them all pretensions to fashionable life, unless they develop sufficient genius to get in on their brains in spite of their clothes.

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Notwithstanding these very obvious truths, the superior note in modern fashion-talk declares the modes slavery and fit only for slaves, and insists that the wise and powerful are independent of them. This view of fashion is false to human nature, a mere affectation and a pose-a fashion in itself; and, moreover, a mistaken view of human nature; for the instinct of following the fashions is a great and wise one in our natures, and an indication of civilization. Of course, you must decide for yourself whether you think civilization a good or an evil; and besides that, there is the further necessity of deciding how much civilization you are willing to discard or where you draw the line-at stays or afternoon tea, motor-cars or drains. However, I let that pass, and assuming, at any rate, that civilization is a vital and living force, I may observe that where fashion in clothes-or in food or in anything is stagnant, civilization, of however advanced a nature, is also in a state of stagnation. Fashion, as we know it, began with the Renaissance, at which period complaints were first made by the older generations that the younger people wanted clothes of everincreasing variety of cut and color, and did not relish heirloom garments as in former days. We can see the process going on in our day in the East, where as soon as a stagnant civilization begins to stir, and the national soul awakes, as in Japan, the eye, it seems, awakens also and begins to crave continual change, which may or may not be progress, but at any rate is change. The most completely stagnant people I have ever seen are the natives of the Philippine Islands, whose general knowledge of our civilization is precisely at the point achieved by the contempo

raries of Magellan; and their costume, a native sarong (a pattern some thousands of years old when the pyramids were built), accompanied by a blouse cut in imitation of the big sleeves and huge ruffs worn in Europe in the days of our Elizabeth. If we look at the evidence of monuments we see that when the old, far-off civilizations attained those stages of stagnation which enveloped them for centuries and tens of centuries at a time, costume became, inevitably, equally immovable in aspect. When events began to stir and new ideas were imported, as when the Greeks came into Egypt, the prevailing unrest reflected itself at once in the fashions of the time. Peoples who have never advanced in learning, have even retrograded, such as the Arabs, who now wear the same cut of garments as they did in the days of Abraham. It is charmingly romantic and interesting to visit "Bible Lands" and be able to observe the inhabitants "just the same as they were in Bible times"; but, in real truth, it is a melancholy view of human nature and as cheering as it would be to come to Britain and find the people living in swamps and forests and painted blue.

To follow the fashions is the first duty laid upon any individual whose fortune increases above that of the vast mass of low wage-earners; and this is an instinct cultivated and followed, not by the silliest and most ignorant in the lands of progress, but by all that is best and most intelligent. This being almost a truism, it follows that the best class of women are not and never attempt to be independent of fashion. Ideas of their own they may and do have, but never unfashionable ones. For instance, it simply could not occur to a great or fashionable lady to wear, at this moment, a tiny hat of a pill-box or District Messenger pattern, however it might suit her face or features; nor could she dream of putting on sandals

to go in an omnibus, though she believed that such a custom would be the most desirable and beautiful in the world. The particular hat, the particular stuffs, the particular outlineabove all, the outline of the moment, she welcomes and, perhaps, adapts; no more. I have in mind an instance of the supposed boldness of a great lady who lately chose for her bridesmaids' costumes something resembling the robes of Botticelli's Primavera. This feat was trumpetted by the fashionwriters as a daringly original adventure, when, as a matter of hard fact, it would have been almost impossible to chose a dress more in line and harmony with the prevailing fashions or more completely fashionable at the moment. To be really original and reckless would be to copy a Holbein, a Velasquez, or-a Frith. This is only one instance of many occurring every day, all pointing to the profound truth, fixed on the bed-rock of human nature, that no one ever attempts to neglect the fashions and be fashionable. And he was a deep thinker who said that one may as well be dead as out of the fashion. One is dead. It is true that wishes and desires may be controlled, or even quenched by the state of the purse; but even then, old-fashionedrecent-fashioned-clothes, would unwillingly be worn; unfashionable things -never. The more the spread of wealth makes fashions accessible, the more we observe the universal craving there is to follow them in the hopes of attaining fresh impetus and interest in life. That such universal desire can be entirely useless or foolish is outside the bounds of possibility. The fact that it is one of the first instincts of the most cultivated and educated classes should surely absolve it from all ideas of being absurd or ridiculous. People who laugh at the incoming of any new fashion, laugh at what they do not understand, like villagers I have

seen in uncontrollable fits of mirth over the sight of a Chinaman. On the contrary, far from being in the least funny or absurd, the subject of fashion, whatever its freaks, is one to be considered with attention, for obviously it has its function in human life and human nature, and its manifestations are consistently allied with progress and enlightenment.

As a stimulant to trade, fashion's functions are very obvious. We all live by trade, whether directly or indirectly; there is no other means of subsistence. But in countries where trade is varied, roused, stimulated by changes of fashion and new demands and supplies, there is a flow of wealth, a healthy ebb and tide of individual prosperity, which is unknown in stagnant nations. Where fashion becomes crystallized-could such an undesirable event Occur-we should all suffer sooner or later, and probably sooner. All stagnation is a form of death, and everything that is healthy-microbe or planet-moves perpetually. When a nation is healthy it can no more remain stationary in the matter of dress than it can in the matter of locomotion or means of communication.

Men, as we know, are not in our day so much affected by changes of modes as women are; but the change is there, and a well-dressed man of to-day is not a bit like a well-dressed man of ten years ago. Man, alone, among animals, has resigned to the females of his species the business of attracting by the eye, and is satisfied with beholding her constant changes of shape and coloring. They give him the pleasurable sense of novelty that is a food of the mind; and, generally without knowing why, he insists very clearly upon a regard for the variety afforded by the fashions of the moment. It is woman who is thus made the object of attention when human beings meet together, and it is easily seen how, with

all the instinct for change, men's fashions change so little: the necessary refreshment for the male eye and the male taste is gratified by the feminine changes to such an extent that the comparative sameness of male attire does not pall as it would do if women kept to the same ideas for years at a time. This reversal of the adornment of the sexes is not very old as history goes, but its gradual development may be traced co-evally with the greater liberty accorded to women. In days when women were almost as much shut up in the house as the inhabitants of harems, men went very gorgeously clothed, and even so late as two hundred years ago, when fashionable and beautiful women were rarely to be seen in the public streets, men were very splendid. Now, however, as we have observed, the craving for change and novelty is being gratified, and the eye refreshed on every side, and, without knowing why or wherefore, men are perfectly content in clothes of cut and colors that would have made their great-greatgrandfathers miserable.

Fashions must be set by some authority that is universally recognized and obeyed. This is of the essence of harmony and progress. It was all very well in the small world of a French Court of the eighteenth century for the lay figure set up by the Queen to dictate the modes of the day. Communication was slow, riches were rare, and to these circumstances that custom was perfectly adapted; and if the fashions of our day are not set by the great ladies, but ordained by the great dressmakers, it is useless and foolish to repine or to wish the old way back again. Moreover, what is there to complain of in the taste of the dressmakers? have some model set now and then which is ill-adapted to the short, the stout, the middle-aged; but if that should annoy us, turn for comfort to some old prints and observe the disas

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trous effects of the skittish in dress, say, in the drawings of Hogarth. This ephemeral "hobble" skirt may be everything that its detractors declare, but at least it does not sweep up the filth of the streets as did the products of many epochs of fashion set by great ladies, nor can it be compared for one instant with the hideous and insanitary headdresses of the days when Marie Antoinette set the fashions-those headdresses which were not undone for weeks at a time-a pleasing custom which involved their adornment with long jewelled pins ready for scratching and killing. At every period when the fashions were set by great ladies there were monstrous anomalies of ugliness, discomfort, or downright insanitariness, which could not possibly emanate from the "ateliers" of our day. We may be ruled by the shopman in this as in many other matters, but, in dress at least, his rule is infinitely to be preferred to the taste of any period set by an individual great personage, from Elizabeth and her hoops and ruff and stomach-pillows, to Victoria and her elastic-sided boots-from Henry VIII. and his absurd toes, to George IV. and his tights. The government of the shopman ensures to a very great extent that fashion must make its appeal by novelty and beauty; and if not actual and intrinsic beauty, then the curious and subtle cut and color which produces or emphasizes beauty in the wearer. The day of its appeal to snobbishness is past; and with its widened scope and myriad influences fashion works as one of the living forces, and as a guarantee of the living forces, of the greatest civilization this world has ever seen. The intelligent woman, the product of perfected culture, vitality, applied science, increased wealth, is imbued, above all other things with the spirit of her day. She is that spirit, in fact she produces it, and that spirit is progress,

turn twenty yards aside from the road to spend half an hour seated on the turf near or under the old tree. These half-hours were always grateful; and conscious that the tree drew me to it I questioned myself as to the reason. It was, I told myself, nothing but mental curiosity-my interest was a purely scientific one. For how comes it, I asked, that a thorn can grow to a tree and live to a great age in such a situation, on a vast naked down, where for many centuries, perhaps for thousands of years, the herbage has been so closely fed by sheep as to have the appearance of a carpet or newly mown lawn? The seed is carried and scattered everywhere by the birds, but no sooner does it germinate and send up a shoot than it is eaten down to the roots; for there is no scent that attracts a sheep more, no flavor it has greater taste for, than that of any forest seedling springing up amidst the minute herbaceous plants which carpet the downs. The thorn, like other organisms, has its own unconscious intelligence and cunning by means of which it endeavors to save itself and fulfil its life. It opens its first tender leaves under the herbage and at the same time thrusts up a vertical spine to wound the nibbling mouth; and no sooner has it got a leaf or two and a spine than it spreads its roots all round and from each of them springs a fresh shoot, leaves and protecting spine, to increase the chances of preservation. vain! the cunning animal finds a way to defeat all this strategy, and after the leaves have been bitten off again and again, the infant plant gives up the struggle and dies in the ground. Yet we see that from time to time one survives-one perhaps in a million; but how-whether by a quicker growth or a harder or more poisonous thorn, an unpalatable leaf, or some other secret agency-we cannot guess. First as a diminutive scrubby shrub, with nu

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merous iron-hard stems, with few and small leaves but many thorns, it keeps its poor flowerless frustrate life for perhaps half a century or longer, without growing more than a couple of feet high; and then, as by a miracle, it will spring up until its top shoots are out of reach of the browsing sheep, and in the end it becomes a tree with spreading branches and fully developed leaves, and flowers and fruit in its season.

One day I was visited by an artist from a distance who, when shown the thorn, pronounced it a fine subject for his pencil, and while he made his picture we talked about the hawthorn generally as compared with other trees, and agreed that, except in its blossoming time when it is merely pretty, it is the most engaging and perhaps the most beautiful of our native trees. We said that it was the most individual of trees, that its variety was infinite, for you never find two alike whether growing in a forest, in groups or masses, or alone. We were almost lyrical in its praises. But the solitary thorn was always best, he said, and this one was perhaps the best of all he had seen; strange and at the same time decorative in its form, beautiful too in its appearance of great age with unimpaired vigor and something more in its expression-that elusive something which we find in some trees and don't know how to explain.

Ah, yes, thought I, it was this appeal to the æsthetic faculty which attracted me from the first, and not, as I had imagined, the mere curiosity of the naturalist interested mainly and always in the habits of living things, plant or animal.

Certainly the thorn had strangeness. Its appearance as to height was deceptive; one would have guessed it eighteen feet; measuring it I was surprised to find it only ten. It has four separate boles, springing from one root,