Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/305

 social intercourse; to it she owes a widely diffused exercise of the art-critical faculty; and to it she owes an impulse of generous patronage which contributed immensely to the progress of all her art industries. But to it also must be attributed a conservatism which cramped the genius of her artists; a false standard which confused beauty and archaism, and an influence which contributed largely to the formalism that constitutes a distinct blemish in her character.