Gallery of London. Forget that the subjects are supposed to be Greeks and Persians, and you still have, even more clearly, the essential idea of the picture: the glory and splendor of Venice in the sixteenth century. But another thought took more and more forcible hold on methat the subject, whether the apparent or the real one, would never have made the picture the great work we find it to-day had not the producer's deepest interest lain in the quality of the art with which he glorifies that stretch of canvas. Accordingly I set myself to learn my tradeI am not ashamed of the phrase—and I made up my mind that if I was ever to do anything, it would be through making myself a master of the medium, as the great men of the old time were. I set to work to find out how to begin a picture-an important and neglected step; too many are hurrying on to give what is called 'finish' before they have grounded their work in the truth which must inform and uphold the entire structure. "I studied the works of the masters in many cities to which I traveled, and made copies after Hals, Velasquez, Rembrandt, and others. But, in my great desire to build my art on the eternal principles which govern theirs, I fell almost unavoidably into an error. This was brought home to me in striking fashion by Alfred Stevens, who said to me, after seeing my picture at the Salon: Chase, it is a good work, but don't try to make your pictures look as if they had been done by the old masters.' I saw the truth of his remark; modern conditions and trends of thought demand modern art for their expression. I saw in a new light the sublime example of Velasquez. One reason he seems so near to us is that he, like ourselves, journeyed to a country where great art was to be seen, and studied and copied there. But what was so important for me just at this time was that Velasquez-with all his acquirement from the masters who had gone before him-felt the need of choosing new forms and arrangements, new schemes of color and methods of paint ing, to fit the time and place he was called on to depict. "I make sure that the marks of confidence I have received from my portrait sitters and from my students would never have been accorded me without my recognition of the need for an ever-new outlook on the questions of art. "What are the conditions in America to-day? We are a new people in a new country. Watch the crowds along Piccadilly or the Champs Elysées-you spot the Americans among them almost as easily as if they wore our flag in their buttonholes. It means that already a new type has appeared, the offspring, as we know, of European stock, but which no longer resembles it. An Englishman in a portrait by Gainsborough or Reynolds, a Dutchman by Rembrandt, or an Italian by Titian is clearly the ancestor of the Englishman, the Dutchman, or the Italian of to-day. But though the American may have some of the blood of these very individuals (quite likely of all of them), we feel that somehow he has broken away from the steady channel of heredity. And just as his look and character are different, so his art must be different. "Please observe that of the masters I have just mentioned each was a member of the nation which he has recorded, and that theirs is the characterization of the people which we know to be the true one. I could extend the list so that it would include almost every case. Van Dyck's might seem to be one of the few exceptions, but at the exhibition of his works this winter it was the portraits of Snyders and his wife-Flemings like the man who painted them—that were the best, and by far the best, however well he did in his pictures of the Genoese. "We know how far mistaken many of the books are which Europeans write about our country; but if they mistake the external phases of which such works are largely composed, how much more must they go wrong in painting portraits of our people, where the very essence of the work is an intimate comprehension of the sitter's nature. No, the great record of America must come from Americans themselves. "I would not have you understand that I am claiming superiority for our artists over those of other countries. I do no such thing. Yet in Whistler we had one of the great men of the last century; to-day we have Sargent, Weir and Wiles, Winslow Homer and Albert P. Ryder, Henri and Glackens-to name men of very varied temperaments who are among the most interesting figures in the world of contemporary art. What I mean is that it is to such painters that we must look for the composite likeness of America. more "I am tempted to give one instance of that most important of artiststhe one who registers for all time the ideals of his country; indeed, as short as my list has been, it would be too incomplete without a mention of Frans Hals. I wish I could have you with me in Haarlem, as I had a class of young students some years ago, and I would show you in the pictures so lovingly and zealously preserved in the Town Hall how these simple portraits are the greatest monument that exists to the manhood and womanhood of the Dutch people at one of the great periods of its history. I am not now touching on the well-nigh incomparable qualities these works have when regarded as examples of art, though there is a close connection among all the phases of a picture. I speak of them at present as the most splendid record we possess of the men who fought the great battles and gave the great example that Dutch history records. Dead and gone almost three hundred years, these men are brought before us by Hals's art, living, to-day. "And this brings me to certain matters which I have long considered—of the importance of art. "The knowledge we have of man in his earliest civilizations, and even from the time before that, is to a large extent derived from the relics of art that come to us. The profession of the artist is one of the most ancient that we know, and, as I tell the students about to enter it, the most dignified. Why? Because it appeals to those elements in human nature which, arriving latest in man's development up from the mere animal, are concerned with the loftiest emotions of which he is capable. And, speaking from the personal standpoint, I may say that with all my admiration for the great works of literature, as much as I am stirred by music, I still prefer the art of painting, with its permanency, its warmth, its flexibility and power of expressing the most spontaneous and momentary impressions of man to gether with the strength and stability of nature. "Just here I feel as if I ought to say a word on one question that is among the most frequently misunderstood of all the matters of art. While a generally finer appreciation of pictures prevails than we had thirty or forty years ago, there is still all too much of the idea that the beauty and importance of a picture has some relation with the beauty and importance of its subject-or even that the former thing is dependent on the latter. I cannot say too often or too strongly that this notion is absolutely false. The value of a work of art depends simply and solely on the height of inspiration, on the greatness of soul, of the man who produced it. The value of the work of art is in its quality of making you a sharer in the thoughts and sensations of rarely gifted men. And our joy in receiving them comes from our recognition that, though we have not the power to do such work, we have yet sufficient of the same qualities in ourselves to respond to them when they appear. And to me it is one of the most fascinating things to note how diversely these manifestations of genius are made. The quality of the artist's mind mirrors itself in one sort of picture quite as clearly as in another. A vulgar man might paint an angel, and have it as vulgar as himself; a person of the most sensitive and beautiful nature might paint a potato, and have it a great work of art. My proof-the only one possible in these matters-is to refer to the masters. Let us first take a man like Raphael. It is thought by many that his painting of religious subjects must be, ipse facto, his highest achievement. am not at all of that opinion. Raphael, like so many of the great artists, produced his finest works when he was depicting men and women-that is to say, in portraiture. The case of Velasquez brings us a step further. His noble career was passed, as we know, at the court of Philip IV, as painter of the ryai family and the nobility of Spain. But we feel the master's spirit quite as sensibly when he rests from his official duties and paints the buffoons of the palace-poor little half-witted fragments of humanity, who do not take the aristocratic poses of their I 1910 THE IMPORT OF ART lords, but none the less offer all the opportunity he needs for the exercise of his divine gift. Now one example more: the great painter of Amsterdam is rightly loved for his deep feeling, for mankind in its moments of sorrow and thought, as well as in its moments of pride and joy. But go with me to the Louvre, stand with me before that picture called "The Beef," and say whether the spirit of Rembrandt hovers nearer to any of his scenes from Biblical history, or any portrait of one of his own people in the Dutch Ghetto, or any portrait of the members of his family. Ah, I know I am right in this from that one picture, with its humble subject, I know Rembrandt as much as I can ever know him, I am carried back across the centuries and given a precious insight into the depths of his mighty heart and mind. 66 So, now I have told one thing that art does not depend on, let me attempt to answer the difficult question of what its source really is, or, perhaps more exactly, to give my idea of the essential phases of a great picture. I maintain that they are three in number-namely, truth, interesting treatment, and quality. 66 By truth I mean that the picture shall give the impression of a thing well seen. Form and light come in with this category, and, most important of all, character, for that, too, is in the nature, when it is well seen. "But truth is not enough-that is the We must add to it the external element. interest of the artist, and an interest which shall express itself in his manner of treatment. I have already spoken of the way art reflects the mind of its producer, and it is especially in this phase of the matter that the separate individualities most clearly appear. The stupid man, carefully trained in a school, may have his picture never so accurate a transcript of the nature before him; without the expression of a great liking for it or of an enthusiasm for the work itself, we have no whit more interest in his painting than in the objects he represents. To my mind, one of the simplest explanations of "My last criterion, that of quality, is As a matthe hardest of all to explain. ter of fact, you cannot render it in words— it is something that appeals to the eyes. You might as well try to tell what music is in its difference from mere sound as to say what gives the one picture 'quality while the thousand or ten thousand others are lacking in it. Quality comes as a result of a perfect balance of all the parts, and may be manifested in color or line or composition. In the greatest pictures it is found in all three, and then you may be sure that you are before the most consummate of human works." "Won't you say a little more of your own pictures, Mr. Chase? Which do you consider your masterpiece?" We look in the direc"It is that one." tion he points, and see only a blank canvas in a frame, high up on the wall. "Yes, that is my best work. I have painted on it thousands of times, and I know that I am getting on with my art because each year I paint a better picture there. Not that I shall ever actually touch a brush to that canvas; it is for the pictures that I paint in my mind, for the ideals toward which my actual works are directed. I am sorry I cannot show you that picture quite as I see it; I am always trying, but it keeps ahead of me the more I advance, and must remain something that no one can see but myself—the full measure of what my years as a painter have led me to realize of life and nature and art." By Lyman Abbott A Series of Articles in which the Author considers the Effect of Democracy in the Family, in Education, in Industry, and in Government' I Second Paper The Tendency of Democracy N a previous article we have seen that the American democracy of the twentieth century is the child of two ancestors-a Latin-French ancestor modified by migration to an Anglo-Saxon community, and a Hebraic-Puritan ancestor modified by intimate association with its Latin companion. We have seen that the fundamental doctrine of the Americanized Latin democracy was, in brief, that the sole legitimate end of government is to protect the personal and property rights of the individual, and, this done, the individual must be left to work out his own destiny without interference; that the fundamental doctrine of the Americanized Hebraic democracy was that society is a unit, that it is subject to certain great and immutable laws, and that the object of government is, in obedience to those laws, to aid this community in a social, industrial, and political life for the common benefit of all its members. the one philosophy, democracy means selfgovernment of the individual, by the individual, for the benefit of the individual. In the other philosophy it means self-government of the community, by the community, for the benefit of the community. In the one case it is individual; in the other case fraternal. The word which characterizes the one is independence; the word which characterizes the other is interdependence. In In which of these directions has America been tending for the last hundred and thirty years? In which of these directions should thoughtful Americans endeavor to guide the country? These articles are based on and in part condensed from a series of lectures on "The Spirit of Democracy" delivered by the author on consecutive Sunday afternoons before the Brooklyn (New York) Institute in January and February, 1910. I In which direction America has been tending is tolerably clear to all observers, whether they approve or disapprove the tendency. The immediate occasion of the Civil War was the question between the sections, whether slavery was a beneficent form of industrial organization and should be protected throughout the Nation, or an unjust and injurious form of industrial organization and should be confined within its then existing limits in the expectation of its ultimate abolition. The proximate cause of the Civil War was two contrasted opinions respecting the interpretation of a written Constitution upon two questions on which that Constitution was absolutely silent: Had a State a right to secede ? If it attempted to secede, had the Federal Government a right to compel it to remain in the Union? But underlying both questions was the still more fundamental issue between the Hebraic or Puritan conception of government and the Latin or French conception of government. The doctrine that all government is founded on a compact, when applied to the United States, naturally led to the affirmation that the Nation was a confederation of independent and sovereign States. The doctrine that all government rests on the consent of the governed, when applied to such a supposed confederation, naturally led to the conclusion. that if the consent of any one or more of these sovereign States was withdrawn, the government over them ceased to be a just government, and the right either of repudiation or of revolution followed. To Calhoun and his political associates this meant nullification, or the right of a sovereign State in the exercise of its sovereignty to refuse its assent to any Federal law which it |