In fact, the more its upper classes come under the influence of the culture of the Old World, the more ardent will become the admiration and desire of America for the antique,—for that beauty which the civilisations preceding our own created with such wealth and perfection of forms; the more strongly will it be convinced of our artistic inferiority, and persuaded that one of the treasures of life we have lost irreparably, and can only enjoy in the relics of other generations. Every picture or statue or artistic object which crosses the ocean and enters America, every museum which a rich Maecenas opens in the New World to the public or which a city or a state creates, every chair founded, and every book of artistic history printed,—everything, in fact, which brings the spirit of America into contact with the masterpieces of ancient European art, and awakens recognition and admiration for them, makes America at the same time recognise how comparatively decadent is that which our times produce; reveals to it that lost Paradise of Beauty around whose closed gates we are now condemned to hover. This contact with the artistic achievement of the past becomes, therefore, at the same time a gadfly of discontent and unrest to the upper and cultured classes. By an inverse process, the further the spirit of American progress penetrates into Europe, the more completely does it detach the Old World from its past, and, therefore, irritates, grieves, and disgusts the classes which have enough culture to recognise and admire the marvellous arts of that past. With every ten years that elapse, we feel that our past, with all its radiant glories, has receded a hundred years; that we are plunging into a new world, in which riches, knowledge, and our power over nature will increase, but which will be ugly, inharmonious, and vulgar compared with the centuries which preceded it. Many Americans fail to understand why Europe cherishes so many latent antipathies to America, which has never done her any harm, directly at least. The real reason for these antipathies must be looked for in the artistic decadence which accompanies the development of modern civilisation. That civilisation has not been created by America alone, but by America and Europe combined. Europe and America, therefore, share the responsibility for this decadence. Yet it suits the European book from time to time to see in America the symbol of the civilisation of railways, steam, electricity, business, and industry on a large scale; and Europeans gladly vent on America their spleen for whatever in this civilisation, pregnant with good and with evil, offends them and arouses regret.