universes, and learn to despise them.
But the towering and tropical vision of things as they really are--the
gigantic daisies, the heaven-consuming dandelions, the great Odyssey of
strange-coloured oceans and strange-shaped trees, of dust like the wreck
of temples, and thistledown like the ruin of stars--all this colossal
vision shall perish with the last of the humble.

* * * * *

A DEFENCE OF SLANG

The aristocrats of the nineteenth century have destroyed entirely their
one solitary utility. It is their business to be flaunting and arrogant;
but they flaunt unobtrusively, and their attempts at arrogance are
depressing. Their chief duty hitherto has been the development of
variety, vivacity, and fulness of life; oligarchy was the world's first
experiment in liberty. 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.

The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang. Every
day a nameless poet weaves some fairy tracery of popular language. It
may be said that the fashionable world talks slang as much as the
democratic; this is true, and it strongly supports the view under
consideration. Noth