Show Environment and Genius I appears that a child born where I he could first wittingly open his eyes i upon a noble square framed In by palaces pal-aces whose frescoed and sculptured j fronts should face In gardened spaces a lovely fountain with groups b beautiful beauti-ful s statuary glimpsed through the leaves and wateni ought to feel the impulse to creative art far more than a child that first looks out on a barn and a henhouse with a = fmmi in the foreground and a woodshed straggling along In the middle distance and some cattle emerging from the background or on an empty village street athwart a dooryard with the Mondays wash hanging out In l it Yet the chances InV l hanslnS I monsely are that the farmborn or 1 I lageborn boy will feel the divine Influence Influ-ence which will not visit the soul ot the cityborn child or If city birth is not wholly alien to the creative will that it shall stir in the spirit of some boy born In a mean house on a back street or over a shop and not in the heart of a boyborn in a palace on u noble square As yet no one ran say why tills should be though no one can j deny that It Is so and we venture with t much niodet misgiving a theory which I will not perhaps hold halfway if so far as thatV D Howells In Harpers I Har-pers Magazine for March |