Lord Salisbury's speech at the Academy banquet last Saturday was
full of good things. After the announcement of his Russian agreement, the Prime Minister, with evident gusto, launched out into the question of ugliness and beauty in naval architecture and ladies' dress. To him a great ship of war looked like "a whale with two sticks in it, or rather like a whale that has been imperfectly harpooned." As to dress, was it not remarkable that the ugliest dress which the English gentleman ever wore had lasted for fifty years without a change ? Even in women's dress the cult of beauty was dying out. "My belief is that if there was a Dante to write an artistic ' Inferno ' its lowest circle would be assigned to the ladies who dress themselves in the divided skirt or knicker- bockers." And even worse things were in store for us. A few years hence those who are then alive would see all the principal ladies of their acquaintance as Aldermen and Common Coun- cillors. "How do you imagine that they will dress themselves ? In a manner agreeable to the artists in these rooms, where I see ladies in very different costume? How is the beauty of the idealised female form to be maintained under a municipal costume?" In truth, the Constitution of the modern State was againgt the development of the beautiful. "What is con- stitutional government from the point of view of art ? You can produce something beautiful from trials, executions, assassinations, and conspiracies, but how can you produce anything beautiful from an all-night sitting?"
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