An Appeal to the Yomig. 13 



You still brood over it ? Then I foresee that in two 

 ^'ears at the outside, after having suffered disappoint- 

 ment after disappointment, you will lay your favorite 

 authors on the shelf, and you will end by saying that 

 Tell was no doubt a very honest fellow, but after all 

 a trifle cracked ; that poetry is a first-rate thing for 

 the fiieside, especially when a man has been teach- 

 ing the rule-of-three all day long, but still poets are 

 always in the clouds and their views have nothing 

 to do with the life of to-dav, nor with the next visit 

 of Ibo inspector of schools. . . . 



Or, on the other hand, the dreams of your youth 

 will become the firm convictions of your mature age. 

 You will wish to have wide, human education for all, 

 in school and out of school ; and, seeing that this is 

 impossible in existing conditions, you will attack the 

 very foundations of bourgeois society. Then, dis- 

 charged as you will be by the education department, 

 you will leave your school and come among us and be 

 of us ; you will tell men of riper years but of smaller 

 attainments than yourself how enticing knowledge 

 is, what mankind ought to be, nay, what we could be. 

 You will come and work with socialists for the com- 

 plete transformation of the existing system, will 

 strive side by side with us to attain true equality, 

 real fraternity, never-ending liberty for the world. 



Lastly, you, young artist, sculptor, painter, poet, 

 musician, do you not observe that the sacred fire 

 which inspired your predecessors is wanting in the 

 men of to-day? that art is commonplace and medi- 

 ocrity reigns supreme ? 



Could it be otherwise ? The delight of having re- 

 discovered the ancient world, of having bathed afresh 

 in the springs of nature which created the master- 

 pieces of the Renaissance no longer exists for the art 

 of our time ; the revolutionary ideal has left it cold 

 until now, and, failing an ideal, our art fancies that 

 it has found one in realism when it painfully photo- 



