If it is _possible_ for this nation to become artistic in tastes and habits, we shall not fail. There is no branch of special education more enthusiastically advocated and patronized. Of course the end in view will require more advocacy and more patronage—a great deal more—but we are doing so much that the necessary more will doubtless be done. It should be remembered too, that if blood tells in the matter of art culture we have no lack of blood drawn from the artistic nations. Flemings, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and even Greeks, come to New York in large numbers; and if Anglo-Saxon blood were condemned as unartistic by inevitable natural incapacity, we should still be able to produce great artists in abundance—if method, zeal, and patronage could do this thing. We will not prophesy; let us wait and see. It is understood, of course, that much, perhaps most of our art, is industrial. We need to educate a large corps of designers for useful goods, which are also ornamental; and this type of artist is so well rewarded when he displays inventive faculty that we are likely to surpass all other peoples in this department of work. It is not easy to separate completely in our thinking this branch of art from that which aims only at artistic pleasure. A design for goods may be perfect art, and satisfy all the requirements of the æsthetic sense. But it is obvious that decorative art is very close to industrial art in nature and purpose. And the purpose has always been condemned by high art, for it looks straight at the sale of the goods at good prices. It is complained every year in New York, when the art exhibitions come on for criticism, that the pecuniary motive for work, and the avidity of artists for good sales, depress the imagination of the lovers of good work. In substance, then, our trouble as to art—that we are a commercial race—seems to get into the schools and infect their atmosphere. The evil is not that success is rewarded; but that success is not possible to an artist who thinks always of his reward. Art, like religion, requires a spirit of self-renunciation. Success in art is not possible to one who consumes his energy in thinking about the sale of his pictures. To become rich by art one must be first willing to starve to death in the service of art truth. We are not demanding such sacrifices; we are only suggesting that without the spirit of them the pure art of this country will not attain the eminence which our enthusiasm seeks to reach.