distinct, if perhaps at the moment negative, gain. A more visible gain I think comes from the new desire, the new determination to care for the right thing: a fashion due perhaps to the insatiable American craving for "culture," and at times guilty of unintelligent excesses, but pleasanter in results than the old crazes that filled Philadelphia drawing-rooms with spinning wheels and cat's tails and Morris mediævalism,—if they brought Art Nouveau in their train, thank fortune it has left no traces of its passing; a fashion more dignified in results than the old standards that filled Philadelphia streets with flights of originality, and green stone monsters, and the deplorable Philadelphia brand of Gothic and Renaissance, Romanesque and Venetian, Tudor and everything except the architecture that belongs by right and tradition in Penn's beautiful town.
But interest in art does not create art, and when Philadelphia believes in this interest as a creator, Philadelphia falls into a mistake that it has not even the merit of having originated. I have watched for many years the attempts to make art grow, to force it like a hot-house plant. The same thing is going on everywhere. In England, South Kensington for more than half a century has had its schools in all parts of the kingdom, the County Council has added to them, the City Corporation and the City Guilds have followed suit, artists open private classes, exhibitions have increased in number until they are a drug on the market, art critics flourish, the papers devote
