Art in France #251170

Certain kindly disposed confreres who have taken an interest in the following work have asked me now and then whether I intended to deal with French Art in fifty volumes or fifty pages. I have written a good deal less and a good deal more — too much or too little, it may be objected. Compared with works which exhaust the material and those which condense it into a few drops Of elixir, this little book has but one merit — that of existing. For the art of our country has never been treated as a whole, save in treatises on universal art, where the French-chapters appear in their due order, or in general histories of France, where the names Of artists defile at the end of a volume, like baggage at the rear of a convoy. Why has it not been thought necessary to coiordinate these different chapters, as has been done so efficiently and so frequently in the history Of our politics and our literature?