File:Our Philadelphia (1914) (14581906809).jpg

Identifier: cu31924032492773 (find matches)
Title: Our Philadelphia
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, 1855-1936 Pennell, Joseph, 1857-1926
Subjects:
Publisher: Philadelphia and London, J. B. Lippincott
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ve not inherited them;the single finely-proportioned mirror or decorative sil-houette on a white wall; the Colonial rooms that havecome down to us untouched, perfect in their simplicity, notan ornament too many;—all show which way the wind ofart blew. There was hardly one of the great men from anyAmerican town, makers of first the Revolution and thenthe Union, who did not appreciate the meaning and im-portance of art and did not leave a written record, if onlyin a letter, of his appreciation. Few things have struckme more in reading the Correspondence and Memoirs andDiaries of the day. But these men were not onlypatriots, they were men of intelligence, and they knewthe folly of expecting to find in Philadelphia or NewYork or Boston the same beautiful things that in Parisor London or Italy filled them with delight and admira-tion, or of seeing in this fact a reason to lower theirstandard. The critics who are shocked because we haveno aboriginal school might do worse than read some of
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UPSALA, GERMANTOWN PHILADELPHIA AND ART 385 these old documents. I recommend in particular apassage in a letter John Adams wrote to his wife fromParis. It impressed me so when I came upon it, itseemed to me such an admirable explanation of a situa-tion perplexing to critics, that I copied it in my note-book, and I cannot resist quoting it now. It is not indeed the fine arts which our countryrequires, he writes, the useful, the mechanic arts arethose which we have occasion for in a young country asyet simple and not far advajiced in luxury, althoughmuch too far for her age and character. . . . The scienceof government it is my duty to study, more than all othersciences; the arts of legislation and administration andnegotiation ought to take place of, indeed to exclude,in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics andwar, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematicsand philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematicsand philosophy, geography, natural history and navalarchitectu

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