ke its presentation a success if it had been
achieved in London.

It was said that in any effort to arrive at an estimate of American
culture, or to state that culture in terms of English culture, we should
have to find landmarks in trifles. All these things are such trifles.
Let us concede that _Cyrano_ is not the greatest literature, nor is
Verestschagin's work the highest art; still neither the one nor the
other is properly a negligible quantity in the sum-total of the creative
work of the generation. There may be many American women who do not know
their Verdi, and it may be that Madame de Navarro's estimate of Miss
Morris, mine of Mr. Mansfield, and that of certain American critics of
Edward MacDowell are equally at fault; but it still remains absurd to
take ignorance of the Italian operas as characteristic of American
women or to talk contemptuously, as many Englishmen do, of the American
theatre, because they have no knowledge of it beyond what they have seen
of the one class of production from _The Belle of New York_ to _The
Prince of Pilsen_, or of American music, because their acquaintance with
it begins and ends with Sousa and the writers of "coon songs."

* * * * *

It will be urged that successive "crazes" for individual artists or
authors, for particular productions or even isolated schools, are no
evidence of any general culture. Conceding this, it remains impossible
to avoid the question: supposing a nation or an individual to spend each
successive six months in a new enthusiasm--six months on Plato and
Aristotelianism,--six months, taking the _Light of Asia_, Mr. Sinnett,
and _Kim_ as a starting point, on Buddhism and esoteric philosophy,--six
months, inspired by Fitzgerald, on Omar, Persian literature and history
and the various ramifications thereof,--six months on M. Rodin, his
relation to the art of sculpture in general and particularly to the
sculpture of the Greeks,--a similar six months devoted to Mr. Watt with
like excursions into his environment, proximate and remote,--six months
to Millet, Barbizon, and the history of French painting,--six months of
Russian art with Verestschagin and six with Russian literature and
politics working outwards from Count Tolstoi,--six months of philosophic
speculation radiating from Haeckel,--six months absorbed in Japanese
art,--six months burrowing in Egyptian excavations and Egyptian
history--the question is, I say, supposing a