art I was shown several rooms
full of daubs, having absolutely nothing to commend them, weird colors
being thrown together in the strangest manner, without rhyme or reason,
but over which people went mad. The great masters of Europe appeal to me
strongly. In America, marine painters attract me the most, for example,
Edward Moran, who is a splendid delineator of the sea. Bierstadt is a
noble painter, and so is Thomas Moran. There are half a hundred men who
are fine painters, but half a thousand men and women who think they are
artistic but who are not.

Americans have developed no individual architecture. You see
semipagoda-like effects in the East, and old English houses in the
South. They steal the latter and call them Colonial. They steal the
architecture of the Moors and call it Mexican. They borrow Roman and
Grecian effects for great public buildings. At one time they went mad
over the French roof, or mansard. Nowhere have I seen purely American
architecture. The race is not possessed of sufficient unity. So all
their art is from abroad, and notably is French and English. They make
broad effects, and give them an American name; but they are copied from
the Dutch or Germans. All the furniture designers in America are
Europeans. You will find a splendid house with a Chinese room, having
teak inlaid with ivory, etc.; a Japanese room, a Moorish room, and an
Italian room, all splendidly decorated; but the family lives in an
"American room," that is commonplace and subversive of all art digestion
and assimilation. The average middle-class American knows absolutely
nothing about art; the lower classes so little that their homes are
hopeless. Knowing this, they are preyed upon by thousands of foreign
swindlers. There are hundreds of articles manufactured in Europe to sell
to the American tourist. I have seen Napoleonic furniture enough to load
a fleet. I can only compare it to the pieces of the true cross and the
holy relics of the Catholics, of which there are enough to fill the
original ark which the Bible tells the Americans landed on Mount Ararat
in a great flood.

The houses of the best people I have told you about are as far removed
from the commonplace as the equator from the poles. They are rich in
conception, sumptuous in detail, artistic in every way, and filled with
the art gems of the world. But these people have descended from refined
people for several generations. They are the true Americans, but make up
a