One does not want to bandy words with so accomplished
a wit as Lord Salisbury, but surely he is a little behind the times in the matter of ironclads. The ironclads of tvienty years ago were deubtless hideous burdens to the water, but, as Mr. - Kipling has pointed out, the modern cruiser and battleship can be, and now generally are, extremely beautiful. Again, we do not feel qniteso certain as to the increased ugliness of modern every-day life. In many ways we have improved greatly. Consider the middle-class drawing-room as drawn by Leech—all gaseliers, chiffonniers, and bad engravings from Landtieer—and the modern equivalent. We are, however, quite at one with Lord Salisbury when he deprecates Govern- ment interference in matters of art, and opens up the prospect of an animated correspondence with the Treasury, not about the main sum, but about the odd 61d. We wonder whether this last is an example fresh from Whitehall, and represents a recent dispute between the Foreign Office and the Treasury.
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