Adams, Adeline: The spirit of American sculpture (New York: Nat. Sculpture Soc., 1923)

i6
THE SPIRIT OF
observation about the clog walking on
his hind legs. “It is not done well,
but you are surprised to find it done
at all.”
IV
However, we need not harp too
long and too mournfully on the physi-
cal impediments in our sculptural
start. Enormous as these were, they
were less mighty than the spiritual
obstacles set up by time and place.
First of all, it is to be remembered
that the European world of the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries was
moving on in a mild, manifest, not nec-
essarily permanent decline in creative
power as shown through the graphic
arts. The waves of that decline
reached even our own stern coast. It
is safe to say that had the American
colonists’ hour coincided with an hour
of large renascence in art throughout
I
MRS. PATIENCE WRIGHT