Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/186

LANDSCAPE PAINTING design plays an important part will be better able to compete with those of Europe." We may indeed rejoice if we are at last to come into our heritage—so long withheld; if we may hope soon to secure our fair share of the treasures of the world. But if our only use for them is to copy them, to use them for models, it were better they should remain across the water. It is certain, I think, that America will one day have a school of decorative art that will win the universal admiration of the world; but if this is ever to happen, it will be because she has developed an art that is wholly her own; an art that is purely American; an art whose symbols will be the American flora and fauna as seen by American eyes and felt through the American temperament. There is only one path by which an [142]