It would seem then that however much pride we may take in Sargent’s achievements we can hardly be proud because he is peculiarly our own. He is not American in the sense of knowing the land and the people and reflecting our life and civilization. Just as little has his birth in Italy made him Italian or his residence in France and England made him French or English. No country can claim him, no people can appropriate him, for in reality he is a citizen of the world at large--the manner of man we sometimes call a cosmopolite. If there is one place above another that he can be traced to and said to emanate from it is Paris; and Paris is no longer merely the first city of France. It, too, has become cosmopolitan--the centre of modern life and the gathering-place of the world’s knowledge, intelligence, and fashion. Sargent reflects its taste and its skill, but not anything else that is peculiarly French, not anything that smacks of the French soil. The accomplishments of Paris are his, but without the sentiment or the feeling that is French. It is questionable if a man who is equally at home in London, Paris, Florence, and New York will or can have a very strong sentiment about any one of those places. He can hardly spend a winter in the United States and become vitally interested in democracy, and the next winter go to England and fall deeply in love with aristocracy. Nor can he live for a few months in Spain or Germany and penetrate to the quick the life and character of its people. The cosmopolite who moves hither and yon about the globe hardly ever takes to heart the affairs and interests of those with whom he is temporarily sojourning. On the contrary, it is rather his attitude of mind that nothing is to be taken too seriously. To ruffle one’s composure with an emotion or to worry one’s self about a sentiment is the very thing he seeks to avoid. He accepts the facts as facts, concerns himself with the appearance of things, is a stickler for the refinements, and a great student of manners, methods, and styles. He quickly absorbs whatsoever is artistic or intelligent or learned, his perceptions are very acute, his knowledge and manner are polished to the last degree; but the strong feeling that, after all, lies at the bottom of great endeavor finds no utterance in his work, and the national beliefs that are really the insistent and persistent things in both literature and art are not the mainspring of his action.