ove suspicion. Her favourite flowers were tulips, rigid tulips with
opulent crimson streaks. She despised wildings. Her ornaments were
simply displays of the precious metal. Had she known the price of
platinum she would have worn that by preference. Her chains and brooches
and rings were bought by weight. She would have turned her back on
Benvenuto Cellini if he was not 22 carats fine. She despised
water-colour art; her conception of a picture was a vast domain of oily
brown by an Old Master. The Babbages at the Hall had a display of gold
plate swaggering in the corner of the dining-room; and the visitor
(restrained by a plush rope from examining the workmanship) was told the
value, and so passed on. I like my art unadorned: thought and skill, and
the other strange quality that is added thereto, to make things
beautiful--and nothing more. A farthing's worth of paint and paper, and,
behold! a thing of beauty!--as they do in Japan. And if it should fall
into the fire--well, it has gone like yesterday's sunset, and to-morrow
there will be another.

These Japanese are indeed the apostles of cheapness. The Greeks lived to
teach the world beauty, the Hebrews to teach it morality, and now the
Japanese are hammering in the lesson that men may be honourable, daily
life delightful, and a nation great without either freestone houses,
marble mantelpieces, or mahogany sideboards. I have sometimes wished
that my Aunt Charlotte could have travelled among the Japanese nation.
She would, I know, have called it a "parcel of trash." Their use of
paper--paper suits, paper pocket-handkerchiefs--would have made her
rigid with contempt. I have tried, but I cannot imagine my Aunt
Charlotte in paper underclothing. Her aversion to paper was
extraordinary. Her Book of Beauty was printed on satin, and all her
books were bound in leather, the boards regulated rather than decorated
with a severe oblong. Her proper sphere was among the ancient
Babylonians, among which massive populace even the newspapers were
built of brick. She would have compared with the King's daughter whose
raiment was of wrought gold. When I was a little boy I used to think she
had a mahogany skeleton. However, she is gone, poor old lady, and at
least she left me her furniture. Her ghost was torn in pieces after the
sale--must have been. Even the old china went this way and that. I took
what was perhaps a mean revenge of her for the innumerable
black-holeings, bread-and-water d