A strict law was passed, and has since been rigidly enforced, forbidding mental or artistic development being carried beyond a certain fixed standard, a standard attainable by all. Quite naturally learning and the arts have gradually died out among this people. Where there are no rewards either of fame or personal advancement, the spur to mental or artistic achievement is found wanting. The arts particularly have languished. Art, as is well known, can only live by the strength of the imagination--and the imagination is fed by contrasts of life and degrees of picturesqueness. One of the old American sages, Emerson I think it was, well said of the artist, “If the rich were not rich, how poor would the poet be!” Quite naturally, in such a civilization as this, no conditions exist for either creating or maintaining artistic ability. Can you not imagine, my dear Hannevig, that under such a system and order of life, time might be found to be a weighty burden? After the two hours devoted to labor, there are still fourteen waking hours to be disposed of. The people have, it is true, their clubs and their theaters, the national games, their libraries and gardens. But just because all these are free and at their command, is, I presume, reason enough for their finding the amusements thus provided tame and uninteresting. Most of the inhabitants of this city spend their days at the gymnasium. In the exercises and games there practiced, one sees the only evidence or show of excitement and interest indulged in. Both men and women are muscled like athletes, from their continual exercises and perpetual bathing. The athletic party is now trying to pass a law to permit races and contests on the old Greek plan. But the conservatives will scarcely pass it, as they urge that the Olympian games, by developing the physical powers, were in reality only a training-school for the Greek army, and internecine trouble and dissension would surely follow any such public games, as they did in the Greek states.