San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1892-04-15
AMERICAN ADMIRATION FOR EUROPE
A Writer Asks Why 1t Is Reprehensible
to Respect Foreign Opinions.

We have long deferred to Europe in
many ways, and our satirists and critics
have scourged mercilessly what they
branded as our servility. rs the Hudson
not broadly magnificent enough, o recre-
ant American, that you must prattle of
the Rhine' Is the-the-the-Capi at
Albany or at Washington so Insignificant
that you cannot forget crumbling Col
iseum or ruined Parthenon? Are not
S2,O0O,OO0 for street cleaning in New York
enough, that the streets of Berlin or Glas-
gov must be thrown in our faces? The
Campagna, the Vale of Emma, Olympus,
Hymettus, what are they to the prairies of
Illinois and the farther west, to the valley
of Wyoming, to the Rocky mountains?"
So frowns indignant patriotism, speaking
with firm set lips, and so the nightingale
of the boards reproves us for scorning our
own children whom Europe has not yet
crowned with laurel.
But may not something be said foI
Europe? Although it be country no
longer young, is it SO hopelessly senile
that its approval is worthless? Because
we are the child of the morning, with
boundless estate of the future, do we know
everything so much more fully and wisely
Is it weakness that stirs desire in the heart
of the young painter of the prairie to see
miracles of Raphael, of Titan, of Correg;
gio? Is it seryility that draws the Ameri
can sculptor to study the marbles of An
gelo and Phidias? Is it mistrust of his own
land and its genius that sends the architect
to the schools of Paris, the physician to
Germany, the artificer to the countries that
L IL II. III -.
delphia exhibition.
Is it is the shallow love of an echo that
will not let the scholar rest until he comes
face to face with the great masters of
human lore and treads the great libraries,
their worshops! Is it slavishness or 10y.
atty of the soul which makes the land OF
Chaucer and Shakespeare, of Burns and
Scott, enchanted ground to the native of a
continent which only because it is of 70
cent civilization is not yet stepped in the
soft air of glorious tradition?
Would not our melodious monitor agree
that it is because other and smaller coun-
tries are so sincerely devoted to the main
tenance of lyric art. so versed in it, so edu-
Gated by taste and long training and ex-
perience, that their opinion is the opinion
of knowledge, and therefore that their
praise signifies what the verdict of less ex-
perience and training does not signify?
Would not and should not the word OF
Linneus command for a botanist conf
dence which the diploma of many an ex-
cellent American college could not secureS
When the audiences that made the fame
of Thalberg, of Chopin, of List, Of Rubin
stein salute Paderewski, may we not listen
with just prepossession' 1t is familiar
phrase of Cicero, laudari a laudato. APP
probation from Sir Hubert Stanley is praise
indeed, says our later version.
Is the case fully stated when it is said
that we applaud because Europe applands'
Is it not rather because we find that Europe
justly applauded? Its applause properly
bespeaks our attention: but, in fact, oui
applause does not follow ex officio, like
Diggory's laugh the squire's familiar jest;
it follows our own perception of desert
"a perception undoubtedly and properly
quickened and guided by larger experience.
George William Curtis in Harper's.