Philistia

ly in his own neatly padded wickerwork easy-chair, opposite the large lattice-pa

y into Tyrian purple and cloth of gold! Isn't that in itself argument enough to fling at Hartmann's head, if he ventured to come here sprinkling about his heresies, with his affected little spray-shooter, in the midst of a drowsy Oxford autumn? The Cardinal never saw Virginia creeper, I suppose; a man of his taste wouldn't have b

step entirely out of his own century, like my brother Ernest, for instance; but I've never heard his opinion on the subject of colour-harmonies, and I should suspect it of having been distinctly tinged wi

ficant, with my wretched pittance of eighty pounds per annum and my three pass-men a term for classical mods, how I scrape together the few miserable, hoarded ha'pence which I grudgingly invest in my pots and pipkins! I save them from my dinner, Mr. Bursar-I save them. If the Church only recognised modest merit as it ought to do!-if the bishops only listened with due a

nce admit it. Abuses exist, unhappily; and while they continue do so, isn't it better the

hould much prefer that one of

ok at the question abstractly from the side of the empirical ego, and correctly deduce a corre

table, and fare sumptuously every day; I take a commons of cold beef for lunch, and have tea off an egg and roll in my own rooms at seven. You drink St. Emilion or still hock; I drink water from the well or the cup that

s manage to get your money's wort

permanent investment on the transaction the memory of a noisy evening and a headache the next morning. Buy a flute, or a book of p

you can, my dear fellow. Non omnia possumus omnes. You seem to be always up in the aesthetic clouds, with your own music automatically laid on, and

al? David was wiser; he played only before Saul, who had of course all the livings in his own gift, no doubt. I've got a new thing running in my head this very minute that you shall hear though, all the same

ame, at any ra

ent, I mean-the little bit of whirligig thistledown f

ust caught a glimpse

, certainly, and as a

ng, but rather timid at seeing so many fresh faces. You mustn't frighten her by discussing the Absolute and the Unconditioned, or bore her by talking about Aristotle's Poli

a virtue, it is that you're such a deliciously frank and yet considerate critic. I'll pocket your rudeness

s accueillante to

suppose-a country gi

nded by the high hedge

at. She's like her brother,

first place, he's so dreadfully conscious of the fact that he has risen from a lower position; and then, again, he's so engrossingl

on the wings of an undulatory theory of light. It is different with us, you know, who have emerged from the land of darkness by the regular classical and literary highway. We feed upon Rabelais and Burton; he flits carelessly from flower to flower of the the

unded on the oak, and Ernes

with a shade of displeasure in his

stop and lunch with him,

tedly round the room. 'Why, Berkeley,' as his eye fell upon the Venetian vase,

e Apennines. Literally for a song, for it cost me just what I got from

what to think about these things. I can't make up my mind about them. Sometimes I

tiny round looking-glass, 'I can easily reassure you. Do you think a hundred and eig

st, seriously, 'though I dare say it would look like shock

that it's all I ever get to spend in any way. Now, why shouldn't I spend it on the things that please m

ht have you and I to spend so much when others are wanting for bread? And what right have you or I

ce. There I am one with you. But you've also got an aesthetic side to your nature, which makes you worth arguing with upon the matter. I won't argue with your vulgar materialised socialist, who would break up the frieze of the Parthenon for road metal, or pull down Giotto's fresco

sic, which we possess are a grand inheritance from the past; and I woul

porate existence? Would you give anything for a world which didn't care at all for painting, sculpture, music, poetry? I wouldn't. I don't want such a world. I won't

cile to our consciences the spending of one penny on one useless thing when others are dying of sheer want,

p all superfluities, and confine all your energies to the unlimited production of bare necessaries. Suppose you occupy every acre of land with your corn-fields, or your piggeries; and sweep away all the parks, and woods, and heaths, and moorlands in England. Suppos

il, whose acquaintance we have never had the pleasure of personally making? Suppose you read in the Times that the respectable horny-handed one has fallen off a scaffolding and broken his neck; and that the Dresden Madonna has been burnt by an unexpected accident; which of the two items of intelligence affec

in to announce Mr. and Miss Oswald and Mrs. Martindale. Edie wore the grey dress, her brother's present, and fl

this is your brother, I know by the likeness. I thought New College very beautiful, but nothing I've seen is quite as be

ow-sill; 'come and sit by it, Miss Oswald. Mrs. Martindale, won't you pu

said the old lady, seating herself. 'But you kno

icularly anxious for Mrs. Martindale's own society, which was of the most strictly negative character; but he didn't wish Edie to be the one lady in a party of four men, and he invited the Professor's wife as an excellent neutral figure-head, to keep her in countenance. Ladies were scarcer then in Oxford than they are nowadays.

iss Oswald?' asked Ernest, mak

e appraised offhand, on three days' acquaintance. You remind me of the American who went to look at Niagara

the first moment, even if you haven't a judgment on it, can you now? I think it really surpasses my expectations, Mr. Le Breton, whi

.) 'Torquay, Oxford, Edinburgh. Torquay is all nature, spoilt by what I won't call art; Oxford is all art, superimposed on a swamp that

them. 'Yes,' he answered; 'a very good parallel, only Oxford has a trifle more nature about it than Venice. The lagoon, wit

s Tower there, whether any of us can ever hope to leave behind to our successors any legacy at all comparable to the one left us by those nameless old mediaeval masons. It's a very saddening thought that we for whom all these beautiful things have been put together-we whom labouring humanity has pampered and petted from our cradles upward, feeding u

talk enough after his own fashion, but radicalism of this particular pensive tinge she was not ac

amusement, but said nothing. 'Others are squires and landed gentry; and I'm sure the landed gentry are very desirable in keeping up the tone of the country districts, and setting a pattern of virtue and refinement to their poorer neighbours. What would the country villages be, for example, if it weren't for the centres of culture af

nation, and that any attempt to obtain a constitution from him is simply flat rebellion and flying in the face of Providence. In England we had a King John once, and we extracted a constitution out of him and sundry other kings by main force; and here, it's acquiescence in the present limited aristocratic government that makes up obedience to the Providential arrangement of things apparently. But how about America? eh, Mrs. Martindale? Did Providence ordain that George Washington was to rebel against his most sacred majesty King George III., or did it n

ken aback by Harry's voluble vehemence: 'I suppose

an democracy or ordain it?

coming gently to her rescue, 'your principle amou

ion, and coming back mentally to her squires and rectors. 'The existing order is

no doubt for some wise purpose of Providence; and if he and those who think with him can succeed in changing things generally according to

s-what's the reason? Because whene'er it prospers 'tis not treason." If we could only introduce a socialist republic, then it wou

phalanstery. It would be simply charming. I can imagine myself composing a dignified exhortation to deliver to his grace, entirely compiled out of his own printed pastorals, on the duty of submission and the dange

said the scout, breaking in uncer

acter, so airy that, as Edie herself observed afterwards to Harry, it took away all the sense of meat and drink altogether, and left one only a pleased consciousness of full artistic gratification. Even Ernest, tho

ur must have gone to the development of such a complex mixture as this, Ernest, and thank your stars that you were born in this nineteenth c

etty smiles, 'what will this socialist republic of yours be lik

w to reform the world at large as how to shape one's own individual course aright in the actual midst of it. As a single unit of the whole, I want rather guidance for my private conduct than a scheme for redressing the universal dislocation of things in general. It seems to me, every man's first duty is to see that he himself is in the right attitude towards society, and afterwards he may proceed to enquire whether society is in the ri

wald's is the more practical. You can move great masses into demanding their rights; you can't so easily move them into cordially recognising their duties. Hammer, hammer, hammer at the most obvious abuses; that

s voice as he poured himself out a glass of hock, 'I should go with Le