Things are different in Europe, and even in England. There, not only are artists and men of letters honoured when they are successful--they are, of course, honoured at that stage in America; but the pursuit of literature and art is one which a young man need not feel it discreditable to adopt. The contemporaries of a brilliant youth at Oxford or at Cambridge do not secretly despise him if he declines to enter business. The first-class man does not normally aspire to start life as a drummer. Public life and the Church offer honourable careers; and both of them have traditional affinities with literature. So has the Law, still in England a profession and not a trade. One may even be a don or a schoolmaster without serious discredit. Under these conditions a young man can escape from the stifling pressure of the business point of view. He can find societies like-minded with himself, equally indifferent to the ideal of success in business, equally inspired by intellectual or æsthetic ambitions. He can choose to be poor without feeling that he will therefore become despicable. The attitude of the business classes in England, no doubt, is much the same as that of the business classes in America. But in England there are other classes and other traditions, havens of refuge from the prevalent commercialism. In America the trade-wind blows broad, steady, universal over the length and breadth of the continent.
This, I believe, is one reason for the sterility of America in Art. But it is not the only one. Literature and Art in Europe rest on a long tradition which has not only produced books and pictures, but has left its mark on the language, the manners, the ideas, the architecture, the physical features of the country. The books and the pictures can be transplanted, but the rest cannot. Thus, even though in every art the technical tradition has been interrupted, there remains in Europe what I will call the tradition of feeling; and it is this that is absent in America. Art in Europe is rooted; and there still persists into the present something of the spirit which fostered it in the past. Not only is Nature beautiful, she is humanised by the works of Man. Politics are mellowed by history, business tempered by culture. Classes are more segregated, types more distinct, ideals and aims more varied. The ghost of a spiritual life still hovers over the natural, shadowing it with the beat of solemn wings. There are finer overtones for a sensitive ear to catch; rainbow hues where the spray of life goes up. All this, it is true, is disappearing in Europe; but in America it has never existed. A sensitive European, travelling there, feels at once starved and flayed. Nothing nourishes, and everything hurts. There is natural beauty, but it has not been crowned and perfected by the hand of man. Whatever he has touched he has touched only to defile. There is one pursuit, commerce; one type, the business man; one ideal, that of increasing wealth. Monotony of talk, monotony of ideas, monotony of aim, monotony of outlook on the world. America is industrialism pure and simple; Europe is industrialism superimposed on feudalism; and, for the arts, the difference is vital.