d state of preservation, seem to be much the same in New York
and Paris, though French newspapers fancy American taste for art to be
at barbarian pitch. They should learn otherwise from the American
painting and sculpture in Paris, London, Vienna, Florence, and Rome;
they might learn otherwise from the discriminating appreciation of their
own artists at such sales as Mr. Johnston's. The worst statuary as well
as by far the best at Philadelphia last year was Italian, and some of
the worst painting as well as the best was Spanish. There is some
monstrous governmental art, no doubt, with us, but as for popular taste,
there is nothing in America so vulgar as the cheap glass necklaces, tin
spangles, and painted trinkets on the sacred images in the churches of
Southern Europe. American travellers speak of the contrast between the
beautiful cathedral and its hideous painted images bedizened with trash
to which dollar-store jewels are gems of art; and the approaches to a
splendid church or castle are very likely bedecked with clumsy,
unvolatile angels, most terrestrial and unlovely. It is true that the
decoration of temples and the adoration of images, whether under heathen
or Christian auspices, has always fostered art; but American popular
taste, low as it is supposed to be, would hardly set up in churches
statues of painted wood only fit for tobacco shops. In Rome, where
American taste is looked down upon, they have annual shows of painted
wooden figures of saints and angels, in all hues, each uglier than the
other, to be sold for putting upon the altars as votive offerings. In
fact, wherever the "Latin race" is, the popular taste runs to blocks of
the Virgin and Child resembling the lay figures in a tailor's shop.

The leading thought on this subject is that art has made greater strides
in the United States within the past twenty years than for the century
preceding. Twenty years ago there was comparatively no art public at
all. There were not a quarter part as many foreign pictures here as
to-day; there were not a fourth part as many American artists. The
department of American water colors has been substantially created
within ten years. The facilities for art education have been quadrupled
within the same period, and the wealthy who form galleries have
multiplied in like proportion. American progress in science and
mechanism, though so great, falls short of American progress in taste
and American productivity in the fine