And I think the present generation is somewhat ashamed notwithstanding the fact that our modern system of public instruction, liberal as it purports to be, is painfully lame in the department of the arts. They are like so many sealed books to the scholars who are expected to shape our history. The policy of Donna Inez in Byron’s great epic was to withold natural history only from her son’s course of studies. Our policy is to disseminate all the natural history available. The mixed class in physiology recites its lessons unblushingly. We encourage the sciences. The farmer builds his house, to-day, with the best of sanitary arrangements; they are nearly perfect, he installs hot-water heaters and electric lights, he keeps in touch with the moving procession upon all points save one.--What does he know about Art and American Renaissance? The example of modern farm-house (Plate XVI) herewith respectfully submitted indicates the modern farmer’s limitations. So far as teaching architectural art is concerned, it must be admitted that our public schools have been a dead failure. But let us not look upon these things too gloomily, and lest the reader, by this time, discover some sinister intention upon my part to slur the memory of the hero of New Orleans, I wish to state that, personally, I have only the greatest respect and admiration for a man who positively refused to be frightened. Like Napoleon, Jackson was unquestionably the man for the hour--the times, and devilishly bad times they must have been by 1837 to have grown inimical to the very commercial interests that had let them loose. By their aid, however, are we not permitted to see ourselves somewhat as others see us, so at last, we shall have discovered the true mission of these times in the economy of art? PLATE XVIII. [Illustration: DETAIL, PRINCESSGATE. 1896.] [Illustration: A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not, the Pierian spring; For shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, But drinking largely sobers us again.] PLATE XIX. [Illustration: WYCK, GERMANTOWN. EPOCH, A. D. 1700. “The charm that is not deducible by mathematics.”--MISS POLLY FAIRFAX.] CHAPTER IV HUMBLE BEGINNINGS OF A NATIONAL SCHOOL