But now they have adopted the opposite ideal of
'good form,' which may be defined as Puritanism without religion. Good
form has sent them all into black like the stroke of a funeral bell.
They engage, like Mr. Gilbert's curates, in a war of mildness, a
positive competition of obscurity. In old times the lords of the earth
sought above all things to be distinguished from each other; with that
object they erected outrageous images on their helmets and painted
preposterous colours on their shields. They wished to make it entirely
clear that a Norfolk was as different, say, from an Argyll as a white
lion from a black pig. But to-day their ideal is precisely the opposite
one, and if a Norfolk and an Argyll were dressed so much alike that they
were mistaken for each other they would both go home dancing with joy.
The consequences of this are inevitable. The aristocracy must lose their
function of standing to the world for the idea of variety, experiment,
and colour, and we must find these things in some other class. To ask
whether we shall find them in the middle class would be to jest upon
sacred matters. The only conclusion, therefore, is that it is to
certain sections of the lower class, chiefly, for example, to
omnibus-conductors, with their rich and rococo mode of thought, that we
must look for guidance towards liberty and light.
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