Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/201

 demand that French youth shall go mad with sanity of taste and judgment. His Anglo-Saxon brother in a like predicament may be as imprecise, as vague and obscure, as racial character and the genius of his language permit, but we exact of this raging Gaul that his insanity shall be beautifully measured by the canons of art. And so his excesses in anarchy appear to our judgment far more grievous crimes against taste and tact than those of less intellectually and artistically disciplined races. When he falls away from the lines of beauty his defection is more deplorable than another's. We are accustomed to count upon him as a model of elegance in all the finer paths of pleasure; and when he dips into crabbed prose or rude verse, or paints us, as a symphony of modern morals, a naked woman playing the piano, with a fashionable hat on a vulgarly dressed head, we resent the hideous joke as evidence of unjustifiable lawlessness. The Prix de Rome may have something to do with these outbreaks. The best art of the world has been spontaneous and not academic; and though we may admit that training is a priceless advantage in all paths, the individual influence of one master of his craft is far above that of all the academies ever formed. The French in all things depend too exclusively on institutions. They tired of the tyranny of Throne and Church, and overthrew the one and shook the altars of the other.