These things ought to be said again and again to the point of satiety,
if we wish to save any remnants. Coming from me, whose opinions carry
some weight, they are repeated when I am no longer on the spot. People
feel the justice of them, the shaft goes home. A few who are more
ardent than the rest propagate them and stir up a current of opinion
that may lead to reform. There is no reason therefore to fear repeating
them in America, where also people have fallen into the general error.
American artists have followed our teaching, altogether in a bad sense.
Notwithstanding that in taking their point of departure they could have
escaped into the good epochs of art, they have saddled themselves with
the poverty of modern taste.
Let them return to the school of the past; above all, let them return to
nature; it is as beautiful with them as elsewhere. The mountains, the
trees, the vegetation, the men and women of their own country--these
should be their masters in architecture and sculpture. America is full
of will. It desires to be a great nation. It stops at no expense in
order to obtain instruction; it creates immense universities, libraries,
museums. It pours into them streams of money. The favor with which my
work has been received there is the sign of a movement toward truth in
art; they are developing an affection for this naturalistic school which
borrows from life its charm and its variety. But all this will be as
nothing unless America creates work of its own; unless it breaks with
the old errors of the nations of Europe in order to find the path of
true science.
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE FIANCÉE.]