 

 promote the utmost comfort and luxury, and those who live in 

 them are in a position to derive a far more refining influence 

 than they could from gazing at fine pictures once or twice in 

 their lives, or even every week in the year. 



The evidences of a perception of the beautiful in art in our 

 American houses are infinitely greater, and in all that promotes 

 the daily comfort, cleanliness, intelligence, refinement of man- 

 ners and ease, the houses of the same class of people, or people 

 in the same circumstances, of the two countries, are not, in 

 any respect, to be compared. How any people, pretending to 

 refinement and cultivation, can be resigned to the nuisances 

 constantly under the eyes and nose, in the houses of most Ger- 

 man families, and the want of many of the most common com- 

 forts and luxuries of life in them, it is difficult to imagine. 

 Let them have their galleries of fine art, established and sup- 

 ported by their governments who must do most of the thinking 

 and planning for the masses. We have a thousand offsets to 

 them in the houses of our people, in our kitchens, our sleeping 

 rooms and our household libraries. 



I have said, on a previous page, that among the peasantry, a 

 large jtart of the work on the farm is performed by the women. 

 This is true in Bavaria as it is elsewhere, and it is not necessary 



