If he had not done it himself, he had known how to
get it done to suit him, as he knew how to get his wives and
daughters dressed at Worth's or Paquin's. Perhaps he could not do
it again; the next time he would want to do it himself and would
show his own faults; but for the moment he seemed to have leaped
directly from Corinth and Syracuse and Venice, over the heads of
London and New York, to impose classical standards on plastic
Chicago. Critics had no trouble in criticising the classicism,
but all trading cities had always shown traders' taste, and, to
the stern purist of religious faith, no art was thinner than
Venetian Gothic. All trader's taste smelt of bric-a-brac; Chicago
tried at least to give her taste a look of unity.
One sat down to ponder on the steps beneath Richard Hunt's dome
almost as deeply as on the steps of Ara Coeli, and much to the
same purpose. Here was a breach of continuity -- a rupture in
historical sequence! Was it real, or only apparent? One's
personal universe hung on the answer, for, if the rupture was
real and the new American world could take this sharp and
conscious twist towards ideals, one's personal friends would come
in, at last, as winners in the great American chariot-race for
fame. If the people of the Northwest actually knew what was good
when they saw it, they would some day talk about Hunt and
Richardson, La Farge and St.
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