initial commit of ebook 2061HEADmain

10 files changed, 4920 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/2061-0.txt b/2061-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e1b1bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2061-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1575 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Shorter Prose Pieces, by Oscar Wilde
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Shorter Prose Pieces
+
+
+Author: Oscar Wilde
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 11, 2019  [eBook #2061]
+[This file was first posted June 2, 1999]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORTER PROSE PIECES***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1920 Methuen edition of _Art and Decoration_ by
+David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.lorg
+
+                   [Picture: Public domain book cover]
+
+
+
+
+
+                     OSCAR WILDE—SHORTER PROSE PIECES
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                                        PAGE
+PHRASES AND PHILOSOPHIES FOR THE USE OF THE YOUNG          1
+MRS. LANGTRY AS HESTER GRAZEBROOK                         53
+SLAVES OF FASHION                                         56
+WOMAN’S DRESS                                             60
+MORE RADICAL IDEAS UPON DRESS REFORM                      66
+COSTUME                                                   80
+THE AMERICAN INVASION                                     83
+SERMONS IN STONES AT BLOOMSBURY                           90
+L’ENVOI                                                  119
+
+
+
+
+PHRASES AND PHILOSOPHIES FOR
+THE USE OF THE YOUNG
+
+
+                             (December 1894)
+
+THE first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible.  What the
+second duty is no one has as yet discovered.
+
+Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious
+attractiveness of others.
+
+If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the
+problem of poverty.
+
+Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.
+
+A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature.
+
+Religions die when they are proved to be true.  Science is the record of
+dead religions.
+
+The well-bred contradict other people.  The wise contradict themselves.
+
+Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance.
+
+Dulness is the coming of age of seriousness.
+
+In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.  In
+all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.
+
+If one tells the truth one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
+
+Pleasure is the only thing one should live for.  Nothing ages like
+happiness.
+
+It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the
+memory of the commercial classes.
+
+No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime.  Vulgarity is the conduct
+of others.
+
+Only the shallow know themselves.
+
+Time is waste of money.
+
+One should always be a little improbable.
+
+There is a fatality about all good resolutions.  They are invariably made
+too soon.
+
+The only way to atone for being occasionally a little overdressed is by
+being always absolutely overeducated.
+
+To be premature is to be perfect.
+
+Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows
+an arrested intellectual development.
+
+Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
+
+A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
+
+In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.
+
+Greek dress was in its essence inartistic.  Nothing should reveal the
+body but the body.
+
+One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
+
+It is only the superficial qualities that last.  Man’s deeper nature is
+soon found out.
+
+Industry is the root of all ugliness.
+
+The ages live in history through their anachronisms.
+
+It is only the gods who taste of death.  Apollo has passed away, but
+Hyacinth, whom men say he slew, lives on.  Nero and Narcissus are always
+with us.
+
+The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything; the young
+know everything.
+
+The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.
+
+Only the great masters of style ever succeeded in being obscure.
+
+There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there
+are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect
+profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession.
+
+To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
+
+
+
+
+MRS. LANGTRY AS HESTER GRAZEBROOK
+
+
+                   (_New York World_, November 7, 1882)
+
+IT is only in the best Greek gems, on the silver coins of Syracuse, or
+among the marble figures of the Parthenon frieze, that one can find the
+ideal representation of the marvellous beauty of that face which laughed
+through the leaves last night as Hester Grazebrook.
+
+Pure Greek it is, with the grave low forehead, the exquisitely arched
+brow; the noble chiselling of the mouth, shaped as if it were the
+mouthpiece of an instrument of music; the supreme and splendid curve of
+the cheek; the augustly pillared throat which bears it all: it is Greek,
+because the lines which compose it are so definite and so strong, and yet
+so exquisitely harmonized that the effect is one of simple loveliness
+purely: Greek, because its essence and its quality, as is the quality of
+music and of architecture, is that of beauty based on absolutely
+mathematical laws.
+
+But while art remains dumb and immobile in its passionless serenity, with
+the beauty of this face it is different: the grey eyes lighten into blue
+or deepen into violet as fancy succeeds fancy; the lips become
+flower-like in laughter or, tremulous as a bird’s wing, mould themselves
+at last into the strong and bitter moulds of pain or scorn.  And then
+motion comes, and the statue wakes into life.  But the life is not the
+ordinary life of common days; it is life with a new value given to it,
+the value of art: and the charm to me of Hester Grazebrook’s acting in
+the first scene of the play last night was that mingling of classic grace
+with absolute reality which is the secret of all beautiful art, of the
+plastic work of the Greeks and of the pictures of Jean François Millet
+equally.
+
+I do not think that the sovereignty and empire of women’s beauty has at
+all passed away, though we may no longer go to war for them as the Greeks
+did for the daughter of Leda.  The greatest empire still remains for
+them—the empire of art.  And, indeed, this wonderful face, seen last
+night for the first time in America, has filled and permeated with the
+pervading image of its type the whole of our modern art in England.  Last
+century it was the romantic type which dominated in art, the type loved
+by Reynolds and Gainsborough, of wonderful contrasts of colour, of
+exquisite and varying charm of expression, but without that definite
+plastic feeling which divides classic from romantic work.  This type
+degenerated into mere facile prettiness in the hands of lesser masters,
+and, in protest against it, was created by the hands of the
+Pre-Raphaelites a new type, with its rare combination of Greek form with
+Florentine mysticism.  But this mysticism becomes over-strained and a
+burden, rather than an aid to expression, and a desire for the pure
+Hellenic joy and serenity came in its place; and in all our modern work,
+in the paintings of such men as Albert Moore and Leighton and Whistler,
+we can trace the influence of this single face giving fresh life and
+inspiration in the form of a new artistic ideal.
+
+
+
+
+SLAVES OF FASHION
+
+
+MISS LEFFLER-ARNIM’S statement, in a lecture delivered recently at St.
+Saviour’s Hospital, that “she had heard of instances where ladies were so
+determined not to exceed the fashionable measurement that they had
+actually held on to a cross-bar while their maids fastened the
+fifteen-inch corset,” has excited a good deal of incredulity, but there
+is nothing really improbable in it.  From the sixteenth century to our
+own day there is hardly any form of torture that has not been inflicted
+on girls, and endured by women, in obedience to the dictates of an
+unreasonable and monstrous Fashion.  “In order to obtain a real Spanish
+figure,” says Montaigne, “what a Gehenna of suffering will not women
+endure, drawn in and compressed by great _coches_ entering the flesh;
+nay, sometimes they even die thereof!”  “A few days after my arrival at
+school,” Mrs. Somerville tells us in her memoirs, “although perfectly
+straight and well made, I was enclosed in stiff stays, with a steel busk
+in front; while above my frock, bands drew my shoulders back till the
+shoulder-blades met.  Then a steel rod with a semi-circle, which went
+under my chin, was clasped to the steel busk in my stays.  In this
+constrained state I and most of the younger girls had to prepare our
+lessons”; and in the life of Miss Edgeworth we read that, being sent to a
+certain fashionable establishment, “she underwent all the usual tortures
+of back-boards, iron collars and dumbs, and also (because she was a very
+tiny person) the unusual one of being hung by the neck to draw out the
+muscles and increase the growth,” a signal failure in her case.  Indeed,
+instances of absolute mutilation and misery are so common in the past
+that it is unnecessary to multiply them; but it is really sad to think
+that in our own day a civilized woman can hang on to a cross-bar while
+her maid laces her waist into a fifteen-inch circle.  To begin with, the
+waist is not a circle at all, but an oval; nor can there be any greater
+error than to imagine that an unnaturally small waist gives an air of
+grace, or even of slightness, to the whole figure.  Its effect, as a
+rule, is simply to exaggerate the width of the shoulders and the hips;
+and those whose figures possess that stateliness which is called
+stoutness by the vulgar, convert what is a quality into a defect by
+yielding to the silly edicts of Fashion on the subject of tight-lacing.
+The fashionable English waist, also, is not merely far too small, and
+consequently quite out of proportion to the rest of the figure, but it is
+worn far too low down.  I use the expression “worn” advisedly, for a
+waist nowadays seems to be regarded as an article of apparel to be put on
+when and where one likes.  A long waist always implies shortness of the
+lower limbs, and, from the artistic point of view, has the effect of
+diminishing the height; and I am glad to see that many of the most
+charming women in Paris are returning to the idea of the Directoire style
+of dress.  This style is not by any means perfect, but at least it has
+the merit of indicating the proper position of the waist.  I feel quite
+sure that all English women of culture and position will set their faces
+against such stupid and dangerous practices as are related by Miss
+Leffler-Arnim.  Fashion’s motto is: _Il faut souffrir pour être belle_;
+but the motto of art and of common-sense is: _Il faut être bête pour
+souffrir_.
+
+Talking of Fashion, a critic in the _Pall Mall Gazelle_ expresses his
+surprise that I should have allowed an illustration of a hat, covered
+with “the bodies of dead birds,” to appear in the first number of the
+_Woman’s World_; and as I have received many letters on the subject, it
+is only right that I should state my exact position in the matter.
+Fashion is such an essential part of the _mundus muliebris_ of our day,
+that it seems to me absolutely necessary that its growth, development,
+and phases should be duly chronicled; and the historical and practical
+value of such a record depends entirely upon its perfect fidelity to
+fact.  Besides, it is quite easy for the children of light to adapt
+almost any fashionable form of dress to the requirements of utility and
+the demands of good taste.  The Sarah Bernhardt tea-gown, for instance,
+figured in the present issue, has many good points about it, and the
+gigantic dress-improver does not appear to me to be really essential to
+the mode; and though the Postillion costume of the fancy dress ball is
+absolutely detestable in its silliness and vulgarity, the so-called Late
+Georgian costume in the same plate is rather pleasing.  I must, however,
+protest against the idea that to chronicle the development of Fashion
+implies any approval of the particular forms that Fashion may adopt.
+
+
+
+
+WOMAN’S DRESS
+
+
+                 (_Pall Mall Gazette_, October 14, 1884)
+
+    MR. OSCAR WILDE, who asks us to permit him ‘that most charming of all
+    pleasures, the pleasure of answering one’s critics,’ sends us the
+    following remarks:—
+
+THE “Girl Graduate” must of course have precedence, not merely for her
+sex but for her sanity: her letter is extremely sensible.  She makes two
+points: that high heels are a necessity for any lady who wishes to keep
+her dress clean from the Stygian mud of our streets, and that without a
+tight corset the ordinary number of petticoats and etceteras’ cannot be
+properly or conveniently held up.  Now, it is quite true that as long as
+the lower garments are suspended from the hips a corset is an absolute
+necessity; the mistake lies in not suspending all apparel from the
+shoulders.  In the latter case a corset becomes useless, the body is left
+free and unconfined for respiration and motion, there is more health, and
+consequently more beauty.  Indeed all the most ungainly and uncomfortable
+articles of dress that fashion has ever in her folly prescribed, not the
+tight corset merely, but the farthingale, the vertugadin, the hoop, the
+crinoline, and that modern monstrosity the so-called “dress improver”
+also, all of them have owed their origin to the same error, the error of
+not seeing that it is from the shoulders, and from the shoulders only,
+that all garments should be hung.
+
+And as regards high heels, I quite admit that some additional height to
+the shoe or boot is necessary if long gowns are to be worn in the street;
+but what I object to is that the height should be given to the heel only,
+and not to the sole of the foot also.  The modern high-heeled boot is, in
+fact, merely the clog of the time of Henry VI., with the front prop left
+out, and its inevitable effect is to throw the body forward, to shorten
+the steps, and consequently to produce that want of grace which always
+follows want of freedom.
+
+Why should clogs be despised?  Much art has been expended on clogs.  They
+have been made of lovely woods, and delicately inlaid with ivory, and
+with mother-of-pearl.  A clog might be a dream of beauty, and, if not too
+high or too heavy, most comfortable also.  But if there be any who do not
+like clogs, let them try some adaptation of the trouser of the Turkish
+lady, which is loose round the limb and tight at the ankle.
+
+The “Girl Graduate,” with a pathos to which I am not insensible, entreats
+me not to apotheosize “that awful, befringed, beflounced, and bekilted
+divided skirt.”  Well, I will acknowledge that the fringes, the flounces,
+and the kilting do certainly defeat the whole object of the dress, which
+is that of ease and liberty; but I regard these things as mere wicked
+superfluities, tragic proofs that the divided skirt is ashamed of its own
+division.  The principle of the dress is good, and, though it is not by
+any means perfection, it is a step towards it.
+
+Here I leave the “Girl Graduate,” with much regret, for Mr. Wentworth
+Huyshe.  Mr. Huyshe makes the old criticism that Greek dress is unsuited
+to our climate, and, to me the somewhat new assertion, that the men’s
+dress of a hundred years ago was preferable to that of the second part of
+the seventeenth century, which I consider to have been the exquisite
+period of English costume.
+
+Now, as regards the first of these two statements, I will say, to begin
+with, that the warmth of apparel does not depend really on the number of
+garments worn, but on the material of which they are made.  One of the
+chief faults of modern dress is that it is composed of far too many
+articles of clothing, most of which are of the wrong substance; but over
+a substratum of pure wool, such as is supplied by Dr. Jaeger under the
+modern German system, some modification of Greek costume is perfectly
+applicable to our climate, our country and our century.  This important
+fact has already been pointed out by Mr. E. W. Godwin in his excellent,
+though too brief handbook on Dress, contributed to the Health Exhibition.
+I call it an important fact because it makes almost any form of lovely
+costume perfectly practicable in our cold climate.  Mr. Godwin, it is
+true, points out that the English ladies of the thirteenth century
+abandoned after some time the flowing garments of the early Renaissance
+in favour of a tighter mode, such as Northern Europe seems to demand.
+This I quite admit, and its significance; but what I contend, and what I
+am sure Mr. Godwin would agree with me in, is that the principles, the
+laws of Greek dress may be perfectly realized, even in a moderately tight
+gown with sleeves: I mean the principle of suspending all apparel from
+the shoulders, and of relying for beauty of effect not on the stiff
+ready-made ornaments of the modern milliner—the bows where there should
+be no bows, and the flounces where there should be no flounces—but on the
+exquisite play of light and line that one gets from rich and rippling
+folds.  I am not proposing any antiquarian revival of an ancient costume,
+but trying merely to point out the right laws of dress, laws which are
+dictated by art and not by archæology, by science and not by fashion; and
+just as the best work of art in our days is that which combines classic
+grace with absolute reality, so from a continuation of the Greek
+principles of beauty with the German principles of health will come, I
+feel certain, the costume of the future.
+
+And now to the question of men’s dress, or rather to Mr. Huyshe’s claim
+of the superiority, in point of costume, of the last quarter of the
+eighteenth century over the second quarter of the seventeenth.  The
+broad-brimmed hat of 1640 kept the rain of winter and the glare of summer
+from the face; the same cannot be said of the hat of one hundred years
+ago, which, with its comparatively narrow brim and high crown, was the
+precursor of the modern “chimney-pot”: a wide turned-down collar is a
+healthier thing than a strangling stock, and a short cloak much more
+comfortable than a sleeved overcoat, even though the latter may have had
+“three capes”; a cloak is easier to put on and off, lies lightly on the
+shoulder in summer, and wrapped round one in winter keeps one perfectly
+warm.  A doublet, again, is simpler than a coat and waistcoat; instead of
+two garments one has one; by not being open also it protects the chest
+better.
+
+Short loose trousers are in every way to be preferred to the tight
+knee-breeches which often impede the proper circulation of the blood; and
+finally, the soft leather boots which could be worn above or below the
+knee, are more supple, and give consequently more freedom, than the stiff
+Hessian which Mr. Huyshe so praises.  I say nothing about the question of
+grace and picturesqueness, for I suppose that no one, not even Mr.
+Huyshe, would prefer a maccaroni to a cavalier, a Lawrence to a Vandyke,
+or the third George to the first Charles; but for ease, warmth and
+comfort this seventeenth-century dress is infinitely superior to anything
+that came after it, and I do not think it is excelled by any preceding
+form of costume.  I sincerely trust that we may soon see in England some
+national revival of it.
+
+
+
+
+MORE RADICAL IDEAS UPON DRESS REFORM
+
+
+                 (_Pall Mall Gazette_, November 11, 1884)
+
+I HAVE been much interested at reading the large amount of correspondence
+that has been called forth by my recent lecture on Dress.  It shows me
+that the subject of dress reform is one that is occupying many wise and
+charming people, who have at heart the principles of health, freedom, and
+beauty in costume, and I hope that “H. B. T.” and “Materfamilias” will
+have all the real influence which their letters—excellent letters both of
+them—certainly deserve.
+
+I turn first to Mr. Huyshe’s second letter, and the drawing that
+accompanies it; but before entering into any examination of the theory
+contained in each, I think I should state at once that I have absolutely
+no idea whether this gentleman wears his hair long or short, or his cuffs
+back or forward, or indeed what he is like at all.  I hope he consults
+his own comfort and wishes in everything which has to do with his dress,
+and is allowed to enjoy that individualism in apparel which he so
+eloquently claims for himself, and so foolishly tries to deny to others;
+but I really could not take Mr. Wentworth Huyshe’s personal appearance as
+any intellectual basis for an investigation of the principles which
+should guide the costume of a nation.  I am not denying the force, or
+even the popularity, of the ‘’Eave arf a brick’ school of criticism, but
+I acknowledge it does not interest me.  The gamin in the gutter may be a
+necessity, but the gamin in discussion is a nuisance.  So I will proceed
+at once to the real point at issue, the value of the late
+eighteenth-century costume over that worn in the second quarter of the
+seventeenth: the relative merits, that is, of the principles contained in
+each.  Now, as regards the eighteenth-century costume, Mr. Wentworth
+Huyshe acknowledges that he has had no practical experience of it at all;
+in fact he makes a pathetic appeal to his friends to corroborate him in
+his assertion, which I do not question for a moment, that he has never
+been “guilty of the eccentricity” of wearing himself the dress which he
+proposes for general adoption by others.  There is something so naive and
+so amusing about this last passage in Mr. Huyshe’s letter that I am
+really in doubt whether I am not doing him a wrong in regarding him as
+having any serious, or sincere, views on the question of a possible
+reform in dress; still, as irrespective of any attitude of Mr. Huyshe’s
+in the matter, the subject is in itself an interesting one, I think it is
+worth continuing, particularly as I have myself worn this late
+eighteenth-century dress many times, both in public and in private, and
+so may claim to have a very positive right to speak on its comfort and
+suitability.  The particular form of the dress I wore was very similar to
+that given in Mr. Godwin’s handbook, from a print of Northcote’s, and had
+a certain elegance and grace about it which was very charming; still, I
+gave it up for these reasons:—After a further consideration of the laws
+of dress I saw that a doublet is a far simpler and easier garment than a
+coat and waistcoat, and, if buttoned from the shoulder, far warmer also,
+and that tails have no place in costume, except on some Darwinian theory
+of heredity; from absolute experience in the matter I found that the
+excessive tightness of knee-breeches is not really comfortable if one
+wears them constantly; and, in fact, I satisfied myself that the dress is
+not one founded on any real principles.  The broad-brimmed hat and loose
+cloak, which, as my object was not, of course, historical accuracy but
+modern ease, I had always worn with the costume in question, I have still
+retained, and find them most comfortable.
+
+Well, although Mr. Huyshe has no real experience of the dress he
+proposes, he gives us a drawing of it, which he labels, somewhat
+prematurely, “An ideal dress.”  An ideal dress of course it is not;
+“passably picturesque,” he says I may possibly think it; well, passably
+picturesque it may be, but not beautiful, certainly, simply because it is
+not founded on right principles, or, indeed, on any principles at all.
+Picturesqueness one may get in a variety of ways; ugly things that are
+strange, or unfamiliar to us, for instance, may be picturesque, such as a
+late sixteenth-century costume, or a Georgian house.  Ruins, again, may
+be picturesque, but beautiful they never can be, because their lines are
+meaningless.  Beauty, in fact, is to be got only from the perfection of
+principles; and in “the ideal dress” of Mr. Huyshe there are no ideas or
+principles at all, much less the perfection of either.  Let us examine
+it, and see its faults; they are obvious to any one who desires more than
+a “Fancy-dress ball” basis for costume.  To begin with, the hat and boots
+are all wrong.  Whatever one wears on the extremities, such as the feet
+and head, should, for the sake of comfort, be made of a soft material,
+and for the sake of freedom should take its shape from the way one
+chooses to wear it, and not from any stiff, stereotyped design of hat or
+boot maker.  In a hat made on right principles one should be able to turn
+the brim up or down according as the day is dark or fair, dry or wet; but
+the hat brim of Mr. Huyshe’s drawing is perfectly stiff, and does not
+give much protection to the face, or the possibility of any at all to the
+back of the head or the ears, in case of a cold east wind; whereas the
+bycocket, a hat made in accordance with the right laws, can be turned
+down behind and at the sides, and so give the same warmth as a hood.  The
+crown, again, of Mr. Huyshe’s hat is far too high; a high crown
+diminishes the stature of a small person, and in the case of any one who
+is tall is a great inconvenience when one is getting in and out of
+hansoms and railway carriages, or passing under a street awning: in no
+case is it of any value whatsoever, and being useless it is of course
+against the principles of dress.
+
+As regards the boots, they are not quite so ugly or so uncomfortable as
+the hat; still they are evidently made of stiff leather, as otherwise
+they would fall down to the ankle, whereas the boot should be made of
+soft leather always, and if worn high at all must be either laced up the
+front or carried well over the knee: in the latter case one combines
+perfect freedom for walking together with perfect protection against
+rain, neither of which advantages a short stiff boot will ever give one,
+and when one is resting in the house the long soft boot can be turned
+down as the boot of 1640 was.  Then there is the overcoat: now, what are
+the right principles of an overcoat?  To begin with, it should be capable
+of being easily put on or off, and worn over any kind of dress;
+consequently it should never have narrow sleeves, such as are shown in
+Mr. Huyshe’s drawing.  If an opening or slit for the arm is required it
+should be made quite wide, and may be protected by a flap, as in that
+excellent overall the modern Inverness cape; secondly, it should not be
+too tight, as otherwise all freedom of walking is impeded.  If the young
+gentleman in the drawing buttons his overcoat he may succeed in being
+statuesque, though that I doubt very strongly, but he will never succeed
+in being swift; his _super-totus_ is made for him on no principle
+whatsoever; a _super-totus_, or overall, should be capable of being worn
+long or short, quite loose or moderately tight, just as the wearer
+wishes; he should be able to have one arm free and one arm covered or
+both arms free or both arms covered, just as he chooses for his
+convenience in riding, walking, or driving; an overall again should never
+be heavy, and should always be warm: lastly, it should be capable of
+being easily carried if one wants to take it off; in fact, its principles
+are those of freedom and comfort, and a cloak realizes them all, just as
+much as an overcoat of the pattern suggested by Mr. Huyshe violates them.
+
+The knee-breeches are of course far too tight; any one who has worn them
+for any length of time—any one, in fact, whose views on the subject are
+not purely theoretical—will agree with me there; like everything else in
+the dress, they are a great mistake.  The substitution of the jacket for
+the coat and waistcoat of the period is a step in the right direction,
+which I am glad to see; it is, however, far too tight over the hips for
+any possible comfort.  Whenever a jacket or doublet comes below the waist
+it should be slit at each side.  In the seventeenth century the skirt of
+the jacket was sometimes laced on by points and tags, so that it could be
+removed at will, sometimes it was merely left open at the sides: in each
+case it exemplified what are always the true principles of dress, I mean
+freedom and adaptability to circumstances.
+
+Finally, as regards drawings of this kind, I would point out that there
+is absolutely no limit at all to the amount of “passably picturesque”
+costumes which can be either revived or invented for us; but that unless
+a costume is founded on principles and exemplified laws, it never can be
+of any real value to us in the reform of dress.  This particular drawing
+of Mr. Huyshe’s, for instance, proves absolutely nothing, except that our
+grandfathers did not understand the proper laws of dress.  There is not a
+single rule of right costume which is not violated in it, for it gives us
+stiffness, tightness and discomfort instead of comfort, freedom and ease.
+
+Now here, on the other hand, is a dress which, being founded on
+principles, can serve us as an excellent guide and model; it has been
+drawn for me, most kindly, by Mr. Godwin from the Duke of Newcastle’s
+delightful book on horsemanship, a book which is one of our best
+authorities on our best era of costume.  I do not of course propose it
+necessarily for absolute imitation; that is not the way in which one
+should regard it; it is not, I mean, a revival of a dead costume, but a
+realization of living laws.  I give it as an example of a particular
+application of principles which are universally right.  This rationally
+dressed young man can turn his hat brim down if it rains, and his loose
+trousers and boots down if he is tired—that is, he can adapt his costume
+to circumstances; then he enjoys perfect freedom, the arms and legs are
+not made awkward or uncomfortable by the excessive tightness of narrow
+sleeves and knee-breeches, and the hips are left quite untrammelled,
+always an important point; and as regards comfort, his jacket is not too
+loose for warmth, nor too close for respiration; his neck is well
+protected without being strangled, and even his ostrich feathers, if any
+Philistine should object to them, are not merely dandyism, but fan him
+very pleasantly, I am sure, in summer, and when the weather is bad they
+are no doubt left at home, and his cloak taken out.  _The value of the
+dress is simply that every separate article of it expresses a law_.  My
+young man is consequently apparelled with ideas, while Mr. Huyshe’s young
+man is stiffened with facts; the latter teaches one nothing; from the
+former one learns everything.  I need hardly say that this dress is good,
+not because it is seventeenth century, but because it is constructed on
+the true principles of costume, just as a square lintel or pointed arch
+is good, not because one may be Greek and the other Gothic, but because
+each of them is the best method of spanning a certain-sized opening, or
+resisting a certain weight.  The fact, however, that this dress was
+generally worn in England two centuries and a half ago shows at least
+this, that the right laws of dress have been understood and realized in
+our country, and so in our country may be realized and understood again.
+As regards the absolute beauty of this dress and its meaning, I should
+like to say a few words more.  Mr. Wentworth Huyshe solemnly announces
+that “he and those who think with him” cannot permit this question of
+beauty to be imported into the question of dress; that he and those who
+think with him take “practical views on the subject,” and so on.  Well, I
+will not enter here into a discussion as to how far any one who does not
+take beauty and the value of beauty into account can claim to be
+practical at all.  The word practical is nearly always the last refuge of
+the uncivilized.  Of all misused words it is the most evilly treated.
+But what I want to point out is that beauty is essentially organic; that
+is, it comes, not from without, but from within, not from any added
+prettiness, but from the perfection of its own being; and that
+consequently, as the body is beautiful, so all apparel that rightly
+clothes it must be beautiful also in its construction and in its lines.
+
+I have no more desire to define ugliness than I have daring to define
+beauty; but still I would like to remind those who mock at beauty as
+being an unpractical thing of this fact, that an ugly thing is merely a
+thing that is badly made, or a thing that does not serve it purpose; that
+ugliness is want of fitness; that ugliness is failure; that ugliness is
+uselessness, such as ornament in the wrong place, while beauty, as some
+one finely said, is the purgation of all superfluities.  There is a
+divine economy about beauty; it gives us just what is needful and no
+more, whereas ugliness is always extravagant; ugliness is a spendthrift
+and wastes its material; in fine, ugliness—and I would commend this
+remark to Mr. Wentworth Huyshe—ugliness, as much in costume as in
+anything else, is always the sign that somebody has been unpractical.  So
+the costume of the future in England, if it is founded on the true laws
+of freedom, comfort, and adaptability to circumstances, cannot fail to be
+most beautiful also, because beauty is the sign always of the rightness
+of principles, the mystical seal that is set upon what is perfect, and
+upon what is perfect only.
+
+As for your other correspondent, the first principle of dress that all
+garments should be hung from the shoulders and not from the waist seems
+to me to be generally approved of, although an “Old Sailor” declares that
+no sailors or athletes ever suspend their clothes from the shoulders, but
+always from the hips.  My own recollection of the river and running
+ground at Oxford—those two homes of Hellenism in our little Gothic
+town—is that the best runners and rowers (and my own college turned out
+many) wore always a tight jersey, with short drawers attached to it, the
+whole costume being woven in one piece.  As for sailors, it is true, I
+admit, and the bad custom seems to involve that constant “hitching up” of
+the lower garments which, however popular in transpontine dramas, cannot,
+I think, but be considered an extremely awkward habit; and as all
+awkwardness comes from discomfort of some kind, I trust that this point
+in our sailor’s dress will be looked to in the coming reform of our navy,
+for, in spite of all protests, I hope we are about to reform everything,
+from torpedoes to top-hats, and from crinolettes to cruises.
+
+Then as regards clogs, my suggestion of them seems to have aroused a
+great deal of terror.  Fashion in her high-heeled boots has screamed, and
+the dreadful word “anachronism” has been used.  Now, whatever is useful
+cannot be an anachronism.  Such a word is applicable only to the revival
+of some folly; and, besides, in the England of our own day clogs are
+still worn in many of our manufacturing towns, such as Oldham.  I fear
+that in Oldham they may not be dreams of beauty; in Oldham the art of
+inlaying them with ivory and with pearl may possibly be unknown; yet in
+Oldham they serve their purpose.  Nor is it so long since they were worn
+by the upper classes of this country generally.  Only a few days ago I
+had the pleasure of talking to a lady who remembered with affectionate
+regret the clogs of her girlhood; they were, according to her, not too
+high nor too heavy, and were provided, besides, with some kind of spring
+in the sole so as to make them the more supple for the foot in walking.
+Personally, I object to all additional height being given to a boot or
+shoe; it is really against the proper principles of dress, although, if
+any such height is to be given it should be by means of two props; not
+one; but what I should prefer to see is some adaptation of the divided
+skirt or long and moderately loose knickerbockers.  If, however, the
+divided skirt is to be of any positive value, it must give up all idea of
+“being identical in appearance with an ordinary skirt”; it must diminish
+the moderate width of each of its divisions, and sacrifice its foolish
+frills and flounces; the moment it imitates a dress it is lost; but let
+it visibly announce itself as what it actually is, and it will go far
+towards solving a real difficulty.  I feel sure that there will be found
+many graceful and charming girls ready to adopt a costume founded on
+these principles, in spite of Mr. Wentworth Huyshe’s terrible threat that
+he will not propose to them as long as they wear it, for all charges of a
+want of womanly character in these forms of dress are really meaningless;
+every right article of apparel belongs equally to both sexes, and there
+is absolutely no such thing as a definitely feminine garment.  One word
+of warning I should like to be allowed to give: The over-tunic should be
+made full and moderately loose; it may, if desired, be shaped more or
+less to the figure, but in no case should it be confined at the waist by
+any straight band or belt; on the contrary, it should fall from the
+shoulder to the knee, or below it, in fine curves and vertical lines,
+giving more freedom and consequently more grace.  Few garments are so
+absolutely unbecoming as a belted tunic that reaches to the knees, a fact
+which I wish some of our Rosalinds would consider when they don doublet
+and hose; indeed, to the disregard of this artistic principle is due the
+ugliness, the want of proportion, in the Bloomer costume, a costume which
+in other respects is sensible.
+
+
+
+
+COSTUME
+
+
+ARE we not all weary of him, that venerable impostor fresh from the steps
+of the Piazza di Spagna, who, in the leisure moments that he can spare
+from his customary organ, makes the round of the studios and is waited
+for in Holland Park?  Do we not all recognize him, when, with the gay
+_insouciance_ of his nation, he reappears on the walls of our summer
+exhibitions as everything that he is not, and as nothing that he is,
+glaring at us here as a patriarch of Canaan, here beaming as a brigand
+from the Abruzzi?  Popular is he, this poor peripatetic professor of
+posing, with those whose joy it is to paint the posthumous portrait of
+the last philanthropist who in his lifetime had neglected to be
+photographed,—yet he is the sign of the decadence, the symbol of decay.
+
+For all costumes are caricatures.  The basis of Art is not the Fancy
+Ball.  Where there is loveliness of dress, there is no dressing up.  And
+so, were our national attire delightful in colour, and in construction
+simple and sincere; were dress the expression of the loveliness that it
+shields and of the swiftness and motion that it does not impede; did its
+lines break from the shoulder instead of bulging from the waist; did the
+inverted wineglass cease to be the ideal of form; were these things
+brought about, as brought about they will be, then would painting be no
+longer an artificial reaction against the ugliness of life, but become,
+as it should be, the natural expression of life’s beauty.  Nor would
+painting merely, but all the other arts also, be the gainers by a change
+such as that which I propose; the gainers, I mean, through the increased
+atmosphere of Beauty by which the artists would be surrounded and in
+which they would grow up.  For Art is not to be taught in Academies.  It
+is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist.
+The real schools should be the streets.  There is not, for instance, a
+single delicate line, or delightful proportion, in the dress of the
+Greeks, which is not echoed exquisitely in their architecture.  A nation
+arrayed in stove-pipe hats and dress-improvers might have built the
+Pantechnichon possibly, but the Parthenon never.  And finally, there is
+this to be said: Art, it is true, can never have any other claim but her
+own perfection, and it may be that the artist, desiring merely to
+contemplate and to create, is wise in not busying himself about change in
+others: yet wisdom is not always the best; there are times when she sinks
+to the level of common-sense; and from the passionate folly of those—and
+there are many—who desire that Beauty shall be confined no longer to the
+_bric-à-brac_ of the collector and the dust of the museum, but shall be,
+as it should be, the natural and national inheritance of all,—from this
+noble unwisdom, I say, who knows what new loveliness shall be given to
+life, and, under these more exquisite conditions, what perfect artist
+born?  _Le milieu se renouvelant_, _l’art se renouvelle_.
+
+
+
+
+THE AMERICAN INVASION
+
+
+                               (March 1887)
+
+A TERRIBLE danger is hanging over the Americans in London.  Their future
+and their reputation this season depend entirely on the success of
+Buffalo Bill and Mrs. Brown-Potter.  The former is certain to draw; for
+English people are far more interested in American barbarism than they
+are in American civilization.  When they sight Sandy Hook they look to
+their rifles and ammunition; and, after dining once at Delmonico’s, start
+off for Colorado or California, for Montana or the Yellow Stone Park.
+Rocky Mountains charm them more than riotous millionaires; they have been
+known to prefer buffaloes to Boston.  Why should they not?  The cities of
+America are inexpressibly tedious.  The Bostonians take their learning
+too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an
+atmosphere; their “Hub,” as they call it, is the paradise of prigs.
+Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustle and bores.  Political
+life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry.
+Baltimore is amusing for a week, but Philadelphia is dreadfully
+provincial; and though one can dine in New York one could not dwell
+there.  Better the Far West with its grizzly bears and its untamed
+cowboys, its free open-air life and its free open-air manners, its
+boundless prairie and its boundless mendacity!  This is what Buffalo Bill
+is going to bring to London; and we have no doubt that London will fully
+appreciate his show.
+
+With regard to Mrs. Brown-Potter, as acting is no longer considered
+absolutely essential for success on the English stage, there is really no
+reason why the pretty bright-eyed lady who charmed us all last June by
+her merry laugh and her nonchalant ways, should not—to borrow an
+expression from her native language—make a big boom and paint the town
+red.  We sincerely hope she will; for, on the whole, the American
+invasion has done English society a great deal of good.  American women
+are bright, clever, and wonderfully cosmopolitan.  Their patriotic
+feelings are limited to an admiration for Niagara and a regret for the
+Elevated Railway; and, unlike the men, they never bore us with Bunkers
+Hill.  They take their dresses from Paris and their manners from
+Piccadilly, and wear both charmingly.  They have a quaint pertness, a
+delightful conceit, a native self-assertion.  They insist on being paid
+compliments and have almost succeeded in making Englishmen eloquent.  For
+our aristocracy they have an ardent admiration; they adore titles and are
+a permanent blow to Republican principles.  In the art of amusing men
+they are adepts, both by nature and education, and can actually tell a
+story without forgetting the point—an accomplishment that is extremely
+rare among the women of other countries.  It is true that they lack
+repose and that their voices are somewhat harsh and strident when they
+land first at Liverpool; but after a time one gets to love those pretty
+whirlwinds in petticoats that sweep so recklessly through society and are
+so agitating to all duchesses who have daughters.  There is something
+fascinating in their funny, exaggerated gestures and their petulant way
+of tossing the head.  Their eyes have no magic nor mystery in them, but
+they challenge us for combat; and when we engage we are always worsted.
+Their lips seem made for laughter and yet they never grimace.  As for
+their voices they soon get them into tune.  Some of them have been known
+to acquire a fashionable drawl in two seasons; and after they have been
+presented to Royalty they all roll their R’s as vigorously as a young
+equerry or an old lady-in-waiting.  Still, they never really lose their
+accent; it keeps peeping out here and there, and when they chatter
+together they are like a bevy of peacocks.  Nothing is more amusing than
+to watch two American girls greeting each other in a drawing-room or in
+the Row.  They are like children with their shrill staccato cries of
+wonder, their odd little exclamations.  Their conversation sounds like a
+series of exploding crackers; they are exquisitely incoherent and use a
+sort of primitive, emotional language.  After five minutes they are left
+beautifully breathless and look at each other half in amusement and half
+in affection.  If a stolid young Englishman is fortunate enough to be
+introduced to them he is amazed at their extraordinary vivacity, their
+electric quickness of repartee, their inexhaustible store of curious
+catchwords.  He never really understands them, for their thoughts flutter
+about with the sweet irresponsibility of butterflies; but he is pleased
+and amused and feels as if he were in an aviary.  On the whole, American
+girls have a wonderful charm and, perhaps, the chief secret of their
+charm is that they never talk seriously except about amusements.  They
+have, however, one grave fault—their mothers.  Dreary as were those old
+Pilgrim Fathers who left our shores more than two centuries ago to found
+a New England beyond the seas, the Pilgrim Mothers who have returned to
+us in the nineteenth century are drearier still.
+
+Here and there, of course, there are exceptions, but as a class they are
+either dull, dowdy or dyspeptic.  It is only fair to the rising
+generation of America to state that they are not to blame for this.
+Indeed, they spare no pains at all to bring up their parents properly and
+to give them a suitable, if somewhat late, education.  From its earliest
+years every American child spends most of its time in correcting the
+faults of its father and mother; and no one who has had the opportunity
+of watching an American family on the deck of an Atlantic steamer, or in
+the refined seclusion of a New York boarding-house, can fail to have been
+struck by this characteristic of their civilization.  In America the
+young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the
+full benefits of their inexperience.  A boy of only eleven or twelve
+years of age will firmly but kindly point out to his father his defects
+of manner or temper; will never weary of warning him against
+extravagance, idleness, late hours, unpunctuality, and the other
+temptations to which the aged are so particularly exposed; and sometimes,
+should he fancy that he is monopolizing too much of the conversation at
+dinner, will remind him, across the table, of the new child’s adage,
+“Parents should be seen, not heard.”  Nor does any mistaken idea of
+kindness prevent the little American girl from censuring her mother
+whenever it is necessary.  Often, indeed, feeling that a rebuke conveyed
+in the presence of others is more truly efficacious than one merely
+whispered in the quiet of the nursery, she will call the attention of
+perfect strangers to her mother’s general untidiness, her want of
+intellectual Boston conversation, immoderate love of iced water and green
+corn, stinginess in the matter of candy, ignorance of the usages of the
+best Baltimore Society, bodily ailments, and the like.  In fact, it may
+be truly said that no American child is ever blind to the deficiencies of
+its parents, no matter how much it may love them.
+
+Yet, somehow, this educational system has not been so successful as it
+deserved.  In many cases, no doubt, the material with which the children
+had to deal was crude and incapable of real development; but the fact
+remains that the American mother is a tedious person.  The American
+father is better, for he is never seen in London.  He passes his life
+entirely in Wall Street and communicates with his family once a month by
+means of a telegram in cipher.  The mother, however, is always with us,
+and, lacking the quick imitative faculty of the younger generation,
+remains uninteresting and provincial to the last.  In spite of her,
+however, the American girl is always welcome.  She brightens our dull
+dinner parties for us and makes life go pleasantly by for a season.  In
+the race for coronets she often carries off the prize; but, once she has
+gained the victory, she is generous and forgives her English rivals
+everything, even their beauty.
+
+Warned by the example of her mother that American women do not grow old
+gracefully, she tries not to grow old at all and often succeeds.  She has
+exquisite feet and hands, is always _bien chaussée et bien gantée_ and
+can talk brilliantly upon any subject, provided that she knows nothing
+about it.
+
+Her sense of humour keeps her from the tragedy of a _grande passion_,
+and, as there is neither romance nor humility in her love, she makes an
+excellent wife.  What her ultimate influence on English life will be it
+is difficult to estimate at present; but there can be no doubt that, of
+all the factors that have contributed to the social revolution of London,
+there are few more important, and none more delightful, than the American
+Invasion.
+
+
+
+
+SERMONS IN STONES AT BLOOMSBURY
+
+
+               THE NEW SCULPTURE ROOM AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM
+
+                              (October 1887)
+
+THROUGH the exertions of Sir Charles Newton, to whom every student of
+classic art should be grateful, some of the wonderful treasures so long
+immured in the grimy vaults of the British Museum have at last been
+brought to light, and the new Sculpture Room now opened to the public
+will amply repay the trouble of a visit, even from those to whom art is a
+stumbling-block and a rock of offence.  For setting aside the mere beauty
+of form, outline and mass, the grace and loveliness of design and the
+delicacy of technical treatment, here we have shown to us what the Greeks
+and Romans thought about death; and the philosopher, the preacher, the
+practical man of the world, and even the Philistine himself, cannot fail
+to be touched by these “sermons in stones,” with their deep significance,
+their fertile suggestion, their plain humanity.  Common tombstones they
+are, most of them, the work not of famous artists but of simple
+handicraftsmen, only they were wrought in days when every handicraft was
+an art.  The finest specimens, from the purely artistic point of view,
+are undoubtedly the two _stelai_ found at Athens.  They are both the
+tombstones of young Greek athletes.  In one the athlete is represented
+handing his _strigil_ to his slave, in the other the athlete stands
+alone, _strigil_ in hand.  They do not belong to the greatest period of
+Greek art, they have not the grand style of the Phidian age, but they are
+beautiful for all that, and it is impossible not to be fascinated by
+their exquisite grace and by the treatment which is so simple in its
+means, so subtle in its effect.  All the tombstones, however, are full of
+interest.  Here is one of two ladies of Smyrna who were so remarkable in
+their day that the city voted them honorary crowns; here is a Greek
+doctor examining a little boy who is suffering from indigestion; here is
+the memorial of Xanthippus who, probably, was a martyr to gout, as he is
+holding in his hand the model of a foot, intended, no doubt, as a votive
+offering to some god.  A lovely _stele_ from Rhodes gives us a family
+group.  The husband is on horseback and is bidding farewell to his wife,
+who seems as if she would follow him but is being held back by a little
+child.  The pathos of parting from those we love is the central motive of
+Greek funeral art.  It is repeated in every possible form, and each mute
+marble stone seems to murmur _χαîρε_.  Roman art is different.  It
+introduces vigorous and realistic portraiture and deals with pure family
+life far more frequently than Greek art does.  They are very ugly, those
+stern-looking Roman men and women whose portraits are exhibited on their
+tombs, but they seem to have been loved and respected by their children
+and their servants.  Here is the monument of Aphrodisius and Atilia, a
+Roman gentleman and his wife, who died in Britain many centuries ago, and
+whose tombstone was found in the Thames; and close by it stands a _stele_
+from Rome with the busts of an old married couple who are certainly
+marvellously ill-favoured.  The contrast between the abstract Greek
+treatment of the idea of death and the Roman concrete realization of the
+individuals who have died is extremely curious.
+
+Besides the tombstones, the new Sculpture Room contains some most
+fascinating examples of Roman decorative art under the Emperors.  The
+most wonderful of all, and this alone is worth a trip to Bloomsbury, is a
+bas-relief representing a marriage scene, Juno Pronuba is joining the
+hands of a handsome young noble and a very stately lady.  There is all
+the grace of Perugino in this marble, all the grace of Raphael even.  The
+date of it is uncertain, but the particular cut of the bridegroom’s beard
+seems to point to the time of the Emperor Hadrian.  It is clearly the
+work of Greek artists and is one of the most beautiful bas-reliefs in the
+whole Museum.  There is something in it which reminds one of the music
+and the sweetness of Propertian verse.  Then we have delightful friezes
+of children.  One representing children playing on musical instruments
+might have suggested much of the plastic art of Florence.  Indeed, as we
+view these marbles it is not difficult to see whence the Renaissance
+sprang and to what we owe the various forms of Renaissance art.  The
+frieze of the Muses, each of whom wears in her hair a feather plucked
+from the wings of the vanquished sirens, is extremely fine; there is a
+lovely little bas-relief of two cupids racing in chariots; and the frieze
+of recumbent Amazons has some splendid qualities of design.  A frieze of
+children playing with the armour of the god Mars should also be
+mentioned.  It is full of fancy and delicate humour.
+
+We hope that some more of the hidden treasures will shortly be catalogued
+and shown.  In the vaults at present there is a very remarkable
+bas-relief of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, and another representing
+the professional mourners weeping over the body of the dead.  The fine
+cast of the Lion of Chæronea should also be brought up, and so should the
+_stele_ with the marvellous portrait of the Roman slave.  Economy is an
+excellent public virtue, but the parsimony that allows valuable works of
+art to remain in the grim and gloom of a damp cellar is little short of a
+detestable public vice.
+
+
+
+
+L’ENVOI
+
+
+An introduction to _Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf_ by Rennell Rodd, published
+by J. M. Stoddart and Co., Philadelphia, 1882.
+
+AMONGST the many young men in England who are seeking along with me to
+continue and to perfect the English Renaissance—_jeunes guerriers du
+drapeau romantique_, as Gautier would have called us—there is none whose
+love of art is more flawless and fervent, whose artistic sense of beauty
+is more subtle and more delicate—none, indeed, who is dearer to
+myself—than the young poet whose verses I have brought with me to
+America; verses full of sweet sadness, and yet full of joy; for the most
+joyous poet is not he who sows the desolate highways of this world with
+the barren seed of laughter, but he who makes his sorrow most musical,
+this indeed being the meaning of joy in art—that incommunicable element
+of artistic delight which, in poetry, for instance, comes from what Keats
+called “sensuous life of verse,” the element of song in the singing, made
+so pleasurable to us by that wonder of motion which often has its origin
+in mere musical impulse, and in painting is to be sought for, from the
+subject never, but from the pictorial charm only—the scheme and symphony
+of the colour, the satisfying beauty of the design: so that the ultimate
+expression of our artistic movement in painting has been, not in the
+spiritual vision of the Pre-Raphaelites, for all their marvel of Greek
+legend and their mystery of Italian song, but in the work of such men as
+Whistler and Albert Moore, who have raised design and colour to the ideal
+level of poetry and music.  For the quality of their exquisite painting
+comes from the mere inventive and creative handling of line and colour,
+from a certain form and choice of beautiful workmanship, which, rejecting
+all literary reminiscence and all metaphysical idea, is in itself
+entirely satisfying to the æsthetic sense—is, as the Greeks would say, an
+end in itself; the effect of their work being like the effect given to us
+by music; for music is the art in which form and matter are always
+one—the art whose subject cannot be separated from the method of its
+expression; the art which most completely realizes for us the artistic
+ideal, and is the condition to which all the other arts are constantly
+aspiring.
+
+Now, this increased sense of the absolutely satisfying value of beautiful
+workmanship, this recognition of the primary importance of the sensuous
+element in art, this love of art for art’s sake, is the point in which we
+of the younger school have made a departure from the teaching of Mr.
+Ruskin,—a departure definite and different and decisive.
+
+Master indeed of the knowledge of all noble living and of the wisdom of
+all spiritual things will he be to us ever, seeing that it was he who by
+the magic of his presence and the music of his lips taught us at Oxford
+that enthusiasm for beauty which is the secret of Hellenism, and that
+desire for creation which is the secret of life, and filled some of us,
+at least, with the lofty and passionate ambition to go forth into far and
+fair lands with some message for the nations and some mission for the
+world, and yet in his art criticism, his estimate of the joyous element
+of art, his whole method of approaching art, we are no longer with him;
+for the keystone to his æsthetic system is ethical always.  He would
+judge of a picture by the amount of noble moral ideas it expresses; but
+to us the channels by which all noble work in painting can touch, and
+does touch, the soul are not those of truths of life or metaphysical
+truths.  To him perfection of workmanship seems but the symbol of pride,
+and incompleteness of technical resource the image of an imagination too
+limitless to find within the limits of form its complete expression, or
+of love too simple not to stammer in its tale.  But to us the rule of art
+is not the rule of morals.  In an ethical system, indeed, of any gentle
+mercy good intentions will, one is fain to fancy, have their recognition;
+but of those that would enter the serene House of Beauty the question
+that we ask is not what they had ever meant to do, but what they have
+done.  Their pathetic intentions are of no value to us, but their
+realized creations only.  _Pour moi je préfère les poètes qui font des
+vers_, _les médecins qui sachent guérir_, _les peintres qui sanchent
+peindre_.
+
+Nor, in looking at a work of art, should we be dreaming of what it
+symbolises, but rather loving it for what it is.  Indeed, the
+transcendental spirit is alien to the spirit of art.  The metaphysical
+mind of Asia may create for itself the monstrous and many-breasted idol,
+but to the Greek, pure artist, that work is most instinct with spiritual
+life which conforms most closely to the perfect facts of physical life
+also.  Nor, in its primary aspect, has a painting, for instance, any more
+spiritual message or meaning for us than a blue tile from the wall of
+Damascus, or a Hitzen vase.  It is a beautifully coloured surface,
+nothing more, and affects us by no suggestion stolen from philosophy, no
+pathos pilfered from literature, no feeling filched from a poet, but by
+its own incommunicable artistic essence—by that selection of truth which
+we call style, and that relation of values which is the draughtsmanship
+of painting, by the whole quality of the workmanship, the arabesque of
+the design, the splendour of the colour, for these things are enough to
+stir the most divine and remote of the chords which make music in our
+soul, and colour, indeed, is of itself a mystical presence on things, and
+tone a kind of sentiment . . . all these poems aim, as I said, at
+producing a purely artistic effect, and have the rare and exquisite
+quality that belongs to work of that kind; and I feel that the entire
+subordination in our æsthetic movement of all merely emotional and
+intellectual motives to the vital informing poetic principle is the
+surest sign of our strength.
+
+But it is not enough that a work of art should conform to the æsthetic
+demands of the age: there should be also about it, if it is to give us
+any permanent delight, the impress of a distinct individuality.  Whatever
+work we have in the nineteenth century must rest on the two poles of
+personality and perfection.  And so in this little volume, by separating
+the earlier and more simple work from the work that is later and stronger
+and possesses increased technical power and more artistic vision, one
+might weave these disconnected poems, these stray and scattered threads,
+into one fiery-coloured strand of life, noting first a boy’s mere
+gladness of being young, with all its simple joy in field and flower, in
+sunlight and in song, and then the bitterness of sudden sorrow at the
+ending by Death of one of the brief and beautiful friendships of one’s
+youth, with all those unanswered lodgings and questionings unsatisfied by
+which we vex, so uselessly, the marble face of death; the artistic
+contrast between the discontented incompleteness of the spirit and the
+complete perfection of the style that expresses it forming the chief
+element of the æsthetic charm of these particular poems;—and then the
+birth of Love, and all the wonder and the fear and the perilous delight
+of one on whose boyish brows the little wings of love have beaten for the
+first time; and the love-songs, so dainty and delicate, little
+swallow-flights of music, and full of such fragrance and freedom that
+they might all be sung in the open air and across moving water; and then
+autumn, coming with its choirless woods and odorous decay and ruined
+loveliness, Love lying dead; and the sense of the mere pity of it.
+
+One might stop there, for from a young poet one should ask for no deeper
+chords of life than those that love and friendship make eternal for us;
+and the best poems in the volume belong clearly to a later time, a time
+when these real experiences become absorbed and gathered up into a form
+which seems from such real experiences to be the most alien and the most
+remote; when the simple expression of joy or sorrow suffices no longer,
+and lives rather in the stateliness of the cadenced metre, in the music
+and colour of the linked words, than in any direct utterance; lives, one
+might say, in the perfection of the form more than in the pathos of the
+feeling.  And yet, after the broken music of love and the burial of love
+in the autumn woods, we can trace that wandering among strange people,
+and in lands unknown to us, by which we try so pathetically to heal the
+hurts of the life we know, and that pure and passionate devotion to Art
+which one gets when the harsh reality of life has too suddenly wounded
+one, and is with discontent or sorrow marring one’s youth, just as often,
+I think, as one gets it from any natural joy of living; and that curious
+intensity of vision by which, in moments of overmastering sadness and
+despair ungovernable, artistic things will live in one’s memory with a
+vivid realism caught from the life which they help one to forget—an old
+grey tomb in Flanders with a strange legend on it, making one think how,
+perhaps, passion does live on after death; a necklace of blue and amber
+beads and a broken mirror found in a girl’s grave at Rome, a marble image
+of a boy habited like Erôs, and with the pathetic tradition of a great
+king’s sorrow lingering about it like a purple shadow,—over all these the
+tired spirit broods with that calm and certain joy that one gets when one
+has found something that the ages never dull and the world cannot harm;
+and with it comes that desire of Greek things which is often an artistic
+method of expressing one’s desire for perfection; and that longing for
+the old dead days which is so modern, so incomplete, so touching, being,
+in a way, the inverted torch of Hope, which burns the hand it should
+guide; and for many things a little sadness, and for all things a great
+love; and lastly, in the pinewood by the sea, once more the quick and
+vital pulse of joyous youth leaping and laughing in every line, the frank
+and fearless freedom of wave and wind waking into fire life’s burnt-out
+ashes and into song the silent lips of pain,—how clearly one seems to see
+it all, the long colonnade of pines with sea and sky peeping in here and
+there like a flitting of silver; the open place in the green, deep heart
+of the wood with the little moss-grown altar to the old Italian god in
+it; and the flowers all about, cyclamen in the shadowy places, and the
+stars of the white narcissus lying like snow-flakes over the grass, where
+the quick, bright-eyed lizard starts by the stone, and the snake lies
+coiled lazily in the sun on the hot sand, and overhead the gossamer
+floats from the branches like thin, tremulous threads of gold,—the scene
+is so perfect for its motive, for surely here, if anywhere, the real
+gladness of life might be revealed to one’s youth—the gladness that
+comes, not from the rejection, but from the absorption, of all passion,
+and is like that serene calm that dwells in the faces of the Greek
+statues, and which despair and sorrow cannot touch, but intensify only.
+
+In some such way as this we could gather up these strewn and scattered
+petals of song into one perfect rose of life, and yet, perhaps, in so
+doing, we might be missing the true quality of the poems; one’s real life
+is so often the life that one does not lead; and beautiful poems, like
+threads of beautiful silks, may be woven into many patterns and to suit
+many designs, all wonderful and all different: and romantic poetry, too,
+is essentially the poetry of impressions, being like that latest school
+of painting, the school of Whistler and Albert Moore, in its choice of
+situation as opposed to subject; in its dealing with the exceptions
+rather than with the types of life; in its brief intensity; in what one
+might call its fiery-coloured momentariness, it being indeed the
+momentary situations of life, the momentary aspects of nature, which
+poetry and painting new seek to render for us.  Sincerity and constancy
+will the artist, indeed, have always; but sincerity in art is merely that
+plastic perfection of execution without which a poem or a painting,
+however noble its sentiment or human its origin, is but wasted and unreal
+work, and the constancy of the artist cannot be to any definite rule or
+system of living, but to that principle of beauty only through which the
+inconstant shadows of his life are in their most fleeting moment arrested
+and made permanent.  He will not, for instance, in intellectual matters
+acquiesce in that facile orthodoxy of our day which is so reasonable and
+so artistically uninteresting, nor yet will he desire that fiery faith of
+the antique time which, while it intensified, yet limited the vision;
+still less will he allow the calm of his culture to be marred by the
+discordant despair of doubt or the sadness of a sterile scepticism; for
+the Valley Perilous, where ignorant armies clash by night, is no
+resting-place meet for her to whom the gods have assigned the clear
+upland, the serene height, and the sunlit air,—rather will he be always
+curiously testing new forms of belief, tinging his nature with the
+sentiment that still lingers about some beautiful creeds, and searching
+for experience itself, and not for the fruits of experience; when he has
+got its secret, he will leave without regret much that was once very
+precious to him.  “I am always insincere,” says Emerson somewhere, “as
+knowing that there are other moods”: “_Les émotions_,” wrote Théophile
+Gautier once in a review of Arsène Houssaye, “_Les émotions_, _ne se
+ressemblent pas_, _mais être ému_—_voilà l’important_.”
+
+Now, this is the secret of the art of the modern romantic school, and
+gives one the right keynote for its apprehension; but the real quality of
+all work which, like Mr. Rodd’s, aims, as I said, at a purely artistic
+effect, cannot be described in terms of intellectual criticism; it is too
+intangible for that.  One can perhaps convey it best in terms of the
+other arts, and by reference to them; and, indeed, some of these poems
+are as iridescent and as exquisite as a lovely fragment of Venetian
+glass; others as delicate in perfect workmanship and as single in natural
+motive as an etching by Whistler is, or one of those beautiful little
+Greek figures which in the olive woods round Tanagra men can still find,
+with the faint gilding and the fading crimson not yet fled from hair and
+lips and raiment; and many of them seem like one of Corot’s twilights
+just passing into music; for not merely in visible colour, but in
+sentiment also—which is the colour of poetry—may there be a kind of tone.
+
+But I think that the best likeness to the quality of this young poet’s
+work I ever saw was in the landscape by the Loire.  We were staying once,
+he and I, at Amboise, that little village with its grey slate roofs and
+steep streets and gaunt, grim gateway, where the quiet cottages nestle
+like white pigeons into the sombre clefts of the great bastioned rock,
+and the stately Renaissance houses stand silent and apart—very desolate
+now, but with some memory of the old days still lingering about the
+delicately-twisted pillars, and the carved doorways, with their grotesque
+animals, and laughing masks, and quaint heraldic devices, all reminding
+one of a people who could not think life real till they had made it
+fantastic.  And above the village, and beyond the bend of the river, we
+used to go in the afternoon, and sketch from one of the big barges that
+bring the wine in autumn and the wood in winter down to the sea, or lie
+in the long grass and make plans _pour la gloire_, _et pour ennuyer les
+Philistins_, or wander along the low, sedgy banks, “matching our reeds in
+sportive rivalry,” as comrades used in the old Sicilian days; and the
+land was an ordinary land enough, and bare, too, when one thought of
+Italy, and how the oleanders were robing the hillsides by Genoa in
+scarlet, and the cyclamen filling with its purple every valley from
+Florence to Rome; for there was not much real beauty, perhaps, in it,
+only long, white dusty roads and straight rows of formal poplars; but,
+now and then, some little breaking gleam of broken light would lend to
+the grey field and the silent barn a secret and a mystery that were
+hardly their own, would transfigure for one exquisite moment the peasants
+passing down through the vineyard, or the shepherd watching on the hill,
+would tip the willows with silver and touch the river into gold; and the
+wonder of the effect, with the strange simplicity of the material, always
+seemed to me to be a little like the quality of these the verses of my
+friend.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORTER PROSE PIECES***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 2061-0.txt or 2061-0.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/6/2061
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
+be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
+States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive
+specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this
+eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook
+for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports,
+performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given
+away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks
+not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the
+trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.
+
+START: FULL LICENSE
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
+person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
+1.E.8.
+
+1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
+Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country outside the United States.
+
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
+on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+
+  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+  most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
+  restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+  under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+  eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
+  United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you
+  are located before using this ebook.
+
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
+other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
+Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+provided that
+
+* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+  the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
+  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+  Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+  Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
+  works.
+
+* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+  receipt of the work.
+
+* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+  distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The
+Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
+www.gutenberg.org 
+
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary 
+Archive Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the
+mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its
+volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous
+locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt
+Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to
+date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and
+official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+
+    Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+    Chief Executive and Director
+    gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
+state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search
+facility: www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/2061-0.zip b/2061-0.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55774b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2061-0.zip
diff --git a/2061-h.zip b/2061-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2232c68
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2061-h.zip
diff --git a/2061-h/2061-h.htm b/2061-h/2061-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773e554
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2061-h/2061-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,1789 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html
+     PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+     "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>Shorter Prose Pieces, by Oscar Wilde</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    P {  margin-top: .75em;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;
+         }
+    P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;}
+    P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; }
+    .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; }
+    H1, H2 {
+         text-align: center;
+		margin-top: 2em;
+		margin-bottom: 2em;
+         }
+    H3, H4, H5 {
+	text-align: center;
+	margin-top: 1em;
+	margin-bottom: 1em;
+	}
+    BODY{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+        }
+ table { border-collapse: collapse; }
+table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;}
+    td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;}
+    td p { margin: 0.2em; }
+    .blkquot  {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */
+
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+    .pagenum {position: absolute;
+               left: 92%;
+               font-size: small;
+               text-align: right;
+		font-weight: normal;
+               color: gray;
+               }
+    img { border: none; }
+    img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; }
+    p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; }
+    div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; }
+    div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} 
+    div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%;
+                  border-top: 1px solid; }
+    div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%;
+		  border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;}
+     div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%;
+                  margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid;
+                  border-bottom: 1px solid; }
+    div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%;
+                  margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid;
+                  border-bottom: 1px solid;}
+    div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%;
+		  border-top: 1px solid; }
+    .citation {vertical-align: super;
+               font-size: .5em;
+               text-decoration: none;}
+    span.red { color: red; }
+    body {background-color: #ffffc0; }
+    img.floatleft { float: left;
+			margin-right: 1em;
+			margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; }
+    img.floatright { float: right;
+			margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em;
+			margin-bottom: 0.5em; }
+    img.clearcenter {display: block;
+			margin-left: auto;
+			margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em;
+			margin-bottom: 0.5em}
+    -->
+    /* XML end  ]]>*/
+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Shorter Prose Pieces, by Oscar Wilde
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Shorter Prose Pieces
+
+
+Author: Oscar Wilde
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 11, 2019  [eBook #2061]
+[This file was first posted June 2, 1999]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORTER PROSE PIECES***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1920 Methuen edition of <i>Art and
+Decoration</i> by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.lorg</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/cover.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Public domain book cover"
+title=
+"Public domain book cover"
+ src="images/cover.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h1>OSCAR WILDE&mdash;SHORTER PROSE PIECES</h1>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Phrases and Philosophies for the use
+of the Young</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page1">1</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Mrs. Langtry as Hester
+Grazebrook</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page53">53</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Slaves of Fashion</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page56">56</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Woman&rsquo;s Dress</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page60">60</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">More Radical Ideas upon Dress
+Reform</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page66">66</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Costume</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page80">80</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The American Invasion</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page83">83</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Sermons in Stones at
+Bloomsbury</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page90">90</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">L&rsquo;Envoi</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page119">119</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>PHRASES
+AND PHILOSOPHIES FOR<br />
+THE USE OF THE YOUNG</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">(December 1894)</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> first duty in life is to be as
+artificial as possible.&nbsp; What the second duty is no one has
+as yet discovered.</p>
+<p>Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for
+the curious attractiveness of others.</p>
+<p>If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in
+solving the problem of poverty.</p>
+<p>Those who see any difference between soul and body have
+neither.</p>
+<p>A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and
+Nature.</p>
+<p>Religions die when they are proved to be true.&nbsp; Science
+is the record of dead religions.</p>
+<p>The well-bred contradict other people.&nbsp; The wise
+contradict themselves.</p>
+<p>Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest
+importance.</p>
+<p>Dulness is the coming of age of seriousness.</p>
+<p>In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the
+essential.&nbsp; In all important matters, style, not sincerity,
+is the essential.</p>
+<p>If one tells the truth one is sure, sooner or later, to be
+found out.</p>
+<p>Pleasure is the only thing one should live for.&nbsp; Nothing
+ages like happiness.</p>
+<p>It is only by not paying one&rsquo;s bills that one can hope
+to live in the memory of the commercial classes.</p>
+<p>No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime.&nbsp;
+Vulgarity is the conduct of others.</p>
+<p>Only the shallow know themselves.</p>
+<p>Time is waste of money.</p>
+<p>One should always be a little improbable.</p>
+<p>There is a fatality about all good resolutions.&nbsp; They are
+invariably made too soon.</p>
+<p>The only way to atone for being occasionally a little
+overdressed is by being always absolutely overeducated.</p>
+<p>To be premature is to be perfect.</p>
+<p>Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in
+conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.</p>
+<p>Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.</p>
+<p>A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes
+in it.</p>
+<p>In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot
+answer.</p>
+<p>Greek dress was in its essence inartistic.&nbsp; Nothing
+should reveal the body but the body.</p>
+<p>One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.</p>
+<p>It is only the superficial qualities that last.&nbsp;
+Man&rsquo;s deeper nature is soon found out.</p>
+<p>Industry is the root of all ugliness.</p>
+<p>The ages live in history through their anachronisms.</p>
+<p>It is only the gods who taste of death.&nbsp; Apollo has
+passed away, but Hyacinth, whom men say he slew, lives on.&nbsp;
+Nero and Narcissus are always with us.</p>
+<p>The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect
+everything; the young know everything.</p>
+<p>The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection
+is youth.</p>
+<p>Only the great masters of style ever succeeded in being
+obscure.</p>
+<p>There is something tragic about the enormous number of young
+men there are in England at the present moment who start life
+with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful
+profession.</p>
+<p>To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.</p>
+<h2><a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>MRS.
+LANGTRY AS HESTER GRAZEBROOK</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">(<i>New York World</i>, November 7,
+1882)</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is only in the best Greek gems,
+on the silver coins of Syracuse, or among the marble figures of
+the Parthenon frieze, that one can find the ideal representation
+of the marvellous beauty of that face which laughed through the
+leaves last night as Hester Grazebrook.</p>
+<p>Pure Greek it is, with the grave low forehead, the exquisitely
+arched brow; the noble chiselling of the mouth, shaped as if it
+were the mouthpiece of an instrument of music; the supreme and
+splendid curve of the cheek; the augustly pillared throat which
+bears it all: it is Greek, because the lines which compose it are
+so definite and so strong, and yet so exquisitely harmonized that
+the effect is one of simple loveliness purely: Greek, because its
+essence and its quality, as is the quality of music and of
+architecture, is that of beauty based on absolutely mathematical
+laws.</p>
+<p>But while art remains dumb and immobile in its passionless
+serenity, with the beauty of this face it is different: the grey
+eyes lighten into blue or deepen into violet as fancy succeeds
+fancy; the lips become flower-like in laughter or, tremulous as a
+bird&rsquo;s wing, mould themselves at last into the strong and
+bitter moulds of pain or scorn.&nbsp; And then motion comes, and
+the statue wakes into life.&nbsp; But the life is not the
+ordinary life of common days; it is life with a new value given
+to it, the value of art: and the charm to me of Hester
+Grazebrook&rsquo;s acting in the first scene of the play last
+night was that mingling of classic grace with absolute reality
+which is the secret of all beautiful art, of the plastic work of
+the Greeks and of the pictures of Jean Fran&ccedil;ois Millet
+equally.</p>
+<p>I do not think that the sovereignty and empire of
+women&rsquo;s beauty has at all passed away, though we may no
+longer go to war for them as the Greeks did for the daughter of
+Leda.&nbsp; The greatest empire still remains for them&mdash;the
+empire of art.&nbsp; And, indeed, this wonderful face, seen last
+night for the first time in America, has filled and permeated
+with the pervading image of its type the whole of our modern art
+in England.&nbsp; Last century it was the romantic type which
+dominated in art, the type loved by Reynolds and Gainsborough, of
+wonderful contrasts of colour, of exquisite and varying charm of
+expression, but without that definite plastic feeling which
+divides classic from romantic work.&nbsp; This type degenerated
+into mere facile prettiness in the hands of lesser masters, and,
+in protest against it, was created by the hands of the
+Pre-Raphaelites a new type, with its rare combination of Greek
+form with Florentine mysticism.&nbsp; But this mysticism becomes
+over-strained and a burden, rather than an aid to expression, and
+a desire for the pure Hellenic joy and serenity came in its
+place; and in all our modern work, in the paintings of such men
+as Albert Moore and Leighton and Whistler, we can trace the
+influence of this single face giving fresh life and inspiration
+in the form of a new artistic ideal.</p>
+<h2><a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>SLAVES
+OF FASHION</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Miss Leffler-Arnim&rsquo;s</span>
+statement, in a lecture delivered recently at St. Saviour&rsquo;s
+Hospital, that &ldquo;she had heard of instances where ladies
+were so determined not to exceed the fashionable measurement that
+they had actually held on to a cross-bar while their maids
+fastened the fifteen-inch corset,&rdquo; has excited a good deal
+of incredulity, but there is nothing really improbable in
+it.&nbsp; From the sixteenth century to our own day there is
+hardly any form of torture that has not been inflicted on girls,
+and endured by women, in obedience to the dictates of an
+unreasonable and monstrous Fashion.&nbsp; &ldquo;In order to
+obtain a real Spanish figure,&rdquo; says Montaigne, &ldquo;what
+a Gehenna of suffering will not women endure, drawn in and
+compressed by great <i>coches</i> entering the flesh; nay,
+sometimes they even die thereof!&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;A few days
+after my arrival at school,&rdquo; Mrs. Somerville tells us in
+her memoirs, &ldquo;although perfectly straight and well made, I
+was enclosed in stiff stays, with a steel busk in front; while
+above my frock, bands drew my shoulders back till the
+shoulder-blades met.&nbsp; Then a steel rod with a semi-circle,
+which went under my chin, was clasped to the steel busk in my
+stays.&nbsp; In this constrained state I and most of the younger
+girls had to prepare our lessons&rdquo;; and in the life of Miss
+Edgeworth we read that, being sent to a certain fashionable
+establishment, &ldquo;she underwent all the usual tortures of
+back-boards, iron collars and dumbs, and also (because she was a
+very tiny person) the unusual one of being hung by the neck to
+draw out the muscles and increase the growth,&rdquo; a signal
+failure in her case.&nbsp; Indeed, instances of absolute
+mutilation and misery are so common in the past that it is
+unnecessary to multiply them; but it is really sad to think that
+in our own day a civilized woman can hang on to a cross-bar while
+her maid laces her waist into a fifteen-inch circle.&nbsp; To
+begin with, the waist is not a circle at all, but an oval; nor
+can there be any greater error than to imagine that an
+unnaturally small waist gives an air of grace, or even of
+slightness, to the whole figure.&nbsp; Its effect, as a rule, is
+simply to exaggerate the width of the shoulders and the hips; and
+those whose figures possess that stateliness which is called
+stoutness by the vulgar, convert what is a quality into a defect
+by yielding to the silly edicts of Fashion on the subject of
+tight-lacing.&nbsp; The fashionable English waist, also, is not
+merely far too small, and consequently quite out of proportion to
+the rest of the figure, but it is worn far too low down.&nbsp; I
+use the expression &ldquo;worn&rdquo; advisedly, for a waist
+nowadays seems to be regarded as an article of apparel to be put
+on when and where one likes.&nbsp; A long waist always implies
+shortness of the lower limbs, and, from the artistic point of
+view, has the effect of diminishing the height; and I am glad to
+see that many of the most charming women in Paris are returning
+to the idea of the Directoire style of dress.&nbsp; This style is
+not by any means perfect, but at least it has the merit of
+indicating the proper position of the waist.&nbsp; I feel quite
+sure that all English women of culture and position will set
+their faces against such stupid and dangerous practices as are
+related by Miss Leffler-Arnim.&nbsp; Fashion&rsquo;s motto is:
+<i>Il faut souffrir pour &ecirc;tre belle</i>; but the motto of
+art and of common-sense is: <i>Il faut &ecirc;tre b&ecirc;te pour
+souffrir</i>.</p>
+<p>Talking of Fashion, a critic in the <i>Pall Mall Gazelle</i>
+expresses his surprise that I should have allowed an illustration
+of a hat, covered with &ldquo;the bodies of dead birds,&rdquo; to
+appear in the first number of the <i>Woman&rsquo;s World</i>; and
+as I have received many letters on the subject, it is only right
+that I should state my exact position in the matter.&nbsp;
+Fashion is such an essential part of the <i>mundus muliebris</i>
+of our day, that it seems to me absolutely necessary that its
+growth, development, and phases should be duly chronicled; and
+the historical and practical value of such a record depends
+entirely upon its perfect fidelity to fact.&nbsp; Besides, it is
+quite easy for the children of light to adapt almost any
+fashionable form of dress to the requirements of utility and the
+demands of good taste.&nbsp; The Sarah Bernhardt tea-gown, for
+instance, figured in the present issue, has many good points
+about it, and the gigantic dress-improver does not appear to me
+to be really essential to the mode; and though the Postillion
+costume of the fancy dress ball is absolutely detestable in its
+silliness and vulgarity, the so-called Late Georgian costume in
+the same plate is rather pleasing.&nbsp; I must, however, protest
+against the idea that to chronicle the development of Fashion
+implies any approval of the particular forms that Fashion may
+adopt.</p>
+<h2><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+60</span>WOMAN&rsquo;S DRESS</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">(<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, October
+14, 1884)</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Mr. Oscar Wilde</span>, who
+asks us to permit him &lsquo;that most charming of all pleasures,
+the pleasure of answering one&rsquo;s critics,&rsquo; sends us
+the following remarks:&mdash;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> &ldquo;Girl Graduate&rdquo;
+must of course have precedence, not merely for her sex but for
+her sanity: her letter is extremely sensible.&nbsp; She makes two
+points: that high heels are a necessity for any lady who wishes
+to keep her dress clean from the Stygian mud of our streets, and
+that without a tight corset the ordinary number of petticoats and
+etceteras&rsquo; cannot be properly or conveniently held
+up.&nbsp; Now, it is quite true that as long as the lower
+garments are suspended from the hips a corset is an absolute
+necessity; the mistake lies in not suspending all apparel from
+the shoulders.&nbsp; In the latter case a corset becomes useless,
+the body is left free and unconfined for respiration and motion,
+there is more health, and consequently more beauty.&nbsp; Indeed
+all the most ungainly and uncomfortable articles of dress that
+fashion has ever in her folly prescribed, not the tight corset
+merely, but the farthingale, the vertugadin, the hoop, the
+crinoline, and that modern monstrosity the so-called &ldquo;dress
+improver&rdquo; also, all of them have owed their origin to the
+same error, the error of not seeing that it is from the
+shoulders, and from the shoulders only, that all garments should
+be hung.</p>
+<p>And as regards high heels, I quite admit that some additional
+height to the shoe or boot is necessary if long gowns are to be
+worn in the street; but what I object to is that the height
+should be given to the heel only, and not to the sole of the foot
+also.&nbsp; The modern high-heeled boot is, in fact, merely the
+clog of the time of Henry VI., with the front prop left out, and
+its inevitable effect is to throw the body forward, to shorten
+the steps, and consequently to produce that want of grace which
+always follows want of freedom.</p>
+<p>Why should clogs be despised?&nbsp; Much art has been expended
+on clogs.&nbsp; They have been made of lovely woods, and
+delicately inlaid with ivory, and with mother-of-pearl.&nbsp; A
+clog might be a dream of beauty, and, if not too high or too
+heavy, most comfortable also.&nbsp; But if there be any who do
+not like clogs, let them try some adaptation of the trouser of
+the Turkish lady, which is loose round the limb and tight at the
+ankle.</p>
+<p>The &ldquo;Girl Graduate,&rdquo; with a pathos to which I am
+not insensible, entreats me not to apotheosize &ldquo;that awful,
+befringed, beflounced, and bekilted divided skirt.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Well, I will acknowledge that the fringes, the flounces, and the
+kilting do certainly defeat the whole object of the dress, which
+is that of ease and liberty; but I regard these things as mere
+wicked superfluities, tragic proofs that the divided skirt is
+ashamed of its own division.&nbsp; The principle of the dress is
+good, and, though it is not by any means perfection, it is a step
+towards it.</p>
+<p>Here I leave the &ldquo;Girl Graduate,&rdquo; with much
+regret, for Mr. Wentworth Huyshe.&nbsp; Mr. Huyshe makes the old
+criticism that Greek dress is unsuited to our climate, and, to me
+the somewhat new assertion, that the men&rsquo;s dress of a
+hundred years ago was preferable to that of the second part of
+the seventeenth century, which I consider to have been the
+exquisite period of English costume.</p>
+<p>Now, as regards the first of these two statements, I will say,
+to begin with, that the warmth of apparel does not depend really
+on the number of garments worn, but on the material of which they
+are made.&nbsp; One of the chief faults of modern dress is that
+it is composed of far too many articles of clothing, most of
+which are of the wrong substance; but over a substratum of pure
+wool, such as is supplied by Dr. Jaeger under the modern German
+system, some modification of Greek costume is perfectly
+applicable to our climate, our country and our century.&nbsp;
+This important fact has already been pointed out by Mr. E. W.
+Godwin in his excellent, though too brief handbook on Dress,
+contributed to the Health Exhibition.&nbsp; I call it an
+important fact because it makes almost any form of lovely costume
+perfectly practicable in our cold climate.&nbsp; Mr. Godwin, it
+is true, points out that the English ladies of the thirteenth
+century abandoned after some time the flowing garments of the
+early Renaissance in favour of a tighter mode, such as Northern
+Europe seems to demand.&nbsp; This I quite admit, and its
+significance; but what I contend, and what I am sure Mr. Godwin
+would agree with me in, is that the principles, the laws of Greek
+dress may be perfectly realized, even in a moderately tight gown
+with sleeves: I mean the principle of suspending all apparel from
+the shoulders, and of relying for beauty of effect not on the
+stiff ready-made ornaments of the modern milliner&mdash;the bows
+where there should be no bows, and the flounces where there
+should be no flounces&mdash;but on the exquisite play of light
+and line that one gets from rich and rippling folds.&nbsp; I am
+not proposing any antiquarian revival of an ancient costume, but
+trying merely to point out the right laws of dress, laws which
+are dictated by art and not by arch&aelig;ology, by science and
+not by fashion; and just as the best work of art in our days is
+that which combines classic grace with absolute reality, so from
+a continuation of the Greek principles of beauty with the German
+principles of health will come, I feel certain, the costume of
+the future.</p>
+<p>And now to the question of men&rsquo;s dress, or rather to Mr.
+Huyshe&rsquo;s claim of the superiority, in point of costume, of
+the last quarter of the eighteenth century over the second
+quarter of the seventeenth.&nbsp; The broad-brimmed hat of 1640
+kept the rain of winter and the glare of summer from the face;
+the same cannot be said of the hat of one hundred years ago,
+which, with its comparatively narrow brim and high crown, was the
+precursor of the modern &ldquo;chimney-pot&rdquo;: a wide
+turned-down collar is a healthier thing than a strangling stock,
+and a short cloak much more comfortable than a sleeved overcoat,
+even though the latter may have had &ldquo;three capes&rdquo;; a
+cloak is easier to put on and off, lies lightly on the shoulder
+in summer, and wrapped round one in winter keeps one perfectly
+warm.&nbsp; A doublet, again, is simpler than a coat and
+waistcoat; instead of two garments one has one; by not being open
+also it protects the chest better.</p>
+<p>Short loose trousers are in every way to be preferred to the
+tight knee-breeches which often impede the proper circulation of
+the blood; and finally, the soft leather boots which could be
+worn above or below the knee, are more supple, and give
+consequently more freedom, than the stiff Hessian which Mr.
+Huyshe so praises.&nbsp; I say nothing about the question of
+grace and picturesqueness, for I suppose that no one, not even
+Mr. Huyshe, would prefer a maccaroni to a cavalier, a Lawrence to
+a Vandyke, or the third George to the first Charles; but for
+ease, warmth and comfort this seventeenth-century dress is
+infinitely superior to anything that came after it, and I do not
+think it is excelled by any preceding form of costume.&nbsp; I
+sincerely trust that we may soon see in England some national
+revival of it.</p>
+<h2><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>MORE
+RADICAL IDEAS UPON DRESS REFORM</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">(<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, November
+11, 1884)</p>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">have</span> been much interested at
+reading the large amount of correspondence that has been called
+forth by my recent lecture on Dress.&nbsp; It shows me that the
+subject of dress reform is one that is occupying many wise and
+charming people, who have at heart the principles of health,
+freedom, and beauty in costume, and I hope that &ldquo;H. B.
+T.&rdquo; and &ldquo;Materfamilias&rdquo; will have all the real
+influence which their letters&mdash;excellent letters both of
+them&mdash;certainly deserve.</p>
+<p>I turn first to Mr. Huyshe&rsquo;s second letter, and the
+drawing that accompanies it; but before entering into any
+examination of the theory contained in each, I think I should
+state at once that I have absolutely no idea whether this
+gentleman wears his hair long or short, or his cuffs back or
+forward, or indeed what he is like at all.&nbsp; I hope he
+consults his own comfort and wishes in everything which has to do
+with his dress, and is allowed to enjoy that individualism in
+apparel which he so eloquently claims for himself, and so
+foolishly tries to deny to others; but I really could not take
+Mr. Wentworth Huyshe&rsquo;s personal appearance as any
+intellectual basis for an investigation of the principles which
+should guide the costume of a nation.&nbsp; I am not denying the
+force, or even the popularity, of the &lsquo;&rsquo;Eave arf a
+brick&rsquo; school of criticism, but I acknowledge it does not
+interest me.&nbsp; The gamin in the gutter may be a necessity,
+but the gamin in discussion is a nuisance.&nbsp; So I will
+proceed at once to the real point at issue, the value of the late
+eighteenth-century costume over that worn in the second quarter
+of the seventeenth: the relative merits, that is, of the
+principles contained in each.&nbsp; Now, as regards the
+eighteenth-century costume, Mr. Wentworth Huyshe acknowledges
+that he has had no practical experience of it at all; in fact he
+makes a pathetic appeal to his friends to corroborate him in his
+assertion, which I do not question for a moment, that he has
+never been &ldquo;guilty of the eccentricity&rdquo; of wearing
+himself the dress which he proposes for general adoption by
+others.&nbsp; There is something so naive and so amusing about
+this last passage in Mr. Huyshe&rsquo;s letter that I am really
+in doubt whether I am not doing him a wrong in regarding him as
+having any serious, or sincere, views on the question of a
+possible reform in dress; still, as irrespective of any attitude
+of Mr. Huyshe&rsquo;s in the matter, the subject is in itself an
+interesting one, I think it is worth continuing, particularly as
+I have myself worn this late eighteenth-century dress many times,
+both in public and in private, and so may claim to have a very
+positive right to speak on its comfort and suitability.&nbsp; The
+particular form of the dress I wore was very similar to that
+given in Mr. Godwin&rsquo;s handbook, from a print of
+Northcote&rsquo;s, and had a certain elegance and grace about it
+which was very charming; still, I gave it up for these
+reasons:&mdash;After a further consideration of the laws of dress
+I saw that a doublet is a far simpler and easier garment than a
+coat and waistcoat, and, if buttoned from the shoulder, far
+warmer also, and that tails have no place in costume, except on
+some Darwinian theory of heredity; from absolute experience in
+the matter I found that the excessive tightness of knee-breeches
+is not really comfortable if one wears them constantly; and, in
+fact, I satisfied myself that the dress is not one founded on any
+real principles.&nbsp; The broad-brimmed hat and loose cloak,
+which, as my object was not, of course, historical accuracy but
+modern ease, I had always worn with the costume in question, I
+have still retained, and find them most comfortable.</p>
+<p>Well, although Mr. Huyshe has no real experience of the dress
+he proposes, he gives us a drawing of it, which he labels,
+somewhat prematurely, &ldquo;An ideal dress.&rdquo;&nbsp; An
+ideal dress of course it is not; &ldquo;passably
+picturesque,&rdquo; he says I may possibly think it; well,
+passably picturesque it may be, but not beautiful, certainly,
+simply because it is not founded on right principles, or, indeed,
+on any principles at all.&nbsp; Picturesqueness one may get in a
+variety of ways; ugly things that are strange, or unfamiliar to
+us, for instance, may be picturesque, such as a late
+sixteenth-century costume, or a Georgian house.&nbsp; Ruins,
+again, may be picturesque, but beautiful they never can be,
+because their lines are meaningless.&nbsp; Beauty, in fact, is to
+be got only from the perfection of principles; and in &ldquo;the
+ideal dress&rdquo; of Mr. Huyshe there are no ideas or principles
+at all, much less the perfection of either.&nbsp; Let us examine
+it, and see its faults; they are obvious to any one who desires
+more than a &ldquo;Fancy-dress ball&rdquo; basis for
+costume.&nbsp; To begin with, the hat and boots are all
+wrong.&nbsp; Whatever one wears on the extremities, such as the
+feet and head, should, for the sake of comfort, be made of a soft
+material, and for the sake of freedom should take its shape from
+the way one chooses to wear it, and not from any stiff,
+stereotyped design of hat or boot maker.&nbsp; In a hat made on
+right principles one should be able to turn the brim up or down
+according as the day is dark or fair, dry or wet; but the hat
+brim of Mr. Huyshe&rsquo;s drawing is perfectly stiff, and does
+not give much protection to the face, or the possibility of any
+at all to the back of the head or the ears, in case of a cold
+east wind; whereas the bycocket, a hat made in accordance with
+the right laws, can be turned down behind and at the sides, and
+so give the same warmth as a hood.&nbsp; The crown, again, of Mr.
+Huyshe&rsquo;s hat is far too high; a high crown diminishes the
+stature of a small person, and in the case of any one who is tall
+is a great inconvenience when one is getting in and out of
+hansoms and railway carriages, or passing under a street awning:
+in no case is it of any value whatsoever, and being useless it is
+of course against the principles of dress.</p>
+<p>As regards the boots, they are not quite so ugly or so
+uncomfortable as the hat; still they are evidently made of stiff
+leather, as otherwise they would fall down to the ankle, whereas
+the boot should be made of soft leather always, and if worn high
+at all must be either laced up the front or carried well over the
+knee: in the latter case one combines perfect freedom for walking
+together with perfect protection against rain, neither of which
+advantages a short stiff boot will ever give one, and when one is
+resting in the house the long soft boot can be turned down as the
+boot of 1640 was.&nbsp; Then there is the overcoat: now, what are
+the right principles of an overcoat?&nbsp; To begin with, it
+should be capable of being easily put on or off, and worn over
+any kind of dress; consequently it should never have narrow
+sleeves, such as are shown in Mr. Huyshe&rsquo;s drawing.&nbsp;
+If an opening or slit for the arm is required it should be made
+quite wide, and may be protected by a flap, as in that excellent
+overall the modern Inverness cape; secondly, it should not be too
+tight, as otherwise all freedom of walking is impeded.&nbsp; If
+the young gentleman in the drawing buttons his overcoat he may
+succeed in being statuesque, though that I doubt very strongly,
+but he will never succeed in being swift; his <i>super-totus</i>
+is made for him on no principle whatsoever; a <i>super-totus</i>,
+or overall, should be capable of being worn long or short, quite
+loose or moderately tight, just as the wearer wishes; he should
+be able to have one arm free and one arm covered or both arms
+free or both arms covered, just as he chooses for his convenience
+in riding, walking, or driving; an overall again should never be
+heavy, and should always be warm: lastly, it should be capable of
+being easily carried if one wants to take it off; in fact, its
+principles are those of freedom and comfort, and a cloak realizes
+them all, just as much as an overcoat of the pattern suggested by
+Mr. Huyshe violates them.</p>
+<p>The knee-breeches are of course far too tight; any one who has
+worn them for any length of time&mdash;any one, in fact, whose
+views on the subject are not purely theoretical&mdash;will agree
+with me there; like everything else in the dress, they are a
+great mistake.&nbsp; The substitution of the jacket for the coat
+and waistcoat of the period is a step in the right direction,
+which I am glad to see; it is, however, far too tight over the
+hips for any possible comfort.&nbsp; Whenever a jacket or doublet
+comes below the waist it should be slit at each side.&nbsp; In
+the seventeenth century the skirt of the jacket was sometimes
+laced on by points and tags, so that it could be removed at will,
+sometimes it was merely left open at the sides: in each case it
+exemplified what are always the true principles of dress, I mean
+freedom and adaptability to circumstances.</p>
+<p>Finally, as regards drawings of this kind, I would point out
+that there is absolutely no limit at all to the amount of
+&ldquo;passably picturesque&rdquo; costumes which can be either
+revived or invented for us; but that unless a costume is founded
+on principles and exemplified laws, it never can be of any real
+value to us in the reform of dress.&nbsp; This particular drawing
+of Mr. Huyshe&rsquo;s, for instance, proves absolutely nothing,
+except that our grandfathers did not understand the proper laws
+of dress.&nbsp; There is not a single rule of right costume which
+is not violated in it, for it gives us stiffness, tightness and
+discomfort instead of comfort, freedom and ease.</p>
+<p>Now here, on the other hand, is a dress which, being founded
+on principles, can serve us as an excellent guide and model; it
+has been drawn for me, most kindly, by Mr. Godwin from the Duke
+of Newcastle&rsquo;s delightful book on horsemanship, a book
+which is one of our best authorities on our best era of
+costume.&nbsp; I do not of course propose it necessarily for
+absolute imitation; that is not the way in which one should
+regard it; it is not, I mean, a revival of a dead costume, but a
+realization of living laws.&nbsp; I give it as an example of a
+particular application of principles which are universally
+right.&nbsp; This rationally dressed young man can turn his hat
+brim down if it rains, and his loose trousers and boots down if
+he is tired&mdash;that is, he can adapt his costume to
+circumstances; then he enjoys perfect freedom, the arms and legs
+are not made awkward or uncomfortable by the excessive tightness
+of narrow sleeves and knee-breeches, and the hips are left quite
+untrammelled, always an important point; and as regards comfort,
+his jacket is not too loose for warmth, nor too close for
+respiration; his neck is well protected without being strangled,
+and even his ostrich feathers, if any Philistine should object to
+them, are not merely dandyism, but fan him very pleasantly, I am
+sure, in summer, and when the weather is bad they are no doubt
+left at home, and his cloak taken out.&nbsp; <i>The value of the
+dress is simply that every separate article of it expresses a
+law</i>.&nbsp; My young man is consequently apparelled with
+ideas, while Mr. Huyshe&rsquo;s young man is stiffened with
+facts; the latter teaches one nothing; from the former one learns
+everything.&nbsp; I need hardly say that this dress is good, not
+because it is seventeenth century, but because it is constructed
+on the true principles of costume, just as a square lintel or
+pointed arch is good, not because one may be Greek and the other
+Gothic, but because each of them is the best method of spanning a
+certain-sized opening, or resisting a certain weight.&nbsp; The
+fact, however, that this dress was generally worn in England two
+centuries and a half ago shows at least this, that the right laws
+of dress have been understood and realized in our country, and so
+in our country may be realized and understood again.&nbsp; As
+regards the absolute beauty of this dress and its meaning, I
+should like to say a few words more.&nbsp; Mr. Wentworth Huyshe
+solemnly announces that &ldquo;he and those who think with
+him&rdquo; cannot permit this question of beauty to be imported
+into the question of dress; that he and those who think with him
+take &ldquo;practical views on the subject,&rdquo; and so
+on.&nbsp; Well, I will not enter here into a discussion as to how
+far any one who does not take beauty and the value of beauty into
+account can claim to be practical at all.&nbsp; The word
+practical is nearly always the last refuge of the
+uncivilized.&nbsp; Of all misused words it is the most evilly
+treated.&nbsp; But what I want to point out is that beauty is
+essentially organic; that is, it comes, not from without, but
+from within, not from any added prettiness, but from the
+perfection of its own being; and that consequently, as the body
+is beautiful, so all apparel that rightly clothes it must be
+beautiful also in its construction and in its lines.</p>
+<p>I have no more desire to define ugliness than I have daring to
+define beauty; but still I would like to remind those who mock at
+beauty as being an unpractical thing of this fact, that an ugly
+thing is merely a thing that is badly made, or a thing that does
+not serve it purpose; that ugliness is want of fitness; that
+ugliness is failure; that ugliness is uselessness, such as
+ornament in the wrong place, while beauty, as some one finely
+said, is the purgation of all superfluities.&nbsp; There is a
+divine economy about beauty; it gives us just what is needful and
+no more, whereas ugliness is always extravagant; ugliness is a
+spendthrift and wastes its material; in fine, ugliness&mdash;and
+I would commend this remark to Mr. Wentworth
+Huyshe&mdash;ugliness, as much in costume as in anything else, is
+always the sign that somebody has been unpractical.&nbsp; So the
+costume of the future in England, if it is founded on the true
+laws of freedom, comfort, and adaptability to circumstances,
+cannot fail to be most beautiful also, because beauty is the sign
+always of the rightness of principles, the mystical seal that is
+set upon what is perfect, and upon what is perfect only.</p>
+<p>As for your other correspondent, the first principle of dress
+that all garments should be hung from the shoulders and not from
+the waist seems to me to be generally approved of, although an
+&ldquo;Old Sailor&rdquo; declares that no sailors or athletes
+ever suspend their clothes from the shoulders, but always from
+the hips.&nbsp; My own recollection of the river and running
+ground at Oxford&mdash;those two homes of Hellenism in our little
+Gothic town&mdash;is that the best runners and rowers (and my own
+college turned out many) wore always a tight jersey, with short
+drawers attached to it, the whole costume being woven in one
+piece.&nbsp; As for sailors, it is true, I admit, and the bad
+custom seems to involve that constant &ldquo;hitching up&rdquo;
+of the lower garments which, however popular in transpontine
+dramas, cannot, I think, but be considered an extremely awkward
+habit; and as all awkwardness comes from discomfort of some kind,
+I trust that this point in our sailor&rsquo;s dress will be
+looked to in the coming reform of our navy, for, in spite of all
+protests, I hope we are about to reform everything, from
+torpedoes to top-hats, and from crinolettes to cruises.</p>
+<p>Then as regards clogs, my suggestion of them seems to have
+aroused a great deal of terror.&nbsp; Fashion in her high-heeled
+boots has screamed, and the dreadful word
+&ldquo;anachronism&rdquo; has been used.&nbsp; Now, whatever is
+useful cannot be an anachronism.&nbsp; Such a word is applicable
+only to the revival of some folly; and, besides, in the England
+of our own day clogs are still worn in many of our manufacturing
+towns, such as Oldham.&nbsp; I fear that in Oldham they may not
+be dreams of beauty; in Oldham the art of inlaying them with
+ivory and with pearl may possibly be unknown; yet in Oldham they
+serve their purpose.&nbsp; Nor is it so long since they were worn
+by the upper classes of this country generally.&nbsp; Only a few
+days ago I had the pleasure of talking to a lady who remembered
+with affectionate regret the clogs of her girlhood; they were,
+according to her, not too high nor too heavy, and were provided,
+besides, with some kind of spring in the sole so as to make them
+the more supple for the foot in walking.&nbsp; Personally, I
+object to all additional height being given to a boot or shoe; it
+is really against the proper principles of dress, although, if
+any such height is to be given it should be by means of two
+props; not one; but what I should prefer to see is some
+adaptation of the divided skirt or long and moderately loose
+knickerbockers.&nbsp; If, however, the divided skirt is to be of
+any positive value, it must give up all idea of &ldquo;being
+identical in appearance with an ordinary skirt&rdquo;; it must
+diminish the moderate width of each of its divisions, and
+sacrifice its foolish frills and flounces; the moment it imitates
+a dress it is lost; but let it visibly announce itself as what it
+actually is, and it will go far towards solving a real
+difficulty.&nbsp; I feel sure that there will be found many
+graceful and charming girls ready to adopt a costume founded on
+these principles, in spite of Mr. Wentworth Huyshe&rsquo;s
+terrible threat that he will not propose to them as long as they
+wear it, for all charges of a want of womanly character in these
+forms of dress are really meaningless; every right article of
+apparel belongs equally to both sexes, and there is absolutely no
+such thing as a definitely feminine garment.&nbsp; One word of
+warning I should like to be allowed to give: The over-tunic
+should be made full and moderately loose; it may, if desired, be
+shaped more or less to the figure, but in no case should it be
+confined at the waist by any straight band or belt; on the
+contrary, it should fall from the shoulder to the knee, or below
+it, in fine curves and vertical lines, giving more freedom and
+consequently more grace.&nbsp; Few garments are so absolutely
+unbecoming as a belted tunic that reaches to the knees, a fact
+which I wish some of our Rosalinds would consider when they don
+doublet and hose; indeed, to the disregard of this artistic
+principle is due the ugliness, the want of proportion, in the
+Bloomer costume, a costume which in other respects is
+sensible.</p>
+<h2><a name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+80</span>COSTUME</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Are</span> we not all weary of him, that
+venerable impostor fresh from the steps of the Piazza di Spagna,
+who, in the leisure moments that he can spare from his customary
+organ, makes the round of the studios and is waited for in
+Holland Park?&nbsp; Do we not all recognize him, when, with the
+gay <i>insouciance</i> of his nation, he reappears on the walls
+of our summer exhibitions as everything that he is not, and as
+nothing that he is, glaring at us here as a patriarch of Canaan,
+here beaming as a brigand from the Abruzzi?&nbsp; Popular is he,
+this poor peripatetic professor of posing, with those whose joy
+it is to paint the posthumous portrait of the last philanthropist
+who in his lifetime had neglected to be photographed,&mdash;yet
+he is the sign of the decadence, the symbol of decay.</p>
+<p>For all costumes are caricatures.&nbsp; The basis of Art is
+not the Fancy Ball.&nbsp; Where there is loveliness of dress,
+there is no dressing up.&nbsp; And so, were our national attire
+delightful in colour, and in construction simple and sincere;
+were dress the expression of the loveliness that it shields and
+of the swiftness and motion that it does not impede; did its
+lines break from the shoulder instead of bulging from the waist;
+did the inverted wineglass cease to be the ideal of form; were
+these things brought about, as brought about they will be, then
+would painting be no longer an artificial reaction against the
+ugliness of life, but become, as it should be, the natural
+expression of life&rsquo;s beauty.&nbsp; Nor would painting
+merely, but all the other arts also, be the gainers by a change
+such as that which I propose; the gainers, I mean, through the
+increased atmosphere of Beauty by which the artists would be
+surrounded and in which they would grow up.&nbsp; For Art is not
+to be taught in Academies.&nbsp; It is what one looks at, not
+what one listens to, that makes the artist.&nbsp; The real
+schools should be the streets.&nbsp; There is not, for instance,
+a single delicate line, or delightful proportion, in the dress of
+the Greeks, which is not echoed exquisitely in their
+architecture.&nbsp; A nation arrayed in stove-pipe hats and
+dress-improvers might have built the Pantechnichon possibly, but
+the Parthenon never.&nbsp; And finally, there is this to be said:
+Art, it is true, can never have any other claim but her own
+perfection, and it may be that the artist, desiring merely to
+contemplate and to create, is wise in not busying himself about
+change in others: yet wisdom is not always the best; there are
+times when she sinks to the level of common-sense; and from the
+passionate folly of those&mdash;and there are many&mdash;who
+desire that Beauty shall be confined no longer to the
+<i>bric-&agrave;-brac</i> of the collector and the dust of the
+museum, but shall be, as it should be, the natural and national
+inheritance of all,&mdash;from this noble unwisdom, I say, who
+knows what new loveliness shall be given to life, and, under
+these more exquisite conditions, what perfect artist born?&nbsp;
+<i>Le milieu se renouvelant</i>, <i>l&rsquo;art se
+renouvelle</i>.</p>
+<h2><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>THE
+AMERICAN INVASION</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">(March 1887)</p>
+<p>A <span class="smcap">terrible</span> danger is hanging over
+the Americans in London.&nbsp; Their future and their reputation
+this season depend entirely on the success of Buffalo Bill and
+Mrs. Brown-Potter.&nbsp; The former is certain to draw; for
+English people are far more interested in American barbarism than
+they are in American civilization.&nbsp; When they sight Sandy
+Hook they look to their rifles and ammunition; and, after dining
+once at Delmonico&rsquo;s, start off for Colorado or California,
+for Montana or the Yellow Stone Park.&nbsp; Rocky Mountains charm
+them more than riotous millionaires; they have been known to
+prefer buffaloes to Boston.&nbsp; Why should they not?&nbsp; The
+cities of America are inexpressibly tedious.&nbsp; The Bostonians
+take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an
+accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their
+&ldquo;Hub,&rdquo; as they call it, is the paradise of
+prigs.&nbsp; Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustle
+and bores.&nbsp; Political life at Washington is like political
+life in a suburban vestry.&nbsp; Baltimore is amusing for a week,
+but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can
+dine in New York one could not dwell there.&nbsp; Better the Far
+West with its grizzly bears and its untamed cowboys, its free
+open-air life and its free open-air manners, its boundless
+prairie and its boundless mendacity!&nbsp; This is what Buffalo
+Bill is going to bring to London; and we have no doubt that
+London will fully appreciate his show.</p>
+<p>With regard to Mrs. Brown-Potter, as acting is no longer
+considered absolutely essential for success on the English stage,
+there is really no reason why the pretty bright-eyed lady who
+charmed us all last June by her merry laugh and her nonchalant
+ways, should not&mdash;to borrow an expression from her native
+language&mdash;make a big boom and paint the town red.&nbsp; We
+sincerely hope she will; for, on the whole, the American invasion
+has done English society a great deal of good.&nbsp; American
+women are bright, clever, and wonderfully cosmopolitan.&nbsp;
+Their patriotic feelings are limited to an admiration for Niagara
+and a regret for the Elevated Railway; and, unlike the men, they
+never bore us with Bunkers Hill.&nbsp; They take their dresses
+from Paris and their manners from Piccadilly, and wear both
+charmingly.&nbsp; They have a quaint pertness, a delightful
+conceit, a native self-assertion.&nbsp; They insist on being paid
+compliments and have almost succeeded in making Englishmen
+eloquent.&nbsp; For our aristocracy they have an ardent
+admiration; they adore titles and are a permanent blow to
+Republican principles.&nbsp; In the art of amusing men they are
+adepts, both by nature and education, and can actually tell a
+story without forgetting the point&mdash;an accomplishment that
+is extremely rare among the women of other countries.&nbsp; It is
+true that they lack repose and that their voices are somewhat
+harsh and strident when they land first at Liverpool; but after a
+time one gets to love those pretty whirlwinds in petticoats that
+sweep so recklessly through society and are so agitating to all
+duchesses who have daughters.&nbsp; There is something
+fascinating in their funny, exaggerated gestures and their
+petulant way of tossing the head.&nbsp; Their eyes have no magic
+nor mystery in them, but they challenge us for combat; and when
+we engage we are always worsted.&nbsp; Their lips seem made for
+laughter and yet they never grimace.&nbsp; As for their voices
+they soon get them into tune.&nbsp; Some of them have been known
+to acquire a fashionable drawl in two seasons; and after they
+have been presented to Royalty they all roll their R&rsquo;s as
+vigorously as a young equerry or an old lady-in-waiting.&nbsp;
+Still, they never really lose their accent; it keeps peeping out
+here and there, and when they chatter together they are like a
+bevy of peacocks.&nbsp; Nothing is more amusing than to watch two
+American girls greeting each other in a drawing-room or in the
+Row.&nbsp; They are like children with their shrill staccato
+cries of wonder, their odd little exclamations.&nbsp; Their
+conversation sounds like a series of exploding crackers; they are
+exquisitely incoherent and use a sort of primitive, emotional
+language.&nbsp; After five minutes they are left beautifully
+breathless and look at each other half in amusement and half in
+affection.&nbsp; If a stolid young Englishman is fortunate enough
+to be introduced to them he is amazed at their extraordinary
+vivacity, their electric quickness of repartee, their
+inexhaustible store of curious catchwords.&nbsp; He never really
+understands them, for their thoughts flutter about with the sweet
+irresponsibility of butterflies; but he is pleased and amused and
+feels as if he were in an aviary.&nbsp; On the whole, American
+girls have a wonderful charm and, perhaps, the chief secret of
+their charm is that they never talk seriously except about
+amusements.&nbsp; They have, however, one grave fault&mdash;their
+mothers.&nbsp; Dreary as were those old Pilgrim Fathers who left
+our shores more than two centuries ago to found a New England
+beyond the seas, the Pilgrim Mothers who have returned to us in
+the nineteenth century are drearier still.</p>
+<p>Here and there, of course, there are exceptions, but as a
+class they are either dull, dowdy or dyspeptic.&nbsp; It is only
+fair to the rising generation of America to state that they are
+not to blame for this.&nbsp; Indeed, they spare no pains at all
+to bring up their parents properly and to give them a suitable,
+if somewhat late, education.&nbsp; From its earliest years every
+American child spends most of its time in correcting the faults
+of its father and mother; and no one who has had the opportunity
+of watching an American family on the deck of an Atlantic
+steamer, or in the refined seclusion of a New York
+boarding-house, can fail to have been struck by this
+characteristic of their civilization.&nbsp; In America the young
+are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves
+the full benefits of their inexperience.&nbsp; A boy of only
+eleven or twelve years of age will firmly but kindly point out to
+his father his defects of manner or temper; will never weary of
+warning him against extravagance, idleness, late hours,
+unpunctuality, and the other temptations to which the aged are so
+particularly exposed; and sometimes, should he fancy that he is
+monopolizing too much of the conversation at dinner, will remind
+him, across the table, of the new child&rsquo;s adage,
+&ldquo;Parents should be seen, not heard.&rdquo;&nbsp; Nor does
+any mistaken idea of kindness prevent the little American girl
+from censuring her mother whenever it is necessary.&nbsp; Often,
+indeed, feeling that a rebuke conveyed in the presence of others
+is more truly efficacious than one merely whispered in the quiet
+of the nursery, she will call the attention of perfect strangers
+to her mother&rsquo;s general untidiness, her want of
+intellectual Boston conversation, immoderate love of iced water
+and green corn, stinginess in the matter of candy, ignorance of
+the usages of the best Baltimore Society, bodily ailments, and
+the like.&nbsp; In fact, it may be truly said that no American
+child is ever blind to the deficiencies of its parents, no matter
+how much it may love them.</p>
+<p>Yet, somehow, this educational system has not been so
+successful as it deserved.&nbsp; In many cases, no doubt, the
+material with which the children had to deal was crude and
+incapable of real development; but the fact remains that the
+American mother is a tedious person.&nbsp; The American father is
+better, for he is never seen in London.&nbsp; He passes his life
+entirely in Wall Street and communicates with his family once a
+month by means of a telegram in cipher.&nbsp; The mother,
+however, is always with us, and, lacking the quick imitative
+faculty of the younger generation, remains uninteresting and
+provincial to the last.&nbsp; In spite of her, however, the
+American girl is always welcome.&nbsp; She brightens our dull
+dinner parties for us and makes life go pleasantly by for a
+season.&nbsp; In the race for coronets she often carries off the
+prize; but, once she has gained the victory, she is generous and
+forgives her English rivals everything, even their beauty.</p>
+<p>Warned by the example of her mother that American women do not
+grow old gracefully, she tries not to grow old at all and often
+succeeds.&nbsp; She has exquisite feet and hands, is always
+<i>bien chauss&eacute;e et bien gant&eacute;e</i> and can talk
+brilliantly upon any subject, provided that she knows nothing
+about it.</p>
+<p>Her sense of humour keeps her from the tragedy of a <i>grande
+passion</i>, and, as there is neither romance nor humility in her
+love, she makes an excellent wife.&nbsp; What her ultimate
+influence on English life will be it is difficult to estimate at
+present; but there can be no doubt that, of all the factors that
+have contributed to the social revolution of London, there are
+few more important, and none more delightful, than the American
+Invasion.</p>
+<h2><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+90</span>SERMONS IN STONES AT BLOOMSBURY</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">THE NEW
+SCULPTURE ROOM AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">(October 1887)</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Through</span> the exertions of Sir
+Charles Newton, to whom every student of classic art should be
+grateful, some of the wonderful treasures so long immured in the
+grimy vaults of the British Museum have at last been brought to
+light, and the new Sculpture Room now opened to the public will
+amply repay the trouble of a visit, even from those to whom art
+is a stumbling-block and a rock of offence.&nbsp; For setting
+aside the mere beauty of form, outline and mass, the grace and
+loveliness of design and the delicacy of technical treatment,
+here we have shown to us what the Greeks and Romans thought about
+death; and the philosopher, the preacher, the practical man of
+the world, and even the Philistine himself, cannot fail to be
+touched by these &ldquo;sermons in stones,&rdquo; with their deep
+significance, their fertile suggestion, their plain
+humanity.&nbsp; Common tombstones they are, most of them, the
+work not of famous artists but of simple handicraftsmen, only
+they were wrought in days when every handicraft was an art.&nbsp;
+The finest specimens, from the purely artistic point of view, are
+undoubtedly the two <i>stelai</i> found at Athens.&nbsp; They are
+both the tombstones of young Greek athletes.&nbsp; In one the
+athlete is represented handing his <i>strigil</i> to his slave,
+in the other the athlete stands alone, <i>strigil</i> in
+hand.&nbsp; They do not belong to the greatest period of Greek
+art, they have not the grand style of the Phidian age, but they
+are beautiful for all that, and it is impossible not to be
+fascinated by their exquisite grace and by the treatment which is
+so simple in its means, so subtle in its effect.&nbsp; All the
+tombstones, however, are full of interest.&nbsp; Here is one of
+two ladies of Smyrna who were so remarkable in their day that the
+city voted them honorary crowns; here is a Greek doctor examining
+a little boy who is suffering from indigestion; here is the
+memorial of Xanthippus who, probably, was a martyr to gout, as he
+is holding in his hand the model of a foot, intended, no doubt,
+as a votive offering to some god.&nbsp; A lovely <i>stele</i>
+from Rhodes gives us a family group.&nbsp; The husband is on
+horseback and is bidding farewell to his wife, who seems as if
+she would follow him but is being held back by a little
+child.&nbsp; The pathos of parting from those we love is the
+central motive of Greek funeral art.&nbsp; It is repeated in
+every possible form, and each mute marble stone seems to murmur
+<i>&chi;&alpha;&icirc;&rho;&epsilon;</i>.&nbsp; Roman art is
+different.&nbsp; It introduces vigorous and realistic portraiture
+and deals with pure family life far more frequently than Greek
+art does.&nbsp; They are very ugly, those stern-looking Roman men
+and women whose portraits are exhibited on their tombs, but they
+seem to have been loved and respected by their children and their
+servants.&nbsp; Here is the monument of Aphrodisius and Atilia, a
+Roman gentleman and his wife, who died in Britain many centuries
+ago, and whose tombstone was found in the Thames; and close by it
+stands a <i>stele</i> from Rome with the busts of an old married
+couple who are certainly marvellously ill-favoured.&nbsp; The
+contrast between the abstract Greek treatment of the idea of
+death and the Roman concrete realization of the individuals who
+have died is extremely curious.</p>
+<p>Besides the tombstones, the new Sculpture Room contains some
+most fascinating examples of Roman decorative art under the
+Emperors.&nbsp; The most wonderful of all, and this alone is
+worth a trip to Bloomsbury, is a bas-relief representing a
+marriage scene, Juno Pronuba is joining the hands of a handsome
+young noble and a very stately lady.&nbsp; There is all the grace
+of Perugino in this marble, all the grace of Raphael even.&nbsp;
+The date of it is uncertain, but the particular cut of the
+bridegroom&rsquo;s beard seems to point to the time of the
+Emperor Hadrian.&nbsp; It is clearly the work of Greek artists
+and is one of the most beautiful bas-reliefs in the whole
+Museum.&nbsp; There is something in it which reminds one of the
+music and the sweetness of Propertian verse.&nbsp; Then we have
+delightful friezes of children.&nbsp; One representing children
+playing on musical instruments might have suggested much of the
+plastic art of Florence.&nbsp; Indeed, as we view these marbles
+it is not difficult to see whence the Renaissance sprang and to
+what we owe the various forms of Renaissance art.&nbsp; The
+frieze of the Muses, each of whom wears in her hair a feather
+plucked from the wings of the vanquished sirens, is extremely
+fine; there is a lovely little bas-relief of two cupids racing in
+chariots; and the frieze of recumbent Amazons has some splendid
+qualities of design.&nbsp; A frieze of children playing with the
+armour of the god Mars should also be mentioned.&nbsp; It is full
+of fancy and delicate humour.</p>
+<p>We hope that some more of the hidden treasures will shortly be
+catalogued and shown.&nbsp; In the vaults at present there is a
+very remarkable bas-relief of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche,
+and another representing the professional mourners weeping over
+the body of the dead.&nbsp; The fine cast of the Lion of
+Ch&aelig;ronea should also be brought up, and so should the
+<i>stele</i> with the marvellous portrait of the Roman
+slave.&nbsp; Economy is an excellent public virtue, but the
+parsimony that allows valuable works of art to remain in the grim
+and gloom of a damp cellar is little short of a detestable public
+vice.</p>
+<h2><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+119</span>L&rsquo;ENVOI</h2>
+<p class="gutsumm">An introduction to <i>Rose Leaf and Apple
+Leaf</i> by Rennell Rodd, published by J. M. Stoddart and Co.,
+Philadelphia, 1882.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Amongst</span> the many young men in
+England who are seeking along with me to continue and to perfect
+the English Renaissance&mdash;<i>jeunes guerriers du drapeau
+romantique</i>, as Gautier would have called us&mdash;there is
+none whose love of art is more flawless and fervent, whose
+artistic sense of beauty is more subtle and more
+delicate&mdash;none, indeed, who is dearer to myself&mdash;than
+the young poet whose verses I have brought with me to America;
+verses full of sweet sadness, and yet full of joy; for the most
+joyous poet is not he who sows the desolate highways of this
+world with the barren seed of laughter, but he who makes his
+sorrow most musical, this indeed being the meaning of joy in
+art&mdash;that incommunicable element of artistic delight which,
+in poetry, for instance, comes from what Keats called
+&ldquo;sensuous life of verse,&rdquo; the element of song in the
+singing, made so pleasurable to us by that wonder of motion which
+often has its origin in mere musical impulse, and in painting is
+to be sought for, from the subject never, but from the pictorial
+charm only&mdash;the scheme and symphony of the colour, the
+satisfying beauty of the design: so that the ultimate expression
+of our artistic movement in painting has been, not in the
+spiritual vision of the Pre-Raphaelites, for all their marvel of
+Greek legend and their mystery of Italian song, but in the work
+of such men as Whistler and Albert Moore, who have raised design
+and colour to the ideal level of poetry and music.&nbsp; For the
+quality of their exquisite painting comes from the mere inventive
+and creative handling of line and colour, from a certain form and
+choice of beautiful workmanship, which, rejecting all literary
+reminiscence and all metaphysical idea, is in itself entirely
+satisfying to the &aelig;sthetic sense&mdash;is, as the Greeks
+would say, an end in itself; the effect of their work being like
+the effect given to us by music; for music is the art in which
+form and matter are always one&mdash;the art whose subject cannot
+be separated from the method of its expression; the art which
+most completely realizes for us the artistic ideal, and is the
+condition to which all the other arts are constantly
+aspiring.</p>
+<p>Now, this increased sense of the absolutely satisfying value
+of beautiful workmanship, this recognition of the primary
+importance of the sensuous element in art, this love of art for
+art&rsquo;s sake, is the point in which we of the younger school
+have made a departure from the teaching of Mr. Ruskin,&mdash;a
+departure definite and different and decisive.</p>
+<p>Master indeed of the knowledge of all noble living and of the
+wisdom of all spiritual things will he be to us ever, seeing that
+it was he who by the magic of his presence and the music of his
+lips taught us at Oxford that enthusiasm for beauty which is the
+secret of Hellenism, and that desire for creation which is the
+secret of life, and filled some of us, at least, with the lofty
+and passionate ambition to go forth into far and fair lands with
+some message for the nations and some mission for the world, and
+yet in his art criticism, his estimate of the joyous element of
+art, his whole method of approaching art, we are no longer with
+him; for the keystone to his &aelig;sthetic system is ethical
+always.&nbsp; He would judge of a picture by the amount of noble
+moral ideas it expresses; but to us the channels by which all
+noble work in painting can touch, and does touch, the soul are
+not those of truths of life or metaphysical truths.&nbsp; To him
+perfection of workmanship seems but the symbol of pride, and
+incompleteness of technical resource the image of an imagination
+too limitless to find within the limits of form its complete
+expression, or of love too simple not to stammer in its
+tale.&nbsp; But to us the rule of art is not the rule of
+morals.&nbsp; In an ethical system, indeed, of any gentle mercy
+good intentions will, one is fain to fancy, have their
+recognition; but of those that would enter the serene House of
+Beauty the question that we ask is not what they had ever meant
+to do, but what they have done.&nbsp; Their pathetic intentions
+are of no value to us, but their realized creations only.&nbsp;
+<i>Pour moi je pr&eacute;f&egrave;re les po&egrave;tes qui font
+des vers</i>, <i>les m&eacute;decins qui sachent
+gu&eacute;rir</i>, <i>les peintres qui sanchent peindre</i>.</p>
+<p>Nor, in looking at a work of art, should we be dreaming of
+what it symbolises, but rather loving it for what it is.&nbsp;
+Indeed, the transcendental spirit is alien to the spirit of
+art.&nbsp; The metaphysical mind of Asia may create for itself
+the monstrous and many-breasted idol, but to the Greek, pure
+artist, that work is most instinct with spiritual life which
+conforms most closely to the perfect facts of physical life
+also.&nbsp; Nor, in its primary aspect, has a painting, for
+instance, any more spiritual message or meaning for us than a
+blue tile from the wall of Damascus, or a Hitzen vase.&nbsp; It
+is a beautifully coloured surface, nothing more, and affects us
+by no suggestion stolen from philosophy, no pathos pilfered from
+literature, no feeling filched from a poet, but by its own
+incommunicable artistic essence&mdash;by that selection of truth
+which we call style, and that relation of values which is the
+draughtsmanship of painting, by the whole quality of the
+workmanship, the arabesque of the design, the splendour of the
+colour, for these things are enough to stir the most divine and
+remote of the chords which make music in our soul, and colour,
+indeed, is of itself a mystical presence on things, and tone a
+kind of sentiment . . . all these poems aim, as I said, at
+producing a purely artistic effect, and have the rare and
+exquisite quality that belongs to work of that kind; and I feel
+that the entire subordination in our &aelig;sthetic movement of
+all merely emotional and intellectual motives to the vital
+informing poetic principle is the surest sign of our
+strength.</p>
+<p>But it is not enough that a work of art should conform to the
+&aelig;sthetic demands of the age: there should be also about it,
+if it is to give us any permanent delight, the impress of a
+distinct individuality.&nbsp; Whatever work we have in the
+nineteenth century must rest on the two poles of personality and
+perfection.&nbsp; And so in this little volume, by separating the
+earlier and more simple work from the work that is later and
+stronger and possesses increased technical power and more
+artistic vision, one might weave these disconnected poems, these
+stray and scattered threads, into one fiery-coloured strand of
+life, noting first a boy&rsquo;s mere gladness of being young,
+with all its simple joy in field and flower, in sunlight and in
+song, and then the bitterness of sudden sorrow at the ending by
+Death of one of the brief and beautiful friendships of
+one&rsquo;s youth, with all those unanswered lodgings and
+questionings unsatisfied by which we vex, so uselessly, the
+marble face of death; the artistic contrast between the
+discontented incompleteness of the spirit and the complete
+perfection of the style that expresses it forming the chief
+element of the &aelig;sthetic charm of these particular
+poems;&mdash;and then the birth of Love, and all the wonder and
+the fear and the perilous delight of one on whose boyish brows
+the little wings of love have beaten for the first time; and the
+love-songs, so dainty and delicate, little swallow-flights of
+music, and full of such fragrance and freedom that they might all
+be sung in the open air and across moving water; and then autumn,
+coming with its choirless woods and odorous decay and ruined
+loveliness, Love lying dead; and the sense of the mere pity of
+it.</p>
+<p>One might stop there, for from a young poet one should ask for
+no deeper chords of life than those that love and friendship make
+eternal for us; and the best poems in the volume belong clearly
+to a later time, a time when these real experiences become
+absorbed and gathered up into a form which seems from such real
+experiences to be the most alien and the most remote; when the
+simple expression of joy or sorrow suffices no longer, and lives
+rather in the stateliness of the cadenced metre, in the music and
+colour of the linked words, than in any direct utterance; lives,
+one might say, in the perfection of the form more than in the
+pathos of the feeling.&nbsp; And yet, after the broken music of
+love and the burial of love in the autumn woods, we can trace
+that wandering among strange people, and in lands unknown to us,
+by which we try so pathetically to heal the hurts of the life we
+know, and that pure and passionate devotion to Art which one gets
+when the harsh reality of life has too suddenly wounded one, and
+is with discontent or sorrow marring one&rsquo;s youth, just as
+often, I think, as one gets it from any natural joy of living;
+and that curious intensity of vision by which, in moments of
+overmastering sadness and despair ungovernable, artistic things
+will live in one&rsquo;s memory with a vivid realism caught from
+the life which they help one to forget&mdash;an old grey tomb in
+Flanders with a strange legend on it, making one think how,
+perhaps, passion does live on after death; a necklace of blue and
+amber beads and a broken mirror found in a girl&rsquo;s grave at
+Rome, a marble image of a boy habited like Er&ocirc;s, and with
+the pathetic tradition of a great king&rsquo;s sorrow lingering
+about it like a purple shadow,&mdash;over all these the tired
+spirit broods with that calm and certain joy that one gets when
+one has found something that the ages never dull and the world
+cannot harm; and with it comes that desire of Greek things which
+is often an artistic method of expressing one&rsquo;s desire for
+perfection; and that longing for the old dead days which is so
+modern, so incomplete, so touching, being, in a way, the inverted
+torch of Hope, which burns the hand it should guide; and for many
+things a little sadness, and for all things a great love; and
+lastly, in the pinewood by the sea, once more the quick and vital
+pulse of joyous youth leaping and laughing in every line, the
+frank and fearless freedom of wave and wind waking into fire
+life&rsquo;s burnt-out ashes and into song the silent lips of
+pain,&mdash;how clearly one seems to see it all, the long
+colonnade of pines with sea and sky peeping in here and there
+like a flitting of silver; the open place in the green, deep
+heart of the wood with the little moss-grown altar to the old
+Italian god in it; and the flowers all about, cyclamen in the
+shadowy places, and the stars of the white narcissus lying like
+snow-flakes over the grass, where the quick, bright-eyed lizard
+starts by the stone, and the snake lies coiled lazily in the sun
+on the hot sand, and overhead the gossamer floats from the
+branches like thin, tremulous threads of gold,&mdash;the scene is
+so perfect for its motive, for surely here, if anywhere, the real
+gladness of life might be revealed to one&rsquo;s youth&mdash;the
+gladness that comes, not from the rejection, but from the
+absorption, of all passion, and is like that serene calm that
+dwells in the faces of the Greek statues, and which despair and
+sorrow cannot touch, but intensify only.</p>
+<p>In some such way as this we could gather up these strewn and
+scattered petals of song into one perfect rose of life, and yet,
+perhaps, in so doing, we might be missing the true quality of the
+poems; one&rsquo;s real life is so often the life that one does
+not lead; and beautiful poems, like threads of beautiful silks,
+may be woven into many patterns and to suit many designs, all
+wonderful and all different: and romantic poetry, too, is
+essentially the poetry of impressions, being like that latest
+school of painting, the school of Whistler and Albert Moore, in
+its choice of situation as opposed to subject; in its dealing
+with the exceptions rather than with the types of life; in its
+brief intensity; in what one might call its fiery-coloured
+momentariness, it being indeed the momentary situations of life,
+the momentary aspects of nature, which poetry and painting new
+seek to render for us.&nbsp; Sincerity and constancy will the
+artist, indeed, have always; but sincerity in art is merely that
+plastic perfection of execution without which a poem or a
+painting, however noble its sentiment or human its origin, is but
+wasted and unreal work, and the constancy of the artist cannot be
+to any definite rule or system of living, but to that principle
+of beauty only through which the inconstant shadows of his life
+are in their most fleeting moment arrested and made
+permanent.&nbsp; He will not, for instance, in intellectual
+matters acquiesce in that facile orthodoxy of our day which is so
+reasonable and so artistically uninteresting, nor yet will he
+desire that fiery faith of the antique time which, while it
+intensified, yet limited the vision; still less will he allow the
+calm of his culture to be marred by the discordant despair of
+doubt or the sadness of a sterile scepticism; for the Valley
+Perilous, where ignorant armies clash by night, is no
+resting-place meet for her to whom the gods have assigned the
+clear upland, the serene height, and the sunlit air,&mdash;rather
+will he be always curiously testing new forms of belief, tinging
+his nature with the sentiment that still lingers about some
+beautiful creeds, and searching for experience itself, and not
+for the fruits of experience; when he has got its secret, he will
+leave without regret much that was once very precious to
+him.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am always insincere,&rdquo; says Emerson
+somewhere, &ldquo;as knowing that there are other moods&rdquo;:
+&ldquo;<i>Les &eacute;motions</i>,&rdquo; wrote Th&eacute;ophile
+Gautier once in a review of Ars&egrave;ne Houssaye, &ldquo;<i>Les
+&eacute;motions</i>, <i>ne se ressemblent pas</i>, <i>mais
+&ecirc;tre &eacute;mu</i>&mdash;<i>voil&agrave;
+l&rsquo;important</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Now, this is the secret of the art of the modern romantic
+school, and gives one the right keynote for its apprehension; but
+the real quality of all work which, like Mr. Rodd&rsquo;s, aims,
+as I said, at a purely artistic effect, cannot be described in
+terms of intellectual criticism; it is too intangible for
+that.&nbsp; One can perhaps convey it best in terms of the other
+arts, and by reference to them; and, indeed, some of these poems
+are as iridescent and as exquisite as a lovely fragment of
+Venetian glass; others as delicate in perfect workmanship and as
+single in natural motive as an etching by Whistler is, or one of
+those beautiful little Greek figures which in the olive woods
+round Tanagra men can still find, with the faint gilding and the
+fading crimson not yet fled from hair and lips and raiment; and
+many of them seem like one of Corot&rsquo;s twilights just
+passing into music; for not merely in visible colour, but in
+sentiment also&mdash;which is the colour of poetry&mdash;may
+there be a kind of tone.</p>
+<p>But I think that the best likeness to the quality of this
+young poet&rsquo;s work I ever saw was in the landscape by the
+Loire.&nbsp; We were staying once, he and I, at Amboise, that
+little village with its grey slate roofs and steep streets and
+gaunt, grim gateway, where the quiet cottages nestle like white
+pigeons into the sombre clefts of the great bastioned rock, and
+the stately Renaissance houses stand silent and apart&mdash;very
+desolate now, but with some memory of the old days still
+lingering about the delicately-twisted pillars, and the carved
+doorways, with their grotesque animals, and laughing masks, and
+quaint heraldic devices, all reminding one of a people who could
+not think life real till they had made it fantastic.&nbsp; And
+above the village, and beyond the bend of the river, we used to
+go in the afternoon, and sketch from one of the big barges that
+bring the wine in autumn and the wood in winter down to the sea,
+or lie in the long grass and make plans <i>pour la gloire</i>,
+<i>et pour ennuyer les Philistins</i>, or wander along the low,
+sedgy banks, &ldquo;matching our reeds in sportive
+rivalry,&rdquo; as comrades used in the old Sicilian days; and
+the land was an ordinary land enough, and bare, too, when one
+thought of Italy, and how the oleanders were robing the hillsides
+by Genoa in scarlet, and the cyclamen filling with its purple
+every valley from Florence to Rome; for there was not much real
+beauty, perhaps, in it, only long, white dusty roads and straight
+rows of formal poplars; but, now and then, some little breaking
+gleam of broken light would lend to the grey field and the silent
+barn a secret and a mystery that were hardly their own, would
+transfigure for one exquisite moment the peasants passing down
+through the vineyard, or the shepherd watching on the hill, would
+tip the willows with silver and touch the river into gold; and
+the wonder of the effect, with the strange simplicity of the
+material, always seemed to me to be a little like the quality of
+these the verses of my friend.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORTER PROSE PIECES***</p>
+<pre>
+
+
+***** This file should be named 2061-h.htm or 2061-h.zip******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/6/2061
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
+be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
+States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive
+specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this
+eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook
+for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports,
+performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given
+away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks
+not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the
+trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.
+
+START: FULL LICENSE
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
+person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
+1.E.8.
+
+1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
+Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country outside the United States.
+
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
+on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+
+  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+  most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
+  restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+  under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+  eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
+  United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you
+  are located before using this ebook.
+
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
+other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
+Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+provided that
+
+* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+  the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
+  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+  Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+  Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
+  works.
+
+* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+  receipt of the work.
+
+* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+  distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The
+Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
+www.gutenberg.org 
+
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary 
+Archive Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the
+mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its
+volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous
+locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt
+Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to
+date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and
+official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+
+    Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+    Chief Executive and Director
+    gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
+state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search
+facility: www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+</pre></body>
+</html>
diff --git a/2061-h/images/cover.jpg b/2061-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0aadf43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2061-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad0901d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #2061 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2061)
diff --git a/old/wldsp10.txt b/old/wldsp10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f36d396
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/wldsp10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1540 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Etext of Shorter Prose Pieces by Oscar Wilde
+#22 in our series by Oscar Wilde
+
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.  Do not remove this.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+
+Shorter Prose Pieces
+
+by Oscar Wilde
+
+February, 2000 [Etext #2061]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg's Etext of Shorter Prose Pieces by Oscar Wilde
+******This file should be named wldsp10.txt or wldsp10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, wldsp11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, wldsp10a.txt
+
+
+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
+all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
+copyright notice is included.  Therefore, we do usually do NOT! keep
+these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.  To be sure you have an
+up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
+in the first week of the next month.  Since our ftp program has
+a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
+look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
+new copy has at least one byte more or less.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text
+files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+
+If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
+total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users.
+
+At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
+of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
+manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly
+from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an
+assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few
+more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we
+don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+
+All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are
+tax deductible to the extent allowable by law.  (CMU = Carnegie-
+Mellon University).
+
+For these and other matters, please mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg
+P. O. Box  2782
+Champaign, IL 61825
+
+When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director:
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
+if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
+it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email.
+
+******
+
+To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser
+to view http://promo.net/pg.  This site lists Etexts by
+author and by title, and includes information about how
+to get involved with Project Gutenberg.  You could also
+download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here.  This
+is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com,
+for a more complete list of our various sites.
+
+To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any
+Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror
+sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed
+at http://promo.net/pg).
+
+Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better.
+
+Example FTP session:
+
+ftp sunsite.unc.edu
+login: anonymous
+password: your@login
+cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
+cd etext90 through etext99
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET GUTINDEX.??  [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
+GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
+
+***
+
+**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
+tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
+Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
+Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project").  Among other
+things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
+     cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     net profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
+     University" within the 60 days following each
+     date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
+     your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
+scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
+free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
+you can think of.  Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
+Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
+
+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+OSCAR WILDE--SHORTER PROSE PIECES
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+Phrases And Philosophies for the Use of The Young
+Mrs. Langtry as Hester Grazebrook
+Slaves of Fashion
+Woman's Dress
+More Radical Ideas upon Dress Reform
+Costume
+The American Invasion
+Sermons in Stones at Bloomsbury
+L'Envoi
+
+
+
+
+PHRASES AND PHILOSOPHIES FOR THE USE OF THE YOUNG
+
+
+
+The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible.  What
+the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.
+
+Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the
+curious attractiveness of others.
+
+If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in
+solving the problem of poverty.
+
+Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.
+
+A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and
+Nature.
+
+Religions die when they are proved to be true.  Science is the
+record of dead religions.
+
+The well-bred contradict other people.  The wise contradict
+themselves.
+
+Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance.
+
+Dulness is the coming of age of seriousness.
+
+In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.
+In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.
+
+If one tells the truth one is sure, sooner or later, to be found
+out.
+
+Pleasure is the only thing one should live for.  Nothing ages like
+happiness.
+
+It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in
+the memory of the commercial classes.
+
+No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime.  Vulgarity is the
+conduct of others.
+
+Only the shallow know themselves.
+
+Time is waste of money.
+
+One should always be a little improbable.
+
+There is a fatality about all good resolutions.  They are
+invariably made too soon.
+
+The only way to atone for being occasionally a little overdressed
+is by being always absolutely overeducated.
+
+To be premature is to be perfect.
+
+Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct
+shows an arrested intellectual development.
+
+Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
+
+A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
+
+In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot
+answer.
+
+Greek dress was in its essence inartistic.  Nothing should reveal
+the body but the body.
+
+One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
+
+It is only the superficial qualities that last.  Man's deeper
+nature is soon found out.
+
+Industry is the root of all ugliness.
+
+The ages live in history through their anachronisms.
+
+It is only the gods who taste of death.  Apollo has passed away,
+but Hyacinth, whom men say he slew, lives on.  Nero and Narcissus
+are always with us.
+
+The old believe everything:  the middle-aged suspect everything;
+the young know everything.
+
+The condition of perfection is idleness:  the aim of perfection is
+youth.
+
+Only the great masters of style ever succeeded in being obscure.
+
+There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men
+there are in England at the present moment who start life with
+perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession.
+
+To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
+
+
+
+MRS. LANGTRY AS HESTER GRAZEBROOK
+
+
+
+It is only in the best Greek gems, on the silver coins of Syracuse,
+or among the marble figures of the Parthenon frieze, that one can
+find the ideal representation of the marvellous beauty of that face
+which laughed through the leaves last night as Hester Grazebrook.
+
+Pure Greek it is, with the grave low forehead, the exquisitely
+arched brow; the noble chiselling of the mouth, shaped as if it
+were the mouthpiece of an instrument of music; the supreme and
+splendid curve of the cheek; the augustly pillared throat which
+bears it all:  it is Greek, because the lines which compose it are
+so definite and so strong, and yet so exquisitely harmonized that
+the effect is one of simple loveliness purely:  Greek, because its
+essence and its quality, as is the quality of music and of
+architecture, is that of beauty based on absolutely mathematical
+laws.
+
+But while art remains dumb and immobile in its passionless
+serenity, with the beauty of this face it is different:  the grey
+eyes lighten into blue or deepen into violet as fancy succeeds
+fancy; the lips become flower-like in laughter or, tremulous as a
+bird's wing, mould themselves at last into the strong and bitter
+moulds of pain or scorn.  And then motion comes, and the statue
+wakes into life.  But the life is not the ordinary life of common
+days; it is life with a new value given to it, the value of art:
+and the charm to me of Hester Grazebrook's acting in the first
+scene of the play last night was that mingling of classic grace
+with absolute reality which is the secret of all beautiful art, of
+the plastic work of the Greeks and of the pictures of Jean Francois
+Millet equally.
+
+I do not think that the sovereignty and empire of women's beauty
+has at all passed away, though we may no longer go to war for them
+as the Greeks did for the daughter of Leda.  The greatest empire
+still remains for them--the empire of art.  And, indeed, this
+wonderful face, seen last night for the first time in America, has
+filled and permeated with the pervading image of its type the whole
+of our modern art in England.  Last century it was the romantic
+type which dominated in art, the type loved by Reynolds and
+Gainsborough, of wonderful contrasts of colour, of exquisite and
+varying charm of expression, but without that definite plastic
+feeling which divides classic from romantic work.  This type
+degenerated into mere facile prettiness in the hands of lesser
+masters, and, in protest against it, was created by the hands of
+the Pre-Raphaelites a new type, with its rare combination of Greek
+form with Florentine mysticism.  But this mysticism becomes over-
+strained and a burden, rather than an aid to expression, and a
+desire for the pure Hellenic joy and serenity came in its place;
+and in all our modern work, in the paintings of such men as Albert
+Moore and Leighton and Whistler, we can trace the influence of this
+single face giving fresh life and inspiration in the form of a new
+artistic ideal.
+
+
+
+SLAVES OF FASHION
+
+
+
+Miss Leffler-Arnim's statement, in a lecture delivered recently at
+St. Saviour's Hospital, that "she had heard of instances where
+ladies were so determined not to exceed the fashionable measurement
+that they had actually held on to a cross-bar while their maids
+fastened the fifteen-inch corset," has excited a good deal of
+incredulity, but there is nothing really improbable in it.  From
+the sixteenth century to our own day there is hardly any form of
+torture that has not been inflicted on girls, and endured by women,
+in obedience to the dictates of an unreasonable and monstrous
+Fashion.  "In order to obtain a real Spanish figure," says
+Montaigne, "what a Gehenna of suffering will not women endure,
+drawn in and compressed by great coches entering the flesh; nay,
+sometimes they even die thereof!"  "A few days after my arrival at
+school," Mrs. Somerville tells us in her memoirs, "although
+perfectly straight and well made, I was enclosed in stiff stays,
+with a steel busk in front; while above my frock, bands drew my
+shoulders back till the shoulder-blades met.  Then a steel rod with
+a semi-circle, which went under my chin, was clasped to the steel
+busk in my stays.  In this constrained state I and most of the
+younger girls had to prepare our lessons"; and in the life of Miss
+Edgeworth we read that, being sent to a certain fashionable
+establishment, "she underwent all the usual tortures of back-
+boards, iron collars and dumbs, and also (because she was a very
+tiny person) the unusual one of being hung by the neck to draw out
+the muscles and increase the growth," a signal failure in her case.
+Indeed, instances of absolute mutilation and misery are so common
+in the past that it is unnecessary to multiply them; but it is
+really sad to think that in our own day a civilized woman can hang
+on to a cross-bar while her maid laces her waist into a fifteen-
+inch circle.  To begin with, the waist is not a circle at all, but
+an oval; nor can there be any greater error than to imagine that an
+unnaturally small waist gives an air of grace, or even of
+slightness, to the whole figure.  Its effect, as a rule, is simply
+to exaggerate the width of the shoulders and the hips; and those
+whose figures possess that stateliness which is called stoutness by
+the vulgar, convert what is a quality into a defect by yielding to
+the silly edicts of Fashion on the subject of tight-lacing.  The
+fashionable English waist, also, is not merely far too small, and
+consequently quite out of proportion to the rest of the figure, but
+it is worn far too low down.  I use the expression "worn"
+advisedly, for a waist nowadays seems to be regarded as an article
+of apparel to be put on when and where one likes.  A long waist
+always implies shortness of the lower limbs, and, from the artistic
+point of view, has the effect of diminishing the height; and I am
+glad to see that many of the most charming women in Paris are
+returning to the idea of the Directoire style of dress.  This style
+is not by any means perfect, but at least it has the merit of
+indicating the proper position of the waist.  I feel quite sure
+that all English women of culture and position will set their faces
+against such stupid and dangerous practices as are related by Miss
+Leffler-Arnim.  Fashion's motto is:  Il faut souffrir pour etre
+belle; but the motto of art and of common-sense is:  Il faut etre
+bete pour souffrir.
+
+Talking of Fashion, a critic in the Pall Mall Gazelle expresses his
+surprise that I should have allowed an illustration of a hat,
+covered with "the bodies of dead birds," to appear in the first
+number of the Woman's World; and as I have received many letters on
+the subject, it is only right that I should state my exact position
+in the matter.  Fashion is such an essential part of the mundus
+muliebris of our day, that it seems to me absolutely necessary that
+its growth, development, and phases should be duly chronicled; and
+the historical and practical value of such a record depends
+entirely upon its perfect fidelity to fact.  Besides, it is quite
+easy for the children of light to adapt almost any fashionable form
+of dress to the requirements of utility and the demands of good
+taste.  The Sarah Bernhardt tea-gown, for instance, figured in the
+present issue, has many good points about it, and the gigantic
+dress-improver does not appear to me to be really essential to the
+mode; and though the Postillion costume of the fancy dress ball is
+absolutely detestable in its silliness and vulgarity, the so-called
+Late Georgian costume in the same plate is rather pleasing.  I
+must, however, protest against the idea that to chronicle the
+development of Fashion implies any approval of the particular forms
+that Fashion may adopt.
+
+
+
+WOMAN'S DRESS
+
+
+
+The "Girl Graduate" must of course have precedence, not merely for
+her sex but for her sanity:  her letter is extremely sensible.  She
+makes two points:  that high heels are a necessity for any lady who
+wishes to keep her dress clean from the Stygian mud of our streets,
+and that without a tight corset the ordinary number of petticoats
+and etceteras' cannot be properly or conveniently held up.  Now, it
+is quite true that as long as the lower garments are suspended from
+the hips a corset is an absolute necessity; the mistake lies in not
+suspending all apparel from the shoulders.  In the latter case a
+corset becomes useless, the body is left free and unconfined for
+respiration and motion, there is more health, and consequently more
+beauty.  Indeed all the most ungainly and uncomfortable articles of
+dress that fashion has ever in her folly prescribed, not the tight
+corset merely, but the farthingale, the vertugadin, the hoop, the
+crinoline, and that modern monstrosity the so-called "dress
+improver" also, all of them have owed their origin to the same
+error, the error of not seeing that it is from the shoulders, and
+from the shoulders only, that all garments should be hung.
+
+And as regards high heels, I quite admit that some additional
+height to the shoe or boot is necessary if long gowns are to be
+worn in the street; but what I object to is that the height should
+be given to the heel only, and not to the sole of the foot also.
+The modern high-heeled boot is, in fact, merely the clog of the
+time of Henry VI., with the front prop left out, and its inevitable
+effect is to throw the body forward, to shorten the steps, and
+consequently to produce that want of grace which always follows
+want of freedom.
+
+Why should clogs be despised?  Much art has been expended on clogs.
+They have been made of lovely woods, and delicately inlaid with
+ivory, and with mother-of-pearl.  A clog might be a dream of
+beauty, and, if not too high or too heavy, most comfortable also.
+But if there be any who do not like clogs, let them try some
+adaptation of the trouser of the Turkish lady, which is loose round
+the limb and tight at the ankle.
+
+The "Girl Graduate," with a pathos to which I am not insensible,
+entreats me not to apotheosize "that awful, befringed, beflounced,
+and bekilted divided skirt."  Well, I will acknowledge that the
+fringes, the flounces, and the kilting do certainly defeat the
+whole object of the dress, which is that of ease and liberty; but I
+regard these things as mere wicked superfluities, tragic proofs
+that the divided skirt is ashamed of its own division.  The
+principle of the dress is good, and, though it is not by any means
+perfection, it is a step towards it.
+
+Here I leave the "Girl Graduate," with much regret, for Mr.
+Wentworth Huyshe.  Mr. Huyshe makes the old criticism that Greek
+dress is unsuited to our climate, and, to me the somewhat new
+assertion, that the men's dress of a hundred years ago was
+preferable to that of the second part of the seventeenth century,
+which I consider to have been the exquisite period of English
+costume.
+
+Now, as regards the first of these two statements, I will say, to
+begin with, that the warmth of apparel does not depend really on
+the number of garments worn, but on the material of which they are
+made.  One of the chief faults of modern dress is that it is
+composed of far too many articles of clothing, most of which are of
+the wrong substance; but over a substratum of pure wool, such as is
+supplied by Dr. Jaeger under the modern German system, some
+modification of Greek costume is perfectly applicable to our
+climate, our country and our century.  This important fact has
+already been pointed out by Mr. E. W. Godwin in his excellent,
+though too brief handbook on Dress, contributed to the Health
+Exhibition.  I call it an important fact because it makes almost
+any form of lovely costume perfectly practicable in our cold
+climate.  Mr. Godwin, it is true, points out that the English
+ladies of the thirteenth century abandoned after some time the
+flowing garments of the early Renaissance in favour of a tighter
+mode, such as Northern Europe seems to demand.  This I quite admit,
+and its significance; but what I contend, and what I am sure Mr.
+Godwin would agree with me in, is that the principles, the laws of
+Greek dress may be perfectly realized, even in a moderately tight
+gown with sleeves:  I mean the principle of suspending all apparel
+from the shoulders, and of relying for beauty of effect not on the
+stiff ready-made ornaments of the modern milliner--the bows where
+there should be no bows, and the flounces where there should be no
+flounces--but on the exquisite play of light and line that one gets
+from rich and rippling folds.  I am not proposing any antiquarian
+revival of an ancient costume, but trying merely to point out the
+right laws of dress, laws which are dictated by art and not by
+archaeology, by science and not by fashion; and just as the best
+work of art in our days is that which combines classic grace with
+absolute reality, so from a continuation of the Greek principles of
+beauty with the German principles of health will come, I feel
+certain, the costume of the future.
+
+And now to the question of men's dress, or rather to Mr. Huyshe's
+claim of the superiority, in point of costume, of the last quarter
+of the eighteenth century over the second quarter of the
+seventeenth.  The broad-brimmed hat of 1640 kept the rain of winter
+and the glare of summer from the face; the same cannot be said of
+the hat of one hundred years ago, which, with its comparatively
+narrow brim and high crown, was the precursor of the modern
+"chimney-pot":  a wide turned-down collar is a healthier thing than
+a strangling stock, and a short cloak much more comfortable than a
+sleeved overcoat, even though the latter may have had "three
+capes"; a cloak is easier to put on and off, lies lightly on the
+shoulder in summer, and wrapped round one in winter keeps one
+perfectly warm.  A doublet, again, is simpler than a coat and
+waistcoat; instead of two garments one has one; by not being open
+also it protects the chest better.
+
+Short loose trousers are in every way to be preferred to the tight
+knee-breeches which often impede the proper circulation of the
+blood; and finally, the soft leather boots which could be worn
+above or below the knee, are more supple, and give consequently
+more freedom, than the stiff Hessian which Mr. Huyshe so praises.
+I say nothing about the question of grace and picturesqueness, for
+I suppose that no one, not even Mr. Huyshe, would prefer a
+maccaroni to a cavalier, a Lawrence to a Vandyke, or the third
+George to the first Charles; but for ease, warmth and comfort this
+seventeenth-century dress is infinitely superior to anything that
+came after it, and I do not think it is excelled by any preceding
+form of costume.  I sincerely trust that we may soon see in England
+some national revival of it.
+
+
+
+MORE RADICAL IDEAS UPON DRESS REFORM
+
+
+
+I have been much interested at reading the large amount of
+correspondence that has been called forth by my recent lecture on
+Dress.  It shows me that the subject of dress reform is one that is
+occupying many wise and charming people, who have at heart the
+principles of health, freedom, and beauty in costume, and I hope
+that "H. B. T." and "Materfamilias" will have all the real
+influence which their letters--excellent letters both of them--
+certainly deserve.
+
+I turn first to Mr. Huyshe's second letter, and the drawing that
+accompanies it; but before entering into any examination of the
+theory contained in each, I think I should state at once that I
+have absolutely no idea whether this gentleman wears his hair long
+or short, or his cuffs back or forward, or indeed what he is like
+at all.  I hope he consults his own comfort and wishes in
+everything which has to do with his dress, and is allowed to enjoy
+that individualism in apparel which he so eloquently claims for
+himself, and so foolishly tries to deny to others; but I really
+could not take Mr. Wentworth Huyshe's personal appearance as any
+intellectual basis for an investigation of the principles which
+should guide the costume of a nation.  I am not denying the force,
+or even the popularity, of the "'Eave arf a brick" school of
+criticism, but I acknowledge it does not interest me.  The gamin in
+the gutter may be a necessity, but the gamin in discussion is a
+nuisance.  So I will proceed at once to the real point at issue,
+the value of the late eighteenth-century costume over that worn in
+the second quarter of the seventeenth:  the relative merits, that
+is, of the principles contained in each.  Now, as regards the
+eighteenth-century costume, Mr. Wentworth Huyshe acknowledges that
+he has had no practical experience of it at all; in fact he makes a
+pathetic appeal to his friends to corroborate him in his assertion,
+which I do not question for a moment, that he has never been
+"guilty of the eccentricity" of wearing himself the dress which he
+proposes for general adoption by others.  There is something so
+naive and so amusing about this last passage in Mr. Huyshe's letter
+that I am really in doubt whether I am not doing him a wrong in
+regarding him as having any serious, or sincere, views on the
+question of a possible reform in dress; still, as irrespective of
+any attitude of Mr. Huyshe's in the matter, the subject is in
+itself an interesting one, I think it is worth continuing,
+particularly as I have myself worn this late eighteenth-century
+dress many times, both in public and in private, and so may claim
+to have a very positive right to speak on its comfort and
+suitability.  The particular form of the dress I wore was very
+similar to that given in Mr. Godwin's handbook, from a print of
+Northcote's, and had a certain elegance and grace about it which
+was very charming; still, I gave it up for these reasons:- After a
+further consideration of the laws of dress I saw that a doublet is
+a far simpler and easier garment than a coat and waistcoat, and, if
+buttoned from the shoulder, far warmer also, and that tails have no
+place in costume, except on some Darwinian theory of heredity; from
+absolute experience in the matter I found that the excessive
+tightness of knee-breeches is not really comfortable if one wears
+them constantly; and, in fact, I satisfied myself that the dress is
+not one founded on any real principles.  The broad-brimmed hat and
+loose cloak, which, as my object was not, of course, historical
+accuracy but modern ease, I had always worn with the costume in
+question, I have still retained, and find them most comfortable.
+
+Well, although Mr. Huyshe has no real experience of the dress he
+proposes, he gives us a drawing of it, which he labels, somewhat
+prematurely, "An ideal dress."  An ideal dress of course it is not;
+"passably picturesque," he says I may possibly think it; well,
+passably picturesque it may be, but not beautiful, certainly,
+simply because it is not founded on right principles, or, indeed,
+on any principles at all.  Picturesqueness one may get in a variety
+of ways; ugly things that are strange, or unfamiliar to us, for
+instance, may be picturesque, such as a late sixteenth-century
+costume, or a Georgian house.  Ruins, again, may be picturesque,
+but beautiful they never can be, because their lines are
+meaningless.  Beauty, in fact, is to be got only from the
+perfection of principles; and in "the ideal dress" of Mr. Huyshe
+there are no ideas or principles at all, much less the perfection
+of either.  Let us examine it, and see its faults; they are obvious
+to any one who desires more than a "Fancy-dress ball" basis for
+costume.  To begin with, the hat and boots are all wrong.  Whatever
+one wears on the extremities, such as the feet and head, should,
+for the sake of comfort, be made of a soft material, and for the
+sake of freedom should take its shape from the way one chooses to
+wear it, and not from any stiff, stereotyped design of hat or boot
+maker.  In a hat made on right principles one should be able to
+turn the brim up or down according as the day is dark or fair, dry
+or wet; but the hat brim of Mr. Huyshe's drawing is perfectly
+stiff, and does not give much protection to the face, or the
+possibility of any at all to the back of the head or the ears, in
+case of a cold east wind; whereas the bycocket, a hat made in
+accordance with the right laws, can be turned down behind and at
+the sides, and so give the same warmth as a hood.  The crown,
+again, of Mr. Huyshe's hat is far too high; a high crown diminishes
+the stature of a small person, and in the case of any one who is
+tall is a great inconvenience when one is getting in and out of
+hansoms and railway carriages, or passing under a street awning:
+in no case is it of any value whatsoever, and being useless it is
+of course against the principles of dress.
+
+As regards the boots, they are not quite so ugly or so
+uncomfortable as the hat; still they are evidently made of stiff
+leather, as otherwise they would fall down to the ankle, whereas
+the boot should be made of soft leather always, and if worn high at
+all must be either laced up the front or carried well over the
+knee:  in the latter case one combines perfect freedom for walking
+together with perfect protection against rain, neither of which
+advantages a short stiff boot will ever give one, and when one is
+resting in the house the long soft boot can be turned down as the
+boot of 1640 was.  Then there is the overcoat:  now, what are the
+right principles of an overcoat?  To begin with, it should be
+capable of being easily put on or off, and worn over any kind of
+dress; consequently it should never have narrow sleeves, such as
+are shown in Mr. Huyshe's drawing.  If an opening or slit for the
+arm is required it should be made quite wide, and may be protected
+by a flap, as in that excellent overall the modern Inverness cape;
+secondly, it should not be too tight, as otherwise all freedom of
+walking is impeded.  If the young gentleman in the drawing buttons
+his overcoat he may succeed in being statuesque, though that I
+doubt very strongly, but he will never succeed in being swift; his
+super-totus is made for him on no principle whatsoever; a super-
+totus, or overall, should be capable of being worn long or short,
+quite loose or moderately tight, just as the wearer wishes; he
+should be able to have one arm free and one arm covered or both
+arms free or both arms covered, just as he chooses for his
+convenience in riding, walking, or driving; an overall again should
+never be heavy, and should always be warm:  lastly, it should be
+capable of being easily carried if one wants to take it off; in
+fact, its principles are those of freedom and comfort, and a cloak
+realizes them all, just as much as an overcoat of the pattern
+suggested by Mr. Huyshe violates them.
+
+The knee-breeches are of course far too tight; any one who has worn
+them for any length of time--any one, in fact, whose views on the
+subject are not purely theoretical--will agree with me there; like
+everything else in the dress, they are a great mistake.  The
+substitution of the jacket for the coat and waistcoat of the period
+is a step in the right direction, which I am glad to see; it is,
+however, far too tight over the hips for any possible comfort.
+Whenever a jacket or doublet comes below the waist it should be
+slit at each side.  In the seventeenth century the skirt of the
+jacket was sometimes laced on by points and tags, so that it could
+be removed at will, sometimes it was merely left open at the sides:
+in each case it exemplified what are always the true principles of
+dress, I mean freedom and adaptability to circumstances.
+
+Finally, as regards drawings of this kind, I would point out that
+there is absolutely no limit at all to the amount of "passably
+picturesque" costumes which can be either revived or invented for
+us; but that unless a costume is founded on principles and
+exemplified laws, it never can be of any real value to us in the
+reform of dress.  This particular drawing of Mr. Huyshe's, for
+instance, proves absolutely nothing, except that our grandfathers
+did not understand the proper laws of dress.  There is not a single
+rule of right costume which is not violated in it, for it gives us
+stiffness, tightness and discomfort instead of comfort, freedom and
+ease.
+
+Now here, on the other hand, is a dress which, being founded on
+principles, can serve us as an excellent guide and model; it has
+been drawn for me, most kindly, by Mr. Godwin from the Duke of
+Newcastle's delightful book on horsemanship, a book which is one of
+our best authorities on our best era of costume.  I do not of
+course propose it necessarily for absolute imitation; that is not
+the way in which one should regard it; it is not, I mean, a revival
+of a dead costume, but a realization of living laws.  I give it as
+an example of a particular application of principles which are
+universally right.  This rationally dressed young man can turn his
+hat brim down if it rains, and his loose trousers and boots down if
+he is tired--that is, he can adapt his costume to circumstances;
+then he enjoys perfect freedom, the arms and legs are not made
+awkward or uncomfortable by the excessive tightness of narrow
+sleeves and knee-breeches, and the hips are left quite
+untrammelled, always an important point; and as regards comfort,
+his jacket is not too loose for warmth, nor too close for
+respiration; his neck is well protected without being strangled,
+and even his ostrich feathers, if any Philistine should object to
+them, are not merely dandyism, but fan him very pleasantly, I am
+sure, in summer, and when the weather is bad they are no doubt left
+at home, and his cloak taken out.  THE VALUE OF THE DRESS IS SIMPLY
+THAT EVERY SEPARATE ARTICLE OF IT EXPRESSES A LAW.  My young man is
+consequently apparelled with ideas, while Mr. Huyshe's young man is
+stiffened with facts; the latter teaches one nothing; from the
+former one learns everything.  I need hardly say that this dress is
+good, not because it is seventeenth century, but because it is
+constructed on the true principles of costume, just as a square
+lintel or pointed arch is good, not because one may be Greek and
+the other Gothic, but because each of them is the best method of
+spanning a certain-sized opening, or resisting a certain weight.
+The fact, however, that this dress was generally worn in England
+two centuries and a half ago shows at least this, that the right
+laws of dress have been understood and realized in our country, and
+so in our country may be realized and understood again.  As regards
+the absolute beauty of this dress and its meaning, I should like to
+say a few words more.  Mr. Wentworth Huyshe solemnly announces that
+"he and those who think with him" cannot permit this question of
+beauty to be imported into the question of dress; that he and those
+who think with him take "practical views on the subject," and so
+on.  Well, I will not enter here into a discussion as to how far
+any one who does not take beauty and the value of beauty into
+account can claim to be practical at all.  The word practical is
+nearly always the last refuge of the uncivilized.  Of all misused
+words it is the most evilly treated.  But what I want to point out
+is that beauty is essentially organic; that is, it comes, not from
+without, but from within, not from any added prettiness, but from
+the perfection of its own being; and that consequently, as the body
+is beautiful, so all apparel that rightly clothes it must be
+beautiful also in its construction and in its lines.
+
+I have no more desire to define ugliness than I have daring to
+define beauty; but still I would like to remind those who mock at
+beauty as being an unpractical thing of this fact, that an ugly
+thing is merely a thing that is badly made, or a thing that does
+not serve it purpose; that ugliness is want of fitness; that
+ugliness is failure; that ugliness is uselessness, such as ornament
+in the wrong place, while beauty, as some one finely said, is the
+purgation of all superfluities.  There is a divine economy about
+beauty; it gives us just what is needful and no more, whereas
+ugliness is always extravagant; ugliness is a spendthrift and
+wastes its material; in fine, ugliness--and I would commend this
+remark to Mr. Wentworth Huyshe--ugliness, as much in costume as in
+anything else, is always the sign that somebody has been
+unpractical.  So the costume of the future in England, if it is
+founded on the true laws of freedom, comfort, and adaptability to
+circumstances, cannot fail to be most beautiful also, because
+beauty is the sign always of the rightness of principles, the
+mystical seal that is set upon what is perfect, and upon what is
+perfect only.
+
+As for your other correspondent, the first principle of dress that
+all garments should be hung from the shoulders and not from the
+waist seems to me to be generally approved of, although an "Old
+Sailor" declares that no sailors or athletes ever suspend their
+clothes from the shoulders, but always from the hips.  My own
+recollection of the river and running ground at Oxford--those two
+homes of Hellenism in our little Gothic town--is that the best
+runners and rowers (and my own college turned out many) wore always
+a tight jersey, with short drawers attached to it, the whole
+costume being woven in one piece.  As for sailors, it is true, I
+admit, and the bad custom seems to involve that constant "hitching
+up" of the lower garments which, however popular in transpontine
+dramas, cannot, I think, but be considered an extremely awkward
+habit; and as all awkwardness comes from discomfort of some kind, I
+trust that this point in our sailor's dress will be looked to in
+the coming reform of our navy, for, in spite of all protests, I
+hope we are about to reform everything, from torpedoes to top-hats,
+and from crinolettes to cruises.
+
+Then as regards clogs, my suggestion of them seems to have aroused
+a great deal of terror.  Fashion in her high-heeled boots has
+screamed, and the dreadful word "anachronism" has been used.  Now,
+whatever is useful cannot be an anachronism.  Such a word is
+applicable only to the revival of some folly; and, besides, in the
+England of our own day clogs are still worn in many of our
+manufacturing towns, such as Oldham.  I fear that in Oldham they
+may not be dreams of beauty; in Oldham the art of inlaying them
+with ivory and with pearl may possibly be unknown; yet in Oldham
+they serve their purpose.  Nor is it so long since they were worn
+by the upper classes of this country generally.  Only a few days
+ago I had the pleasure of talking to a lady who remembered with
+affectionate regret the clogs of her girlhood; they were, according
+to her, not too high nor too heavy, and were provided, besides,
+with some kind of spring in the sole so as to make them the more
+supple for the foot in walking.  Personally, I object to all
+additional height being given to a boot or shoe; it is really
+against the proper principles of dress, although, if any such
+height is to be given it should be by means of two props; not one;
+but what I should prefer to see is some adaptation of the divided
+skirt or long and moderately loose knickerbockers.  If, however,
+the divided skirt is to be of any positive value, it must give up
+all idea of "being identical in appearance with an ordinary skirt";
+it must diminish the moderate width of each of its divisions, and
+sacrifice its foolish frills and flounces; the moment it imitates a
+dress it is lost; but let it visibly announce itself as what it
+actually is, and it will go far towards solving a real difficulty.
+I feel sure that there will be found many graceful and charming
+girls ready to adopt a costume founded on these principles, in
+spite of Mr. Wentworth Huyshe's terrible threat that he will not
+propose to them as long as they wear it, for all charges of a want
+of womanly character in these forms of dress are really
+meaningless; every right article of apparel belongs equally to both
+sexes, and there is absolutely no such thing as a definitely
+feminine garment.  One word of warning I should like to be allowed
+to give:  The over-tunic should be made full and moderately loose;
+it may, if desired, be shaped more or less to the figure, but in no
+case should it be confined at the waist by any straight band or
+belt; on the contrary, it should fall from the shoulder to the
+knee, or below it, in fine curves and vertical lines, giving more
+freedom and consequently more grace.  Few garments are so
+absolutely unbecoming as a belted tunic that reaches to the knees,
+a fact which I wish some of our Rosalinds would consider when they
+don doublet and hose; indeed, to the disregard of this artistic
+principle is due the ugliness, the want of proportion, in the
+Bloomer costume, a costume which in other respects is sensible.
+
+
+
+COSTUME
+
+
+
+Are we not all weary of him, that venerable impostor fresh from the
+steps of the Piazza di Spagna, who, in the leisure moments that he
+can spare from his customary organ, makes the round of the studios
+and is waited for in Holland Park?  Do we not all recognize him,
+when, with the gay insouciance of his nation, he reappears on the
+walls of our summer exhibitions as everything that he is not, and
+as nothing that he is, glaring at us here as a patriarch of Canaan,
+here beaming as a brigand from the Abruzzi?  Popular is he, this
+poor peripatetic professor of posing, with those whose joy it is to
+paint the posthumous portrait of the last philanthropist who in his
+lifetime had neglected to be photographed,--yet he is the sign of
+the decadence, the symbol of decay.
+
+For all costumes are caricatures.  The basis of Art is not the
+Fancy Ball.  Where there is loveliness of dress, there is no
+dressing up.  And so, were our national attire delightful in
+colour, and in construction simple and sincere; were dress the
+expression of the loveliness that it shields and of the swiftness
+and motion that it does not impede; did its lines break from the
+shoulder instead of bulging from the waist; did the inverted
+wineglass cease to be the ideal of form; were these things brought
+about, as brought about they will be, then would painting be no
+longer an artificial reaction against the ugliness of life, but
+become, as it should be, the natural expression of life's beauty.
+Nor would painting merely, but all the other arts also, be the
+gainers by a change such as that which I propose; the gainers, I
+mean, through the increased atmosphere of Beauty by which the
+artists would be surrounded and in which they would grow up.  For
+Art is not to be taught in Academies.  It is what one looks at, not
+what one listens to, that makes the artist.  The real schools
+should be the streets.  There is not, for instance, a single
+delicate line, or delightful proportion, in the dress of the
+Greeks, which is not echoed exquisitely in their architecture.  A
+nation arrayed in stove-pipe hats and dress-improvers might have
+built the Pantechnichon possibly, but the Parthenon never.  And
+finally, there is this to be said:  Art, it is true, can never have
+any other claim but her own perfection, and it may be that the
+artist, desiring merely to contemplate and to create, is wise in
+not busying himself about change in others:  yet wisdom is not
+always the best; there are times when she sinks to the level of
+common-sense; and from the passionate folly of those--and there are
+many--who desire that Beauty shall be confined no longer to the
+bric-a-brac of the collector and the dust of the museum, but shall
+be, as it should be, the natural and national inheritance of all,--
+from this noble unwisdom, I say, who knows what new loveliness
+shall be given to life, and, under these more exquisite conditions,
+what perfect artist born?  Le milieu se renouvelant, l'art se
+renouvelle.
+
+
+
+THE AMERICAN INVASION
+
+
+
+A terrible danger is hanging over the Americans in London.  Their
+future and their reputation this season depend entirely on the
+success of Buffalo Bill and Mrs. Brown-Potter.  The former is
+certain to draw; for English people are far more interested in
+American barbarism than they are in American civilization.  When
+they sight Sandy Hook they look to their rifles and ammunition;
+and, after dining once at Delmonico's, start off for Colorado or
+California, for Montana or the Yellow Stone Park.  Rocky Mountains
+charm them more than riotous millionaires; they have been known to
+prefer buffaloes to Boston.  Why should they not?  The cities of
+America are inexpressibly tedious.  The Bostonians take their
+learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather
+than an atmosphere; their "Hub," as they call it, is the paradise
+of prigs.  Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustle and
+bores.  Political life at Washington is like political life in a
+suburban vestry.  Baltimore is amusing for a week, but Philadelphia
+is dreadfully provincial; and though one can dine in New York one
+could not dwell there.  Better the Far West with its grizzly bears
+and its untamed cowboys, its free open-air life and its free open-
+air manners, its boundless prairie and its boundless mendacity!
+This is what Buffalo Bill is going to bring to London; and we have
+no doubt that London will fully appreciate his show.
+
+With regard to Mrs. Brown-Potter, as acting is no longer considered
+absolutely essential for success on the English stage, there is
+really no reason why the pretty bright-eyed lady who charmed us all
+last June by her merry laugh and her nonchalant ways, should not--
+to borrow an expression from her native language--make a big boom
+and paint the town red.  We sincerely hope she will; for, on the
+whole, the American invasion has done English society a great deal
+of good.  American women are bright, clever, and wonderfully
+cosmopolitan.  Their patriotic feelings are limited to an
+admiration for Niagara and a regret for the Elevated Railway; and,
+unlike the men, they never bore us with Bunkers Hill.  They take
+their dresses from Paris and their manners from Piccadilly, and
+wear both charmingly.  They have a quaint pertness, a delightful
+conceit, a native self-assertion.  They insist on being paid
+compliments and have almost succeeded in making Englishmen
+eloquent.  For our aristocracy they have an ardent admiration; they
+adore titles and are a permanent blow to Republican principles.  In
+the art of amusing men they are adepts, both by nature and
+education, and can actually tell a story without forgetting the
+point--an accomplishment that is extremely rare among the women of
+other countries.  It is true that they lack repose and that their
+voices are somewhat harsh and strident when they land first at
+Liverpool; but after a time one gets to love those pretty
+whirlwinds in petticoats that sweep so recklessly through society
+and are so agitating to all duchesses who have daughters.  There is
+something fascinating in their funny, exaggerated gestures and
+their petulant way of tossing the head.  Their eyes have no magic
+nor mystery in them, but they challenge us for combat; and when we
+engage we are always worsted.  Their lips seem made for laughter
+and yet they never grimace.  As for their voices they soon get them
+into tune.  Some of them have been known to acquire a fashionable
+drawl in two seasons; and after they have been presented to Royalty
+they all roll their R's as vigorously as a young equerry or an old
+lady-in-waiting.  Still, they never really lose their accent; it
+keeps peeping out here and there, and when they chatter together
+they are like a bevy of peacocks.  Nothing is more amusing than to
+watch two American girls greeting each other in a drawing-room or
+in the Row.  They are like children with their shrill staccato
+cries of wonder, their odd little exclamations.  Their conversation
+sounds like a series of exploding crackers; they are exquisitely
+incoherent and use a sort of primitive, emotional language.  After
+five minutes they are left beautifully breathless and look at each
+other half in amusement and half in affection.  If a stolid young
+Englishman is fortunate enough to be introduced to them he is
+amazed at their extraordinary vivacity, their electric quickness of
+repartee, their inexhaustible store of curious catchwords.  He
+never really understands them, for their thoughts flutter about
+with the sweet irresponsibility of butterflies; but he is pleased
+and amused and feels as if he were in an aviary.  On the whole,
+American girls have a wonderful charm and, perhaps, the chief
+secret of their charm is that they never talk seriously except
+about amusements.  They have, however, one grave fault--their
+mothers.  Dreary as were those old Pilgrim Fathers who left our
+shores more than two centuries ago to found a New England beyond
+the seas, the Pilgrim Mothers who have returned to us in the
+nineteenth century are drearier still.
+
+Here and there, of course, there are exceptions, but as a class
+they are either dull, dowdy or dyspeptic.  It is only fair to the
+rising generation of America to state that they are not to blame
+for this.  Indeed, they spare no pains at all to bring up their
+parents properly and to give them a suitable, if somewhat late,
+education.  From its earliest years every American child spends
+most of its time in correcting the faults of its father and mother;
+and no one who has had the opportunity of watching an American
+family on the deck of an Atlantic steamer, or in the refined
+seclusion of a New York boarding-house, can fail to have been
+struck by this characteristic of their civilization.  In America
+the young are always ready to give to those who are older than
+themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.  A boy of only
+eleven or twelve years of age will firmly but kindly point out to
+his father his defects of manner or temper; will never weary of
+warning him against extravagance, idleness, late hours,
+unpunctuality, and the other temptations to which the aged are so
+particularly exposed; and sometimes, should he fancy that he is
+monopolizing too much of the conversation at dinner, will remind
+him, across the table, of the new child's adage, "Parents should be
+seen, not heard."  Nor does any mistaken idea of kindness prevent
+the little American girl from censuring her mother whenever it is
+necessary.  Often, indeed, feeling that a rebuke conveyed in the
+presence of others is more truly efficacious than one merely
+whispered in the quiet of the nursery, she will call the attention
+of perfect strangers to her mother's general untidiness, her want
+of intellectual Boston conversation, immoderate love of iced water
+and green corn, stinginess in the matter of candy, ignorance of the
+usages of the best Baltimore Society, bodily ailments, and the
+like.  In fact, it may be truly said that no American child is ever
+blind to the deficiencies of its parents, no matter how much it may
+love them.
+
+Yet, somehow, this educational system has not been so successful as
+it deserved.  In many cases, no doubt, the material with which the
+children had to deal was crude and incapable of real development;
+but the fact remains that the American mother is a tedious person.
+The American father is better, for he is never seen in London.  He
+passes his life entirely in Wall Street and communicates with his
+family once a month by means of a telegram in cipher.  The mother,
+however, is always with us, and, lacking the quick imitative
+faculty of the younger generation, remains uninteresting and
+provincial to the last.  In spite of her, however, the American
+girl is always welcome.  She brightens our dull dinner parties for
+us and makes life go pleasantly by for a season.  In the race for
+coronets she often carries off the prize; but, once she has gained
+the victory, she is generous and forgives her English rivals
+everything, even their beauty.
+
+Warned by the example of her mother that American women do not grow
+old gracefully, she tries not to grow old at all and often
+succeeds.  She has exquisite feet and hands, is always bien
+chaussee et bien gantee and can talk brilliantly upon any subject,
+provided that she knows nothing about it.
+
+Her sense of humour keeps her from the tragedy of a grande passion,
+and, as there is neither romance nor humility in her love, she
+makes an excellent wife.  What her ultimate influence on English
+life will be it is difficult to estimate at present; but there can
+be no doubt that, of all the factors that have contributed to the
+social revolution of London, there are few more important, and none
+more delightful, than the American Invasion.
+
+
+
+SERMONS IN STONES AT BLOOMSBURY
+THE NEW SCULPTURE ROOM AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM
+
+
+
+Through the exertions of Sir Charles Newton, to whom every student
+of classic art should be grateful, some of the wonderful treasures
+so long immured in the grimy vaults of the British Museum have at
+last been brought to light, and the new Sculpture Room now opened
+to the public will amply repay the trouble of a visit, even from
+those to whom art is a stumbling-block and a rock of offence.  For
+setting aside the mere beauty of form, outline and mass, the grace
+and loveliness of design and the delicacy of technical treatment,
+here we have shown to us what the Greeks and Romans thought about
+death; and the philosopher, the preacher, the practical man of the
+world, and even the Philistine himself, cannot fail to be touched
+by these "sermons in stones," with their deep significance, their
+fertile suggestion, their plain humanity.  Common tombstones they
+are, most of them, the work not of famous artists but of simple
+handicraftsmen, only they were wrought in days when every
+handicraft was an art.  The finest specimens, from the purely
+artistic point of view, are undoubtedly the two stelai found at
+Athens.  They are both the tombstones of young Greek athletes.  In
+one the athlete is represented handing his strigil to his slave, in
+the other the athlete stands alone, strigil in hand.  They do not
+belong to the greatest period of Greek art, they have not the grand
+style of the Phidian age, but they are beautiful for all that, and
+it is impossible not to be fascinated by their exquisite grace and
+by the treatment which is so simple in its means, so subtle in its
+effect.  All the tombstones, however, are full of interest.  Here
+is one of two ladies of Smyrna who were so remarkable in their day
+that the city voted them honorary crowns; here is a Greek doctor
+examining a little boy who is suffering from indigestion; here is
+the memorial of Xanthippus who, probably, was a martyr to gout, as
+he is holding in his hand the model of a foot, intended, no doubt,
+as a votive offering to some god.  A lovely stele from Rhodes gives
+us a family group.  The husband is on horseback and is bidding
+farewell to his wife, who seems as if she would follow him but is
+being held back by a little child.  The pathos of parting from
+those we love is the central motive of Greek funeral art.  It is
+repeated in every possible form, and each mute marble stone seems
+to murmur [Greek text].  Roman art is different.  It introduces
+vigorous and realistic portraiture and deals with pure family life
+far more frequently than Greek art does.  They are very ugly, those
+stern-looking Roman men and women whose portraits are exhibited on
+their tombs, but they seem to have been loved and respected by
+their children and their servants.  Here is the monument of
+Aphrodisius and Atilia, a Roman gentleman and his wife, who died in
+Britain many centuries ago, and whose tombstone was found in the
+Thames; and close by it stands a stele from Rome with the busts of
+an old married couple who are certainly marvellously ill-favoured.
+The contrast between the abstract Greek treatment of the idea of
+death and the Roman concrete realization of the individuals who
+have died is extremely curious.
+
+Besides the tombstones, the new Sculpture Room contains some most
+fascinating examples of Roman decorative art under the Emperors.
+The most wonderful of all, and this alone is worth a trip to
+Bloomsbury, is a bas-relief representing a marriage scene, Juno
+Pronuba is joining the hands of a handsome young noble and a very
+stately lady.  There is all the grace of Perugino in this marble,
+all the grace of Raphael even.  The date of it is uncertain, but
+the particular cut of the bridegroom's beard seems to point to the
+time of the Emperor Hadrian.  It is clearly the work of Greek
+artists and is one of the most beautiful bas-reliefs in the whole
+Museum.  There is something in it which reminds one of the music
+and the sweetness of Propertian verse.  Then we have delightful
+friezes of children.  One representing children playing on musical
+instruments might have suggested much of the plastic art of
+Florence.  Indeed, as we view these marbles it is not difficult to
+see whence the Renaissance sprang and to what we owe the various
+forms of Renaissance art.  The frieze of the Muses, each of whom
+wears in her hair a feather plucked from the wings of the
+vanquished sirens, is extremely fine; there is a lovely little bas-
+relief of two cupids racing in chariots; and the frieze of
+recumbent Amazons has some splendid qualities of design.  A frieze
+of children playing with the armour of the god Mars should also be
+mentioned.  It is full of fancy and delicate humour.
+
+ We hope that some more of the hidden treasures will shortly be
+catalogued and shown.  In the vaults at present there is a very
+remarkable bas-relief of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, and
+another representing the professional mourners weeping over the
+body of the dead.  The fine cast of the Lion of Chaeronea should
+also be brought up, and so should the stele with the marvellous
+portrait of the Roman slave.  Economy is an excellent public
+virtue, but the parsimony that allows valuable works of art to
+remain in the grim and gloom of a damp cellar is little short of a
+detestable public vice.
+
+
+
+L'ENVOI
+
+
+
+Amongst the many young men in England who are seeking along with me
+to continue and to perfect the English Renaissance--jeunes
+guerriers du drapeau romantique, as Gautier would have called us--
+there is none whose love of art is more flawless and fervent, whose
+artistic sense of beauty is more subtle and more delicate--none,
+indeed, who is dearer to myself--than the young poet whose verses I
+have brought with me to America; verses full of sweet sadness, and
+yet full of joy; for the most joyous poet is not he who sows the
+desolate highways of this world with the barren seed of laughter,
+but he who makes his sorrow most musical, this indeed being the
+meaning of joy in art--that incommunicable element of artistic
+delight which, in poetry, for instance, comes from what Keats
+called "sensuous life of verse," the element of song in the
+singing, made so pleasurable to us by that wonder of motion which
+often has its origin in mere musical impulse, and in painting is to
+be sought for, from the subject never, but from the pictorial charm
+only--the scheme and symphony of the colour, the satisfying beauty
+of the design:  so that the ultimate expression of our artistic
+movement in painting has been, not in the spiritual vision of the
+Pre-Raphaelites, for all their marvel of Greek legend and their
+mystery of Italian song, but in the work of such men as Whistler
+and Albert Moore, who have raised design and colour to the ideal
+level of poetry and music.  For the quality of their exquisite
+painting comes from the mere inventive and creative handling of
+line and colour, from a certain form and choice of beautiful
+workmanship, which, rejecting all literary reminiscence and all
+metaphysical idea, is in itself entirely satisfying to the
+aesthetic sense--is, as the Greeks would say, an end in itself; the
+effect of their work being like the effect given to us by music;
+for music is the art in which form and matter are always one--the
+art whose subject cannot be separated from the method of its
+expression; the art which most completely realizes for us the
+artistic ideal, and is the condition to which all the other arts
+are constantly aspiring.
+
+Now, this increased sense of the absolutely satisfying value of
+beautiful workmanship, this recognition of the primary importance
+of the sensuous element in art, this love of art for art's sake, is
+the point in which we of the younger school have made a departure
+from the teaching of Mr. Ruskin,--a departure definite and
+different and decisive.
+
+Master indeed of the knowledge of all noble living and of the
+wisdom of all spiritual things will he be to us ever, seeing that
+it was he who by the magic of his presence and the music of his
+lips taught us at Oxford that enthusiasm for beauty which is the
+secret of Hellenism, and that desire for creation which is the
+secret of life, and filled some of us, at least, with the lofty and
+passionate ambition to go forth into far and fair lands with some
+message for the nations and some mission for the world, and yet in
+his art criticism, his estimate of the joyous element of art, his
+whole method of approaching art, we are no longer with him; for the
+keystone to his aesthetic system is ethical always.  He would judge
+of a picture by the amount of noble moral ideas it expresses; but
+to us the channels by which all noble work in painting can touch,
+and does touch, the soul are not those of truths of life or
+metaphysical truths.  To him perfection of workmanship seems but
+the symbol of pride, and incompleteness of technical resource the
+image of an imagination too limitless to find within the limits of
+form its complete expression, or of love too simple not to stammer
+in its tale.  But to us the rule of art is not the rule of morals.
+In an ethical system, indeed, of any gentle mercy good intentions
+will, one is fain to fancy, have their recognition; but of those
+that would enter the serene House of Beauty the question that we
+ask is not what they had ever meant to do, but what they have done.
+Their pathetic intentions are of no value to us, but their realized
+creations only.  Pour moi je prefere les poetes qui font des vers,
+les medecins qui sachent guerir, les peintres qui sanchent peindre.
+
+Nor, in looking at a work of art, should we be dreaming of what it
+symbolises, but rather loving it for what it is.  Indeed, the
+transcendental spirit is alien to the spirit of art.  The
+metaphysical mind of Asia may create for itself the monstrous and
+many-breasted idol, but to the Greek, pure artist, that work is
+most instinct with spiritual life which conforms most closely to
+the perfect facts of physical life also.  Nor, in its primary
+aspect, has a painting, for instance, any more spiritual message or
+meaning for us than a blue tile from the wall of Damascus, or a
+Hitzen vase.  It is a beautifully coloured surface, nothing more,
+and affects us by no suggestion stolen from philosophy, no pathos
+pilfered from literature, no feeling filched from a poet, but by
+its own incommunicable artistic essence--by that selection of truth
+which we call style, and that relation of values which is the
+draughtsmanship of painting, by the whole quality of the
+workmanship, the arabesque of the design, the splendour of the
+colour, for these things are enough to stir the most divine and
+remote of the chords which make music in our soul, and colour,
+indeed, is of itself a mystical presence on things, and tone a kind
+of sentiment . . . all these poems aim, as I said, at producing a
+purely artistic effect, and have the rare and exquisite quality
+that belongs to work of that kind; and I feel that the entire
+subordination in our aesthetic movement of all merely emotional and
+intellectual motives to the vital informing poetic principle is the
+surest sign of our strength.
+
+But it is not enough that a work of art should conform to the
+aesthetic demands of the age:  there should be also about it, if it
+is to give us any permanent delight, the impress of a distinct
+individuality.  Whatever work we have in the nineteenth century
+must rest on the two poles of personality and perfection.  And so
+in this little volume, by separating the earlier and more simple
+work from the work that is later and stronger and possesses
+increased technical power and more artistic vision, one might weave
+these disconnected poems, these stray and scattered threads, into
+one fiery-coloured strand of life, noting first a boy's mere
+gladness of being young, with all its simple joy in field and
+flower, in sunlight and in song, and then the bitterness of sudden
+sorrow at the ending by Death of one of the brief and beautiful
+friendships of one's youth, with all those unanswered lodgings and
+questionings unsatisfied by which we vex, so uselessly, the marble
+face of death; the artistic contrast between the discontented
+incompleteness of the spirit and the complete perfection of the
+style that expresses it forming the chief element of the aesthetic
+charm of these particular poems;--and then the birth of Love, and
+all the wonder and the fear and the perilous delight of one on
+whose boyish brows the little wings of love have beaten for the
+first time; and the love-songs, so dainty and delicate, little
+swallow-flights of music, and full of such fragrance and freedom
+that they might all be sung in the open air and across moving
+water; and then autumn, coming with its choirless woods and odorous
+decay and ruined loveliness, Love lying dead; and the sense of the
+mere pity of it.
+
+One might stop there, for from a young poet one should ask for no
+deeper chords of life than those that love and friendship make
+eternal for us; and the best poems in the volume belong clearly to
+a later time, a time when these real experiences become absorbed
+and gathered up into a form which seems from such real experiences
+to be the most alien and the most remote; when the simple
+expression of joy or sorrow suffices no longer, and lives rather in
+the stateliness of the cadenced metre, in the music and colour of
+the linked words, than in any direct utterance; lives, one might
+say, in the perfection of the form more than in the pathos of the
+feeling.  And yet, after the broken music of love and the burial of
+love in the autumn woods, we can trace that wandering among strange
+people, and in lands unknown to us, by which we try so pathetically
+to heal the hurts of the life we know, and that pure and passionate
+devotion to Art which one gets when the harsh reality of life has
+too suddenly wounded one, and is with discontent or sorrow marring
+one's youth, just as often, I think, as one gets it from any
+natural joy of living; and that curious intensity of vision by
+which, in moments of overmastering sadness and despair
+ungovernable, artistic things will live in one's memory with a
+vivid realism caught from the life which they help one to forget--
+an old grey tomb in Flanders with a strange legend on it, making
+one think how, perhaps, passion does live on after death; a
+necklace of blue and amber beads and a broken mirror found in a
+girl's grave at Rome, a marble image of a boy habited like Eros,
+and with the pathetic tradition of a great king's sorrow lingering
+about it like a purple shadow,--over all these the tired spirit
+broods with that calm and certain joy that one gets when one has
+found something that the ages never dull and the world cannot harm;
+and with it comes that desire of Greek things which is often an
+artistic method of expressing one's desire for perfection; and that
+longing for the old dead days which is so modern, so incomplete, so
+touching, being, in a way, the inverted torch of Hope, which burns
+the hand it should guide; and for many things a little sadness, and
+for all things a great love; and lastly, in the pinewood by the
+sea, once more the quick and vital pulse of joyous youth leaping
+and laughing in every line, the frank and fearless freedom of wave
+and wind waking into fire life's burnt-out ashes and into song the
+silent lips of pain,--how clearly one seems to see it all, the long
+colonnade of pines with sea and sky peeping in here and there like
+a flitting of silver; the open place in the green, deep heart of
+the wood with the little moss-grown altar to the old Italian god in
+it; and the flowers all about, cyclamen in the shadowy places, and
+the stars of the white narcissus lying like snow-flakes over the
+grass, where the quick, bright-eyed lizard starts by the stone, and
+the snake lies coiled lazily in the sun on the hot sand, and
+overhead the gossamer floats from the branches like thin, tremulous
+threads of gold,--the scene is so perfect for its motive, for
+surely here, if anywhere, the real gladness of life might be
+revealed to one's youth--the gladness that comes, not from the
+rejection, but from the absorption, of all passion, and is like
+that serene calm that dwells in the faces of the Greek statues, and
+which despair and sorrow cannot touch, but intensify only.
+
+In some such way as this we could gather up these strewn and
+scattered petals of song into one perfect rose of life, and yet,
+perhaps, in so doing, we might be missing the true quality of the
+poems; one's real life is so often the life that one does not lead;
+and beautiful poems, like threads of beautiful silks, may be woven
+into many patterns and to suit many designs, all wonderful and all
+different:  and romantic poetry, too, is essentially the poetry of
+impressions, being like that latest school of painting, the school
+of Whistler and Albert Moore, in its choice of situation as opposed
+to subject; in its dealing with the exceptions rather than with the
+types of life; in its brief intensity; in what one might call its
+fiery-coloured momentariness, it being indeed the momentary
+situations of life, the momentary aspects of nature, which poetry
+and painting new seek to render for us.  Sincerity and constancy
+will the artist, indeed, have always; but sincerity in art is
+merely that plastic perfection of execution without which a poem or
+a painting, however noble its sentiment or human its origin, is but
+wasted and unreal work, and the constancy of the artist cannot be
+to any definite rule or system of living, but to that principle of
+beauty only through which the inconstant shadows of his life are in
+their most fleeting moment arrested and made permanent.  He will
+not, for instance, in intellectual matters acquiesce in that facile
+orthodoxy of our day which is so reasonable and so artistically
+uninteresting, nor yet will he desire that fiery faith of the
+antique time which, while it intensified, yet limited the vision;
+still less will he allow the calm of his culture to be marred by
+the discordant despair of doubt or the sadness of a sterile
+scepticism; for the Valley Perilous, where ignorant armies clash by
+night, is no resting-place meet for her to whom the gods have
+assigned the clear upland, the serene height, and the sunlit air,--
+rather will he be always curiously testing new forms of belief,
+tinging his nature with the sentiment that still lingers about some
+beautiful creeds, and searching for experience itself, and not for
+the fruits of experience; when he has got its secret, he will leave
+without regret much that was once very precious to him.  "I am
+always insincere," says Emerson somewhere, "as knowing that there
+are other moods":  "Les emotions," wrote Theophile Gautier once in
+a review of Arsene Houssaye, "Les emotions, ne se ressemblent pas,
+mais etre emu--voila l'important."
+
+Now, this is the secret of the art of the modern romantic school,
+and gives one the right keynote for its apprehension; but the real
+quality of all work which, like Mr. Rodd's, aims, as I said, at a
+purely artistic effect, cannot be described in terms of
+intellectual criticism; it is too intangible for that.  One can
+perhaps convey it best in terms of the other arts, and by reference
+to them; and, indeed, some of these poems are as iridescent and as
+exquisite as a lovely fragment of Venetian glass; others as
+delicate in perfect workmanship and as single in natural motive as
+an etching by Whistler is, or one of those beautiful little Greek
+figures which in the olive woods round Tanagra men can still find,
+with the faint gilding and the fading crimson not yet fled from
+hair and lips and raiment; and many of them seem like one of
+Corot's twilights just passing into music; for not merely in
+visible colour, but in sentiment also--which is the colour of
+poetry--may there be a kind of tone.
+
+But I think that the best likeness to the quality of this young
+poet's work I ever saw was in the landscape by the Loire.  We were
+staying once, he and I, at Amboise, that little village with its
+grey slate roofs and steep streets and gaunt, grim gateway, where
+the quiet cottages nestle like white pigeons into the sombre clefts
+of the great bastioned rock, and the stately Renaissance houses
+stand silent and apart--very desolate now, but with some memory of
+the old days still lingering about the delicately-twisted pillars,
+and the carved doorways, with their grotesque animals, and laughing
+masks, and quaint heraldic devices, all reminding one of a people
+who could not think life real till they had made it fantastic.  And
+above the village, and beyond the bend of the river, we used to go
+in the afternoon, and sketch from one of the big barges that bring
+the wine in autumn and the wood in winter down to the sea, or lie
+in the long grass and make plans pour la gloire, et pour ennuyer
+les Philistins, or wander along the low, sedgy banks, "matching our
+reeds in sportive rivalry," as comrades used in the old Sicilian
+days; and the land was an ordinary land enough, and bare, too, when
+one thought of Italy, and how the oleanders were robing the
+hillsides by Genoa in scarlet, and the cyclamen filling with its
+purple every valley from Florence to Rome; for there was not much
+real beauty, perhaps, in it, only long, white dusty roads and
+straight rows of formal poplars; but, now and then, some little
+breaking gleam of broken light would lend to the grey field and the
+silent barn a secret and a mystery that were hardly their own,
+would transfigure for one exquisite moment the peasants passing
+down through the vineyard, or the shepherd watching on the hill,
+would tip the willows with silver and touch the river into gold;
+and the wonder of the effect, with the strange simplicity of the
+material, always seemed to me to be a little like the quality of
+these the verses of my friend.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of Shorter Prose Pieces by Oscar Wilde
+
diff --git a/old/wldsp10.zip b/old/wldsp10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0bccf20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/wldsp10.zip