gh life. Now
literature is sentimental, now hopefully humorous, now psychological, now
new-womanly. Yesterday's pictures are the laughing-stock of the up-to-
date artist of to-day, and to-day's art will be sneered at to-morrow. Now
it is fashionable to be democratic, to pretend that no virtue or wisdom
can exist outside corduroy, and to abuse the middle classes. One season
we go slumming, and the next we are all socialists. We think we are
thinking; we are simply dressing ourselves up in words we do not
understand for the gods to laugh at us."

"Don't be pessimistic," retorted the Minor Poet, "pessimism is going out.
You call such changes fashions, I call them the footprints of progress.
Each phase of thought is an advance upon the former, bringing the
footsteps of the many nearer to the landmarks left by the mighty climbers
of the past upon the mountain paths of truth. The crowd that was
satisfied with _The Derby Day_ now appreciates Millet. The public that
were content to wag their heads to _The Bohemian Girl_ have made Wagner
popular."

"And the play lovers, who stood for hours to listen to Shakespeare,"
interrupted the Philosopher, "now crowd to music-halls."

"The track sometimes descends for a little way, but it will wind upwards
again," returned the Poet. "The music-hall itself is improving; I
consider it the duty of every intellectual man to visit such places. The
mere influence of his presence helps to elevate the tone of the
performance. I often go myself!"

"I was looking," said the Woman of the World, "at some old illustrated
papers of thirty years ago, showing the men dressed in those very absurd
trousers, so extremely roomy about the waist, and so extremely tight
about the ankles. I recollect poor papa in them; I always used to long
to fill them out by pouring in sawdust at the top."

"You mean the peg-top period," I said. "I remember them distinctly
myself, but it cannot be more than three-and-twenty years ago at the
outside."

"That is very nice of you," replied the Woman of the World, "and shows
more tact than I should have given you credit for. It could, as you say,
have been only twenty-three years ago. I know I was a very little girl
at the time. I think there must be some subtle connection between
clothes and thought. I cannot imagine men in those trousers and
Dundreary whiskers talking as you fellows are talking now, any more than
I could conceive of a woman in a crinoline an