BOOKS.

THE GLASS OF FASHION.*

Tars is an interesting little book and, in our opinion, much better worth reading and writing than The Mirrors of Downing Street. The authorship remains, and will no doubt con- tinue to remain, obscure. Probably this is an advantage to the book. Omit ignotum pro magnifico is one of the main foundations of successful literature on the political side. The Letters of Junius would not have had half the effect they had if there had been no mystery about them. It is probable, as we said in reviewing The Mirrors of Downing Street, that " A Gentleman with a Duster " is a journalist. Anyway, and in spite of certain indications, the " Gentleman " is not a lady.

Like all books which lash the vices and follies of the age, there is a good deal of exaggeration and a good deal also of defective mental " orientation." The world has been crying out on its own degeneracy ever since anything in the nature of public: opinion existed. Byron, speaking of the good old times, says, " All times if old are good," and we might quite well say of these bad new times, " All times if new are bad." It would not be fair, however, to say this without adding that the author of The Glass of Fashion realizes these dangers and does his best to avoid them.

Though the style is generally somewhat forced, the book contains many good things well said, and there is a real air of sincerity about the generalizations. The writer, it is obvious, believes in his mission and honestly wants us to believe in it. In a word, the book is not a piece of mere Grub Street morality prepared by somebody who thinks that this is the dish the public desire at the moment. The following passage is from the introduction

The object of this book is to convince people of two truths hitherto obscured by tolerance and careless thinking—the danger of Folly : the value to a liberal State of a valid Aris- tocracy. I would persuade men that Folly, which has never cared a snap of its fingers for the satirist, is a pervasive poison which corrupts the entire body of a people, and that a democratic State, if it would make a powerful- contribution to the higher life of the human race, needs at its head a small body of enlight- ened people conscious of its duty to the Commonwealth and religiously determined to set the highest possible standard in manners and morals. To those who say that satire is the proper weapon to be directed against Folly, and declare the suggestion absurd that the artillery of moral indignation should be levied against such trivial things as the excesses of Fashion, I would make this simple answer : Satire is the instrument of the cynic, not of the critic, the tool of the destroyer, not of the builder, and its victories in history have been chiefly defeats of virtue, not destructions of vice. Folly survives. And it survives in the cool assurance that the satires which have been directed against it are so many boucluets laid at its triumphant feet: The reason of this, I think, is plain enough. The satirist is a spectator. He makes amusing or stinging remarks on the spectacle of human activity, rather to obtain the applause of brother cynics than to assist humanity in its work. He is, in some particulars, a great danger to the State, for he tends to make a community believe that what so frivolous or ironic a spirit considers laughable cannot conceivably be worth the attention of serious people."

The distinction here drawn between the critic and the satirist is excellent. The introduction ends with a passage which we will also quote :- " By the term Fashion I mean all those noisy ostentatious and frivolous people, patricians and plutocrats, politicians and financiers, lawyers and tradesmen, actors and artists, who have scrambled on to the summit of England's national life, and who, setting the worst possible examples in morals and manners, are never so happy as when they are making people talk about them.. It is of these ostentatious people I write, and my chief hope is to make the Gentry of England talk about them in such a manner as will either bring them to a sense of their duties or lead to their expulsion from the heights. Let me persuade timorous people that the social order has much more to fear from the silence of the Gentry than from the vituperative abuse of the demagogue. The peril of our day is the implication of the Gentry of England in the notorious vulgarity of all that is fast, furious, and fashionable,' there has a main oppor- tunity of the social wrecker."

This appeal to the gentry is curious as well as interesting, and although it was obviously not in the author's mind, it reminds one of the passage appealing to the Knights at the end of Piers Plow- man—a passage which we recommend to the author ae a sugges- tion for one of the new editions which we may feel sure that the book will attain. And here, and before we leave the intro- duction, we may say a word about the quotations placed at the • The Glass of Fashion. By "A Gentleman With a Duster." London Kills and Boon. [be. net.]

head of each chapter or incorporated with the text. Many of them are quite admirable, though the selection shows little

literary discretion. Sometimes we get wise words well placed from FitzGerald, Froude, Dostoevsky, Thomas Browne, Matthew Arnold, and the like. Even Vanbrugh is laid under contribution to afford a motto for the chapter dealing with Mrs. Asquith's Autobiography—" Oh, my God, that you won't listen to a woman of quality when her heart is bursting 1" That is

really first-rate, and we offer our most sincere congratulations to our author for having found it and applied it. Unfortunately, however, such admirable samples are let down by being inter- mixed with quotations not only of much less poignancy, but from writers moving on a perfectly different plane. It was

said of John Bright that he had so little sense of literature that in the same speech he would quote from Paradise Lost and The Epic of Hades! " A Gentleman with a Duster " is quite as bad.

Of the rest of the book we must say that the generalizations are much better than the specific criticisms. The chapter headed " The Principles of the Commonwealth " is far better than the chapter on Colonel Repington's Diaries or Mrs. Asquith's Auto- biography. Do not let it be supposed that we regret the plain- speaking which the Dusterman uses with regard to his " awful examples," but it seems to us that too much importance is paid to them. Readers will remember how Pope pities the painter who has to portray the beauties of his age and must get some

artist's model to sit for him when he draws a great lady :—

" 'Tis from a handmaid we must paint a Helen."

The author of the book before us when he wants to paint a

truly Satanic figure suffers from having to base his picture on Colonel Repington, who, whatever he is, is certainly not a figure

designed to serve as a model of the Prince of Darkness. The same criticism applies to the study of Mrs. Asquith. She may have done some harm to our social fabric by encouraging bad manners and customs in her own little London world, but she is an

impossible model for the heroic figure of Fashion demoralizing the British people. That is a truism which we are sure our author would himself admit. We have described the special portraits as not being nearly as good as the general chapters. We must, however, make one exception. The " Study in

Contrast " which deals largely with Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone is delightful. Amongst other things, it provides a complete because entirely reasonable and intelligible explanation of the vile stories which in the eighties were whispered in regard to Mr. Gladstone's private life.

The chapter is headed with the following quotation from Coleridge, which, if there had been nothing else in the book worth reading, would have justified the publication :—

" The two images farthest removed from each other which can be comprehended under one term, are, I think, Isaiah, ` Hear, 0 heavens, and give ear, 0 earth ! ' ; and Levi, of Holywell Street, ` Old clothes ! ' ; both of them Jews, you'll observe. Immane quantum discrepant 1"

We must hurry to the concluding chapter, which is in truth

the best thing in the book, and, if we are not mistaken, may prove of real value. The chapter is headed by the following

quotations :—

" Society originates in the need of a livelihood, but it exists for the sake of life.—Aristotk.

The open secret flashes on the brain, As if one almost guessed it, almost knew Whence we have sailed and voyage whereunto. Frederic Myers.

Never forget : The higher we soar, the smaller do we appear to those who cannot fly.—Nietzsche."

The matter of this concluding chapter is in truth too com-

pressed for compression, but we must make an attempt. The author, again like Piers Plowman, in spite of the things which so deeply move him and alarm him, sees what a large amount of goodness there is in England. But there is forced upon him

by the state of public morality the instinctive belief that " good- ness is not enough." This idea, he proceeds to say, is not new, for " Aristotle made a vital distinction between the excellence, of conduct and the higher excellence of intelligence. But

Aristotle did not develop his thesis to its revolutionary conclu- sion." Our author, too, goes on to say that that work was accomplished later - in the hills of Galilee, though, unhappily, we have hidden away or ignored the fact. " We have forgotten that; morality is not enough, altogether forgotten that Christ, proclaimed His theory of existence as good news for mankind, Himself as the likht of the world."

Our author very wisely notes that " when it is perceived that goodness is not enough, a revolution takes place in the human mind." Not only is goodness not enough, but we perceive that

there is something beyond morality, and in perceiving this, we, in effect, though he does not say so in so many words, enjoy the ecstasy of " conversion " :—

" Joy takes a new meaning. Power clamours for a new definition. We are not in a rut ; we are not shut down in a pit. We are children of God, and, if children, then heirs of eternal life ; and eternal life is evolution, evolution towards ever greater power, ever greater understanding, ever greater bliss, ` the reason always attentive, but always satisfied.' This, I think, is the natural consequence of discovering our context in eternity. We enter on a new birth, a birth of joy and thanksgiving. I em coming to believe that we may now be moving towards another and a far greater renaissance than that which ended the long drowse of the middle ages. I feel that this present darkness has become so stifling, and this present confusion so inextricable, that we may expect humanity to rescue itself from a reversion to barbarism by one of those great forward movements which at long intervals m history have saved evolution from a fatal halt or a destructive recession."

The author next quotes Professor Muirhead on Aristotle to the

effect that what matters about a man is " not what he is born as, but what he is born for." A flower is not less a flower because

it springs out of the earth, or a statue is not a statue merely because it is resolvable into carbonate of limo. That, of course, is only another way of saying that it is the spirit which quickeneth. Here is the author's message in his own words :—

" It is by realizing his kinship with the universe that man becomes the creative agent of joy. This, perhaps, is our way to a greater renaissance than that which illuminated the sixteenth century, and went astray in the seventeenth. He who would save the human race from darkness must go back to the light of the world, not to assert the claims of theology, not to strengthen the hands of clericalism, but simply to make faith in a spiritual purpose the very breath of human existence. Immortality must be an intellectual conviction, not an emotional uncertainty. Intelligence must become a passion. . . . In this renaissance of the human spirit, which appears to me our one way out from the present darkness, what part, if it comes, will be played by England ? What part will be taken by the aristocracy, that is to say, by the people at the head of the nation ? Can Fashion help us, can Mammon help us, to enter into a new birth of the human spirit ? I think the work of preparation must be done by others. I feel that our salvation will come for the good of all classes—from the good among the aristocracy, the good among the numerous middle classes, the good among the manual workers—and that this work of salvation will proceed from the knowledge that, beyond obedience to morals, there is a boundless region of spiritual excellence waiting for the exploration of mankind. The good will become our aristocracy when they understand that goodness is not enough."

The passage we have quoted will of course be laughed at by our superfine philosophers and ignored by our Pharisees who no doubt honestly believe that they have placed the Spirit of God in the hermetically sealed receptacles of Ritual, forgetting that sterilization, however well intentioned, destroys the vitamins of the spirit, and so of true religion. The materialists will find the whole theory ridiculous, or rather un- meaning. The historians and theologians will say that the whole business is to be found in the records of a dozen periods

of world restlessness. We shall be told that it is actually expressed by the Neo-Platonists, is implicit in all Oriental philosophy, and that a dozen seventeenth and eighteenth century writers from Spinoza onwards hinted at it. In a word, we have known it all along.

Yet, even granting most of this to be valid criticism, we are not at all sure that it is any the worse for that. There are very few true things which are new things. Nevertheless, a new statement of them is wanted every fifty years or so. We can well imagine that the hint contained in the passage we have quoted will bring light and so comfort to the hearts of many plain men and women, and give them, if not the full solution they desire, at least something very much better than the well-meant, conventional shibboleths of a great deal

which passes as theology. It may even be that though the author of The Glass of Fashion, as we expect he would be the first to admit, is not cast to play the part of a St. Francis, a

Savonarola, or a Wesley, he is destined to light a match which in the future may be used to light a candle that will illuminate our little corner of the world. To hope more would be to hope too much. And yet how great, how tremendous a destiny we are half-prophesying for our author! " Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings ! " Why not, then, out of those of journalists

and " writers for the magazines " I