justification, for how could beggars, spongers, bummers, rowdies, and illiterates impress anybody? The decent Spaniards committed the mistake of avowing their solidarity with the sorry fellows of their caste, instead of rejecting them and holding aloof from them and sending them back to Spain. So the Spaniards have brought it to pass, through a mistaken policy, that the Filipinos on their side, too, throw the good elements of the Spanish population into the same pot with the foul. Another reason why a Spanish prestige can not be thought of among us is that, with the exception of the tobacco companies, all the great enterprises in our country are carried on by foreigners and Filipinos. We owe all that is called progress not to the Spaniards, but to our own force or to foreigners." When the painter Juan Luna attracted so much attention with his picture Spoliarum it was not known that the artist was a Malay, and the work was therefore regarded and criticised from a purely artistic point of view. But as soon as the race of the painter became known, European prejudice made itself manifest. It was said that the choice of a tragic subject could unquestionably be traced back to the descent of the artist from "savages." But when did artists of the white race ever shrink from such subjects? Luna has had cause enough to complain of European injustice. The natives are charged with not being independent in art. "They can only imitate," it is said. But how many European nations one would have to strike out of the list of the civilized if that title is to belong only to those which have an art of their own! It should not be forgotten that the Spaniards have, during their three hundred years' rule, impressed a Spanish mark on the native artistic tendencies. The ethnographer who is acquainted with the woven and carved designs of the heathen tribes which have remained free from the Spaniards and from Christian civilization will certainly not be able to deny that the Malays of the Philippine Islands have a great talent for ornamental art. But if the reproach is cast against the Filipinos that they have tried to Europeanize themselves in plastic art as well as in music, they have not done differently from the Europeans--that is, they denationalize themselves and come into the great international circle of civilization, a thing that can hardly be charged as a sin against them. It is very remarkable, they say, that Europeans condemn in the Filipinos, as a mark of inferiority that which they regard in themselves as a sign of progress.