It would be well if
we could persuade the average man to take on a certain human dignity in
the clothing of his average body. Unfortunately he will be slow to be
changed. And as to the poorer part of the mass, so wretched are their
national customs--and the wretchedest of them all the wearing of other
men's old raiment--that they must wait for reform until the reformed
dress, which the reformers have not yet put on, shall have turned second-
hand.
THE UNIT OF THE WORLD
The quarrel of Art with Nature goes on apace. The painters have long
been talking of selecting, then of rejecting, or even, with Mr. Whistler,
of supplanting. And then Mr. Oscar Wilde, in the witty and delicate
series of inversions which he headed 'The Decay of Lying,' declared war
with all the irresponsibility naturally attending an act so serious. He
seems to affirm that Nature is less proportionate to man than is
architecture; that the house is built and the sofa is made measurable by
the unit measure of the body; but that the landscape is set to some other
scale. 'I prefer houses to the open air. In a house we all feel of the
proper proportions. Egotism itself, which is so necessary to a proper
sense of human dignity, is absolutely the result of indoor life.
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