have lost much of its utility
as a basis of pecuniary decency. Therefore the latter-day upper-class
canons of taste do not so consistently insist on an unremitting
demonstration of expensiveness and a strict exclusion of the appearance
of thrift. So, a predilection for the rustic and the "natural" in parks
and grounds makes its appearance on these higher social and intellectual
levels. This predilection is in large part an outcropping of the
instinct of workmanship; and it works out its results with varying
degrees of consistency. It is seldom altogether unaffected, and at times
it shades off into something not widely different from that make-believe
of rusticity which has been referred to above.

A weakness for crudely serviceable contrivances that pointedly suggest
immediate and wasteless use is present even in the middle-class tastes;
but it is there kept well in hand under the unbroken dominance of the
canon of reputable futility. Consequently it works out in a variety
of ways and means for shamming serviceability--in such contrivances
as rustic fences, bridges, bowers, pavilions, and the like decorative
features. An expression of this affectation of serviceability, at what
is perhaps its widest divergence from the first promptings of the
sense of economic beauty, is afforded by the cast-iron rustic fence and
trellis or by a circuitous drive laid across level ground.

The select leisure class has outgrown the use of these
pseudo-serviceable variants of pecuniary beauty, at least at some
points. But the taste of the more recent accessions to the leisure class
proper and of the middle and lower classes still requires a pecuniary
beauty to supplement the aesthetic beauty, even in those objects which
are primarily admired for the beauty that belongs to them as natural
growths.

The popular taste in these matters is to be seen in the prevalent high
appreciation of topiary work and of the conventional flower-beds of
public grounds. Perhaps as happy an illustration as may be had of this
dominance of pecuniary beauty over aesthetic beauty in middle-class
tastes is seen in the reconstruction of the grounds lately occupied by
the Columbian Exposition. The evidence goes to show that the requirement
of reputable expensiveness is still present in good vigor even where
all ostensibly lavish display is avoided. The artistic effects actually
wrought in this work of reconstruction diverge somewhat widely from
the effect to which