uppose it is Macedonian Massacres. Everywhere that I went forlornly,
with my pencil or my paint brush, I found that others had unaccountably
been before me, spoiling the walls, the curtains, and the furniture with
their childish and barbaric designs.

.....

Nowhere did I find a really clear space for sketching until this
occasion when I prolonged beyond the proper limit the process of lying
on my back in bed. Then the light of that white heaven broke upon my
vision, that breadth of mere white which is indeed almost the definition
of Paradise, since it means purity and also means freedom. But alas!
like all heavens, now that it is seen it is found to be unattainable;
it looks more austere and more distant than the blue sky outside the
window. For my proposal to paint on it with the bristly end of a broom
has been discouraged--never mind by whom; by a person debarred from all
political rights--and even my minor proposal to put the other end of
the broom into the kitchen fire and turn it to charcoal has not been
conceded. Yet I am certain that it was from persons in my position that
all the original inspiration came for covering the ceilings of palaces
and cathedrals with a riot of fallen angels or victorious gods. I am
sure that it was only because Michael Angelo was engaged in the ancient
and honourable occupation of lying in bed that he ever realized how the
roof of the Sistine Chapel might be made into an awful imitation of a
divine drama that could only be acted in the heavens.

The tone now commonly taken toward the practice of lying in bed is
hypocritical and unhealthy. Of all the marks of modernity that seem to
mean a kind of decadence, there is none more menacing and dangerous than
the exultation of very small and secondary matters of conduct at the
expense of very great and primary ones, at the expense of eternal ties
and tragic human morality. If there is one thing worse than the modern
weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor
morals. Thus it is considered more withering to accuse a man of bad
taste than of bad ethics. Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays,
for cleanliness is made essential and godliness is regarded as an
offence. A playwright can attack the institution of marriage so long as
he does not misrepresent the manners of society, and I have met Ibsenite
pessimists who thought it wrong to take beer but right to take prussic
acid. Especially this is so in matters of