In the presence of such a spirit, one must see the mistakes of conservatism or of ignorance in due perspective. However trying to those who suffer from them at the time, they cannot fatally warp the growth that is going on. For years we retained a tariff that obstructed the coming into the country of works of art. That is a thing of the past, and as one of the reasons used to defend it was that it protected American artists against the foreigner, so, with the abolition of the tariff, there has been more of a tendency to judge works of art for their own qualities, without question of their nationality and without the puerile idea of nurturing the American product by keeping out work from abroad. How far this mistake had gone may be judged from the fact that in a certain city of our Far West a group of painters made a protest against the attention given by a newspaper to an exhibition sent out from New York, raising no question of the quality of the work, but merely demanding that local men be spoken of when art was discussed in the paper--which promptly acquiesced, and removed the critic from his position. The case may seem an extreme one, yet it illustrates the attitude of many of our collectors and even our museum authorities who, in the name of Americanism, are “helping to fame many, the sight of whose painting is a miseducation,” to use a phrase that Mr. Berenson has applied to another matter. There is no question to-day but that America must evolve along the lines of contemporary thought throughout the civilized world. There will be a local tang to our art. Certain enthusiasms and characteristics, as we develop them, may give emphasis to special phases of our production, but there is no longer the possibility of an isolated, autochthonic growth, such as seemed to be forecast up to about the time of the Revolution. The 18th century in America with its beautiful architecture, its fine craftsmen, and its painting, is only less far from the America of to-day than is the art of the Indians. We still put up buildings and make furniture in what is called the Colonial style, but so do we follow the even more remote Mission style of architecture in our Western States, and attempt to use Indian designs in decoration. The usual fate of attempted continuings of a bygone style overtakes all these efforts. Our materials are different, our needs are different, our time is different. A glance at two houses, as one speeds by in an automobile, tells us which is the real Colonial architecture, which the imitation. At the Jumel Mansion in New York it is easy to see which are the old parts, which the restorations, although enough time has passed since the latter were made to weather them to the tone of the original places.