If the whole
affair happened in some alien atmosphere, if a pear-tree began to grow
apples or a river to run with wine in some strange fairyland, the effect
would be quite different. The streets and shops and door-knockers of the
harlequinade, which to the vulgar aesthete make it seem commonplace, are
in truth the very essence of the aesthetic departure. It must be an
actual modern door which opens and shuts, constantly disclosing
different interiors; it must be a real baker whose loaves fly up into
the air without his touching them, or else the whole internal excitement
of this elvish invasion of civilization, this abrupt entrance of Puck
into Pimlico, is lost. Some day, perhaps, when the present narrow phase
of aesthetics has ceased to monopolize the name, the glory of a farcical
art may become fashionable. Long after men have ceased to drape their
houses in green and gray and to adorn them with Japanese vases, an
aesthete may build a house on pantomime principles, in which all the
doors shall have their bells and knockers on the inside, all the
staircases be constructed to vanish on the pressing of a button, and all
the dinners (humorous dinners in themselves) come up cooked through a
trapdoor.
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