quaint and so instinct with the spirit of its time that
I am fain to quote it:

'There were quaint, beautiful, extraordinary costumes walking
about--ultra-aesthetics, artistic-aesthetics, aesthetics that made
up their minds to be daring, and suddenly gave way in some important
point--put a frivolous bonnet on the top of a grave and flowing
garment that Albert Durer might have designed for a mantle. There were
fashionable costumes that Mrs. Mason or Madame Eliot might have turned
out that morning. The motley crowd mingled, forming into groups,
sometimes dazzling you by the array of colours that you never thought
to see in full daylight.... Canary-coloured garments flitted cheerily
by garments of the saddest green. A hat in an agony of pushes and angles
was seen in company with a bonnet that was a gay garland of flowers. A
vast cape that might have enshrouded the form of a Mater Dolorosa hung
by the side of a jauntily-striped Langtry-hood.'

The 'Master.' By this title his disciples used to address James
Whistler, the author-artist. Without echoing the obloquy that was
lavished at first nor the praise that was lavished later upon his
pictures, we must admit that he was, as least, a great master of English
prose and a controversialist of no mean power.

'Masher.' One authority derives the title, rather ingeniously, from 'Ma
Chere,' the mode of address used by the gilded youth to the barmaids of
the period--whence the corruption, 'Masher.' Another traces it to
the chorus of a song, which, at that time, had a great vogue in the
music-halls: 'I'm the slashing, dashing, mashing Montmorency of the
day.' This, in my opinion, is the safer suggestion, and may be adopted.

London, 1894.

King George The Fourth

They say that when King George was dying, a special form of prayer for
his recovery, composed by one of the Archbishops, was read aloud to him
and that His Majesty, after saying Amen 'thrice, with great fervour,'
begged that his thanks might be conveyed to its author. To the student
of royalty in modern times there is something rather suggestive in this
incident. I like to think of the drug-scented room at Windsor and of the
King, livid and immobile among his pillows, waiting, in superstitious
awe, for the near moment when he must stand, a spirit, in the presence
of a perpetual King. I like to think of him following the futile prayer
with eyes and lips, and then, custom resurgent in him and a touch of
pride that