responsibilities of the “Grand Epoch” (see Chapter V). If there ever existed a condition of unproductive tutelage in America as is imputed by envious critics, it was during the Transitional period. In the earlier chapters of this review, I have defended American Renaissance against all detracting imputations concerning its legitimacy, its honor and its merit, and I do not think I wish to amend anything I have said.
In Plates [LXXIV] and [LXXV] I submit two remarkable views of Hampton Court, one, the Wolsey palace in the earliest Renaissance, according to Gotch, and the other the South palace (time of William and Mary) by Sir Christopher Wren, in the latest. The latter façade has already served for American adaptation, and in all probability will continue to do so, being very easily adapted to American use. And if the feat be historically accomplished the resulting composition becomes, ipso facto, American Renaissance, not English, however exotic it may at first appear, and although it be the custom to call such an architectural development “pure adaptation.” But when we consider that St. Peter’s cathedral at Rome was once an adaptation, the beautiful library of San Marco by Sansovino, also an adaptation, the Louvre and Fontainebleau, adaptations as well, I do not know that we need be particularly scandalized, nor do I doubt for one moment that, if our work be good, it will soon outlive an appellation of uncertain reflection—a word, nevertheless, which every so often must play its part in the history of art.
The school of design which has proved the greatest attraction to the blossoming genius of America is, of course, French Renaissance, preëminently at the time I write. To say that an architect is a Beaux Arts man is equivalent to speaking of a certain much advertised brand of whiskey, in that compliments are superfluous. You call him “a Beaux Arts man,” and—“that’s all.”
No Brahmin of India has his faith more absolutely defined than has the Beaux Arts man his. And he must progress, and ply his art as though he were a bishop on the chess-board, always in a designated line, and always with the same local color of the place of his matriculation except, we shall say, when he is off
CHAMBORD, “THE VALOIS SHOOTING-BOX.”
