Page:The Carnegie institute and library of Pittsburgh (1916).djvu/3



A little less than a hundred years ago Hazlitt published his "Inquiry Whether the Fine Arts are Promoted by Academies and Institutions," in which he declares very emphatically, with all the critic's scorn of British Philistinism, that the arts are not dependent upon "encouraging circumstances" or any artificial props, but flourish best in obscurity. "Art is not science," he says, "nor is the progress made in the one ever like the progress made in the other."