Where
is the rudeness of a new community, the pushing vulgarity of an
imperfect civilization, the licentious contempt of forms that marks our
unchartered freedom, and all the other terrible things which have so
long been the bugaboos of European refinement? Here was a natural
product, as perfectly natural as the deliberate attempt of "Walt
Whitman" to answer the demand of native and foreign misconception was
perfectly artificial. Our institutions do not, then, irretrievably doom
us to coarseness and to impatience of that restraining precedent which
alone makes true culture possible and true art attainable. Unless we are
mistaken, there is something in such an example as that of Mr. Howells
which is a better argument for the American social and political system
than any empirical theories that can be constructed against it.
We know of no single word which will so fitly characterize Mr. Howells's
new volume about Venice as "delightful." The artist has studied his
subject for four years, and at last presents us with a series of
pictures having all the charm of tone and the minute fidelity to nature
which were the praise of the Dutch school of painters, but with a higher
sentiment, a more refined humor, and an airy elegance that recalls the
better moods of Watteau. We do not remember any Italian studies so
faithful or the result of such continuous opportunity, unless it be the
"Roba di Roma" of Mr.
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