selves, so to speak,' and the sharper the line between their worldly
functions and ours, the better. This greater swiftness and less erring
subtlety of mind, their forte and privilege, justifies the painted mask
that Artifice bids them wear. Behind it their minds can play without
let. They gain the strength of reserve. They become important, as in
the days of the Roman Empire were the Emperor's mistresses, as was the
Pompadour at Versailles, as was our Elizabeth. Yet do not their faces
become lined with thought; beautiful and without meaning are their
faces.

And, truly, of all the good things that will happen with the full
revival of cosmetics, one of the best is that surface will finally
be severed from soul. That damnable confusion will be solved by the
extinguishing of a prejudice which, as I suggest, itself created. Too
long has the face been degraded from its rank as a thing of beauty to
a mere vulgar index of character or emotion. We had come to troubling
ourselves, not with its charm of colour and line, but with such
questions as whether the lips were sensuous, the eyes full of
sadness, the nose indicative of determination. I have no quarrel with
physiognomy. For my own part I believe in it. But it has tended to
degrade the face aesthetically, in such wise as the study of cheirosophy
has tended to degrade the hand. And the use of cosmetics, the masking of
the face, will change this. We shall gaze at a woman merely because she
is beautiful, not stare into her face anxiously, as into the face of a
barometer.

How fatal it has been, in how many ways, this confusion of soul and
service! Wise were the Greeks in making plain masks for their mummers to
play in, and dunces we not to have done the same! Only the other day, an
actress was saying that what she was most proud of in her art--next, of
course, to having appeared in some provincial pantomime at the age of
three--was the deftness with which she contrived, in parts demanding a
rapid succession of emotions, to dab her cheeks quite quickly with rouge
from the palm of her right hand or powder from the palm of her left.
Gracious goodness! why do not we have masks upon the stage? Drama is the
presentment of the soul in action. The mirror of the soul is the voice.
Let the young critics, who seek a cheap reputation for austerity, by
cavilling at 'incidental music,' set their faces rather against the
attempt to justify inferior dramatic art by the subvention of a quite