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universal. The world contains a vast amount of good art of very recent
date, and every year adds to the amount. The worst thing that can be
said of the time is that it should be capable of producing so
incalculably great an amount of bad art at the same time; that the
walls of the Paris _Salon_ should be so hung with inferior work every
year that the important pictures are lost in chaos; and that, while
this is true of the _Salon_, it is true to an immeasurably greater
degree of the Royal Academy, of the New York Academy and every other
exhibition in the world, except where a selected few paintings hang on
reserved walls.

And as for sculpture, that is to say expressional sculpture, it is
even more true in this case that the poor works terribly outnumber the
good ones, though this is less noticed and makes less impression on
the public. Our English-speaking communities do not even think of
sculpture as a thing to look to for any refined enjoyment. How far the
labors of a dozen living men, all Frenchmen but two or three, may have
sufficed during the past score of years to change the public mind in
this matter, I am not ready to say; but, surely, it has not been the
general thought that sculpture is anything more than an expensive and
perfunctory way of doing one's duty to a great occasion or a great
man. This, however, is temporary. The good sculpture exists and will
be recognized. So much for expressional art.

But, as for the arts of decoration, once more, there is not so much to
be said. As yet the way to subdue technicalities and enthrone design
has not been discovered. The way to produce beautiful buildings is
known to none. The way to produce good interior decoration, good
furniture, good jewelry, beautiful stuffs, has only been seen by here
and there one, and his lead no one will follow. The fact of his having
done a fine thing, or of his doing fine things habitually, acts not as
an attraction to others, but as a warning to them to keep off. Every
artist strives to do, not as his neighbor has done, and better, but as
his neighbor has not done. The potteries work no better, because of
one pottery which turns out beautiful work. The wall-paper makers
still copy, slavishly from Europe and Japan, fortunately if they do
not spoil in copying, in spite of the occasional production of a
wall-paper which an artist has succeeded in. The carpet-weavers
caricature Oriental designs by taking out of them all movement and