Excerpt from The North American Review, Vol. 102
The American people do not well understand, nor much care for, the arts that have to do with visible beauty. To beauty itself they are not indifferent. Beauty as it exists in nature is probably of as much concern to the Americans as a nation, as to most other nations. But they do not readily respond to the appeals of beauty as seen in art. And for the theory and practice of art that deals with beauty they care very little.
This fact would probably be confessed by every American who has considered the subject at all. It must, indeed, be evident everywhere outside the limits of narrow circles of society in our Eastern cities to every one who knows anything of art, and evident within those limits also to every one who knows art well. And yet, as facts absolute are less clearly seen than facts relative, this one can be rightly estimated only by comparison. If we compare the value set upon these arts in America with the value set upon other expressions of thought in America, or with the value set upon the same arts in Europe, we shall better understand the extent and the importance of the deficiency.
There is no more striking mental phenomenon than the interest felt by the American people in that branch of literature which is most nearly allied to art, namely, poetry.
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