Another evidence of culture among the first generations of Kentuckians is to be seen in the private collections of portraits, among which one wanders now with a sort of stricken feeling that the higher life of Kentucky in this regard never went beyond its early promise. Look into the meagre history of native art, and you will discover that nearly all the best work belongs to this early time. It was possible then that a Kentuckian could give up law and turn to painting. Almost in the wilderness Jouett created rich, luminous, startling canvases. Artists came from older States to sojourn and to work, and were invited or summoned from abroad. Painting was taught in Lexington in 1800. Well for Jouett, perhaps, that he lived when he did; better for Hart, perhaps, that he was not born later: they might have run for Congress. One is prone to recur time and again to this period, when the ideals of Kentucky life were still wavering or unformed, and when there was the greatest receptivity to outside impressions. Thinking of social life as it was developed, say in and around Lexington--of artists coming and going, of the statesmen, the lecturers, the lawyers, of the dignity and the energy of character, of the intellectual dinners--one is inclined to liken the local civilization to a truncated cone, to a thing that should have towered to a symmetric apex, but somehow has never risen very high above a sturdy base. But to speak broadly of home life after it became more typically Kentuckian, and after architecture began to reflect with greater uniformity the character of the people. And here one can find material comfort, if not æsthetic delight; for it is the whole picture of human life in the Blue-grass Region that pleases. Ride east and west, or north and south, along highway or by-way, and the picture is the same. One almost asks for relief from the monotony of a merely well-to-do existence, almost sighs for the extremes of squalor and splendor, that nowhere may be seen, and that would seem so out of place if anywhere confronted. On, and on, and on you go, seeing only the repetition of field and meadow, wood and lawn, a winding stream, an artificial pond, a sunny vineyard, a blooming orchard, a stone-wall, a hedge-row, a tobacco barn, a warehouse, a race-track, cattle under the trees, sheep on the slopes, swine in the pools, and, half hidden by evergreens and shrubbery, the homelike, unpretentious houses that crown very simply and naturally the entire picture of material prosperity. They strike you as built not for their own sakes. Few will offer anything that lays hold upon the memory, unless it be perhaps a front portico with Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian columns; for the typical Kentuckian likes to go into his house through a classic entrance, no matter what inharmonious things may be beyond; and after supper on summer evenings nothing fills him with serener comfort than to tilt his chair back against a classic support,