essentials after the years in which people were deprived of them. Another phenomenon to be noted at this point is the dominance of women in American art-matters. It is unknown in any other country. The vast majority of American men are engrossed in the drive of work, their leisure goes to sport and to the forms of entertainment that call for the smallest amount of mental effort. The women, with their quicker sensibility and their recognition of art as one of the things that mark the higher orders of life, take over the furnishing of the home and through this and the study that their greater leisure permits them, exert a strong influence on the purchase of art-works for private collections and even museums. The production of the American painter and sculptor is also much affected as a consequence, and in the direction of conventionality. I do not claim that the level of art in America would be greatly improved at present if it were the men instead of the women who took the lead; perhaps, in view of the state of appreciation in our people, it would be lowered; but I maintain that the fact that art is so much in the hands of women and the suspicion among men that it carries with it some implication of effeminacy are among the indications of American immaturity in art-appreciation. We cannot expect an art really representative of America until there is a foundation of regard for his work that the artist can build on. In the old civilizations the artist was meeting an active demand on the part of his people; in America, he has to seek desperately for a living. Albrecht Dürer summed up the difference between the two states of civilization when he wrote from Venice to a friend in the young Germany of his day: “Oh, how I shall freeze for this sun when I get home; here I am a gentleman, at home a parasite.” It will seem to many that even such famous words should not be repeated in a country where art is so often mentioned in the papers, where museums are springing up in large numbers, where unheard-of prices are paid for the work of famous men, and where even those who take no interest in art will accord it a sort of halo. But the very fact that it is relegated to the class of Sunday things instead of entering into everyday life shows that our colonial period--in the cultural sense of the word--is not yet passed. This should not be looked on as discouraging; it is natural that the formation of character and ideas should require time and I shall endeavour to show that the development is really a rapid and healthy one. The mistake Americans are most prone to, that of imagining the country to have reached a mature character and a valid expression, shows their eagerness to advance, and explains their readiness to tear down or to build up.