"...All real artists live in their day, in the world of their time, and draw their inspiration from it. The Victorians did not do this. The particular conditions—psychological, social and economic—were, in a sense, against them doing so. They either squandered talent for purse of turned the other cheek—from drab reality to day-dreaming romanticism.
If art is 'the direct measure of man's spiritual vision'—then the art of our grandparents reveals them in rather an unpleasant light. what they so sternly and self-righteously taught us and preached we must now sternly decide to unlearn. The parting is inevitable..." H. Tatlock Miller (from the Editorial)