Happily an appeal to the Secretary of the Treasury--a man interested in art--resulted in an immediate reversal of the ruling, and the works of American artists come in free unless the artist declares his intention of residing abroad permanently. But while the ban on American painting is lifted, sculpture is in a bad way. Under the law only sculpture “wrought by hand” from marble or metal by the sculptor is to be classed as art. Inasmuch as the sculptor never did work bronze by hand, and nowadays very rarely touches the marble, there is no sculpture which comes within the law. The federal courts of New York, high and low, have soberly held that unless it is shown that bronzes are “wrought by hand” by the sculptor, instead of cast from plaster, which in turn is made from the clay, they are commercial products and classed with bronze cooking utensils at forty-five per cent. duty. However, a federal judge in Chicago, somewhat more familiar with art processes, has held that the New York decisions are arrant nonsense, and original bronzes by Rodin, St. Gaudens, and other sculptors, made in the only known way of producing bronzes, should be classed as art. What other federal courts may hold--each, under our wonderful system, having the right to its opinion until the Supreme Court is called upon to finally end the differences--Heaven alone knows; but for the present it behooves lovers of art to bring in their original bronzes and marbles by way of Chicago. These were some of the things Whistler--in common with many an ordinary man--could not understand. * * * * * A few years ago an effort was made to have an exhibition of his pictures in Boston. He was appealed to, but refused: “God bless me, why should you hold an exhibition of pictures in America? The people do not care for art.” “How do you know? You have not been there for many years.” “How do I know! Why, haven’t you a law to keep out pictures and statues? Is it not in black and white that the works of the great masters must not enter America, that they are not wanted----” “But----” “There are no ‘buts’ about it except the fool who butts his head against the barrier you have erected. A people that tolerates such a law has no love for art,--their protestation is mere pretence.” That a great nation should deliberately discourage the importation of beautiful things, should wallow in the mire of ugliness and refuse to be cleansed by art, was to him a mystery,--for what difference does it make whether painting, poetry, and music come out of the East or out of the West, so long as they add to the happiness of a people? And why should painting and sculpture find the gate closed when poetry and music are admitted? He did not know the petty commercial considerations which control certain of the painters and sculptors and some of the institutions supposed to be devoted to art.