THE STOLID SOUTH

The citizens of Greenville, South Carolina, think that the new statue of Apollo Belvedere recently added to their museum is not quite the right thing. Not that reasons of art have led to this verdict; on the contrary, disapproval is based on moral grounds, for the single drapery hanging from the god's carven shoulder is looked upon as far too scanty a covering, and measures are to be taken to clothe the statue more completely.

The distance between Europe and America is just as great and effectual as it was when Edgar Lee Masters wrote of the Spoon River artist at Rome, with his work that looked now like Apollo, now like Lincoln. What has long gone without attention across the water still creates a tumult here. Chiselled marble brings a self-conscious blush to the cheeks of the New World, when it turns from its machines to play the esthete. And, after all why need it be ashamed of its lack of artistic sophistication: No European culture was budding let alone flowering, in as short a time as has elapsed since the settlement of America. Aesthetic minds are attained only after material effort stagnates; preeminence in culture implies that the young vigor of a nation has gone to seed, and a more mature blossom has taken its place. The South, and Greenville especially, seems to be overflowing with this young vigor, and when it turns to fields of art, its materialism becomes painfully obvious. Trousers on the Apollo Belvedere is enough to make even the unaesthetic North smile.