Stott and Sargent are clever fellows enough; I like Stott the best.  If they had remained at home and hadn’t been taught, they might have developed a personal art, but the trail of the serpent is over all they do—­that vile French painting, le morceau, etc.  Stott is getting over it by degrees.  He exhibited a nymph this year.  I know what he meant; it was an interesting intention.  I liked his little landscapes better ... simplified into nothing, into a couple of primitive tints, wonderful clearness, light.  But I doubt if he will find a public to understand all that.

* * * * *

Democratic art!  Art is the direct antithesis to democracy....  Athens! a few thousand citizens who owned many thousand slaves, call that democracy!  No! what I am speaking of is modern democracy—­the mass.  The mass can only appreciate simple and naive emotions, puerile prettiness, above all conventionalities.  See the Americans that come over here; what do they admire?  Is it Degas or Manet they admire?  No, Bouguereau and Lefevre.  What was most admired at the International Exhibition?—­The Dirty Boy.  And if the medal of honour had been decided by a plebiscite, the dirty boy would have had an overwhelming majority.  What is the literature of the people?  The idiotic stories of the Petit Journal.  Don’t talk of Shakespeare, Moliere, and the masters; they are accepted on the authority of the centuries.  If the people could understand Hamlet, the people would not read the Petit Journal; if the people could understand Michel Angelo, they would not look at our Bouguereau or your Bouguereau, Sir F. Leighton.  For the last hundred years we have been going rapidly towards democracy, and what is the result?  The destruction of the handicrafts.  That there are still good pictures painted and good poems written proves nothing, there will always be found men to sacrifice their lives for a picture or a poem.  But the decorative arts which are executed in collaboration, and depend for support on the general taste of a large number, have ceased to exist.  Explain that if you can.  I’ll give you five thousand, ten thousand francs to buy a beautiful clock that is not a copy and is not ancient, and you can’t do it.  Such a thing does not exist.  Look here; I was going up the staircase of the Louvre the other day.  They were putting up a mosaic; it was horrible; every one knows it is horrible.  Well, I asked who had given the order for this mosaic, and I could not find out; no one knew.  An order is passed from bureau to bureau, and no one is responsible; and it will be always so in a republic, and the more republican you are the worse it will be.

* * * * *