ious, _le mouvement
s'arrete_, the materials will not coalesce. The brass and the silver,
the iron and the gold, are all in the crucible, but there is no fusion,
only a discordant clash.

Alas! there is no heat. We are not warmed, as yet, with any love for
art. We are too much absorbed in the rapid accumulation of wealth, or
the passing excitement of the hour, to attend to anything that is noble
or honest or beautiful. And now that devastating war is sweeping through
the land and clogging the wheels of progress, we are learning terrible
lessons; but, with experience for our teacher, learning them well. Where
war prevails, civilization for the time must stand still. _Inter arma
silent--artes_. And so long as we consider art a marketable commodity,
and consign it, like merchandise, to soulless builders, so long will it
remain in hopeless embryo. Only by taking a personal interest in it can
we hope to make it our own.

So much for what we have done. There is little to be proud of, and
little, we hope, that will influence our future art. To which we now
turn our attention.

To begin with, great public buildings will never form a distinguishing
feature of American architecture. It is to be preeminently a domestic
style. Herein shall we differ from the European nations, for in art, as
in politics, the people are the rulers. It is discouraging, at first
thought, to reflect that no such magnificent architectural combinations
as those of the French capital can ever find place in an American city.
They are grand, they are superb, these endless successions of palaces
and gardens and triumphal arches, with groves and fountains all in
perfect symmetry, and well-balanced vistas radiating in all directions;
but they are the result of centuries of despotism--of the impoverishment
of the many and the aggrandizement of the few. This, we hope, is not to
be the fashion in America. It is true that the ground plan for the city
of Washington exhibits a design analogous to the above, but we think it
will be a long time before it exists elsewhere than on the map. The
Greeks and Romans, we know, confined their efforts to public buildings,
but that was their business. They served their Governments, but our
Government serves us: the spirit of the age points in an opposite
direction. Since we are so fond of the classic, why not have chariots
for carriages, and triremes instead of gunboats and steamers?

Our real style will first appear in our r