If not to be admired as a great artist, he was a man of great gifts and a genuine appreciator of the masters. Therefore, he is not to be confused for a moment with the ignoble _pasticheurs_ who achieve office and honours in the anæmic institutions with which we imitate the academies and salons of Europe. These are among the youthful errors I mentioned on an earlier page--depressing enough when one sees the acres of “decorative” abominations which fill our state-houses, courts, and libraries, but in reality of no great importance as a detriment to our culture. Like the soldiers’ monuments, the dead architecture, the tasteless manufactured articles of common use, they sink so far below any level of art that the public is scarcely affected by them. Only the persons trained in schools to admire the painting of a Mr. E. H. Blashfield or the sculpture of a Mr. Daniel C. French ever try to think of them as beautiful; the rest of the public takes them on faith as something that goes with the building, like the “frescoed” cupids to be found in the halls of apartment houses or the tin cupolas and minarets on the roof. The popular magazine-illustrators, poor as they are, have more power to mislead than our quasi-official nonentities. Between the pseudo-classic decorators and the frankly “lowbrow” artists of the commercial publications, the posters, and the advertisements, there is the large class of men whose work is seen at the annual exhibitions, the dealers’ galleries, and the American sections of the museums. They partake of the vice of each of the other two classes: the easily learned formula for their product being a more or less thorough schooling in some style derived from the past, plus an optimistic or “red-blooded” or else gently melancholy attitude toward the subject. Velasquez has been the main victim of their caricature in the later years, but a little Chinese, Florentine, Impressionist, or even Cubist style will often be added to give a look of “modernity” to the work. As long as there is a recognizable proficiency in drawing and painting (it is of course only for the cheaper trade that the picture has to be guaranteed as done by hand), the erudite patron or museum trustee is assured of the seriousness of the artist’s intentions, while to make the thing take with the general buyer, the most important matter is judgment as to the type of American girl, the virile male, or the romantic or homely landscape that our public likes to live with.