intensity in the close neighborhood of his hosts--or
patrons, as Mrs. Arrowpoint would have liked to hear them called, that
she might deny the possibility of any longer patronizing genius, its
royalty being universally acknowledged. The contrast might have amused
a graver personage than Gwendolen. We English are a miscellaneous
people, and any chance fifty of us will present many varieties of
animal architecture or facial ornament; but it must be admitted that
our prevailing expression is not that of a lively, impassioned race,
preoccupied with the ideal and carrying the real as a mere make-weight.
The strong point of the English gentleman pure is the easy style of his
figure and clothing; he objects to marked ins and outs in his costume,
and he also objects to looking inspired.

Fancy an assemblage where the men had all that ordinary stamp of the
well-bred Englishman, watching the entrance of Herr Klesmer--his mane
of hair floating backward in massive inconsistency with the chimney-pot
hat, which had the look of having been put on for a joke above his
pronounced but well-modeled features and powerful clear-shaven mouth
and chin; his tall, thin figure clad in a way which, not being strictly
English, was all the worse for its apparent emphasis of intention.
Draped in a loose garment with a Florentine _berretta_ on his head, he
would have been fit to stand by the side of Leonardo de Vinci; but how
when he presented himself in trousers which were not what English
feeling demanded about the knees?--and when the fire that showed itself
in his glances and the movements of his head, as he looked round him
with curiosity, was turned into comedy by a hat which ruled that
mankind should have well-cropped hair and a staid demeanor, such, for
example, as Mr. Arrowsmith's, whose nullity of face and perfect
tailoring might pass everywhere without ridicule? One feels why it is
often better for greatness to be dead, and to have got rid of the
outward man.

Many present knew Klesmer, or knew of him; but they had only seen him
on candle-light occasions when he appeared simply as a musician, and he
had not yet that supreme, world-wide celebrity which makes an artist
great to the most ordinary people by their knowledge of his great
expensiveness. It was literally a new light for them to see him
in--presented unexpectedly on this July afternoon in an exclusive
society: some were inclined to laugh, others felt a little disgust at
the want