Page:The Galaxy (New York, Sheldon & Co.) Volume 24 (1877).djvu/158

 English culture, then, in so far as it is a luxury, is a child of leisure; whereas leisure, in America, has not yet reached that interesting period at which the parental function begins to operate. We have, it is true, a great many young ladies who "play," but we have, as compared with the English, a very small number who sketch, either in oil or water colors, who write three-volume novels, or produce historical monographs. For my own part, I regret it; for I subscribe to the axiom that culture lends a charm to life. But I have a friend, a compatriot, with whom I often discuss these matters, who takes a very different view, and who pretends that (speaking particularly for instance of the sketching) it is better not to sketch at all than to sketch badly. He here makes, as you see, two questionable assumptions: one is that we Americans do not sketch at all, the other is that the English sketch badly. In fact I should say that we do sketch a little, and that the English often sketch very well. They certainly sketch a great deal; you will hardly find an English family, I think, of which one member at least is not a client of Messrs. Windsor and Newton, the people who manufacture those delightful little miniature gingerbread-pans of cobalt and crimson lake.

My friend has a theory that English sketching is not only no proof of æsthetic talent in the people, but that it is positive proof of the absence of this gift. "It is a proof of their leisure, of their culture, of their luxury, of their wisdom, of their prudence, of their propriety, of their morality, of anything on that line that you will," he always says. "But it is not a proof of their having the painter's disposition. If they had the painter's disposition, they couldn't stand that amount of amateurishness. Observe that they always frame their sketches and hang them on the walls. It is therefore not simply the process that they value, as teaching them (as it is the pertinent fashion now to say) how to look, how to use their eyes—it is the result as well. In nine cases out of ten the result is grotesquely amateurish—the drawings are, seriously speaking, pitiful. But the English can stand that; we couldn't. We feel we couldn't; therefore we don't risk it. The English have the grossness which is proof against offence; we have the delicacy which shrinks from it. In other words, the English have not, as a people, the artistic sense, and we have it in a certain degree."

To this I always make a point of replying that if, as a society, we don't sketch, it is not because we won't, but because we can't; and if we don't hang indifferent water colors on our parlor walls, it is because we have not got them to hang. If we had them, I say, we should be only too happy. It is mere want of culture, I say, and not our native delicacy. Delicacy is shown, not in barren abstinence, but in beautiful performance. This I say, and a great deal more; but I confess I don't convince my friend, which, however, hardly matters, for he is sometimes very bitter against the English, and always judges them from the foreign point of view. Among the other things I say is that, besides, all English sketching is not bad, by a good deal; that I have seen a great deal that is very charming, and that I believe in the existence of a great deal more. I believe that there are charming things done, so quietly and privately, in those beautiful rural homes of which I was speaking just now—at those wide Elizabethan windows that look out on far horizons of their own. To this my friend answers that when I get to talking theoretically about what "must" be produced in English country houses I become very fantastic; and indeed I think it possible that I go too far. Still, I by no means give up my theory that there are watercolor sketches suspended in many of them more beautiful than any that I have seen.

The reader, however, must have