ed, curiously enough, among no set of men does the desire to look as
commonplace as the rest of the world seem so strong as among men of
letters. Perhaps it is out of consideration for the rest of the world;
but, whatever the reason, immobility of expression and general
mediocrity of style are more characteristic of them at present than even
the military.

It is surely a strange paradox that we should pride ourselves on
schooling to foolish insensibility, on eliminating from them every mark
of individual character, the faces that were intended subtly and
eloquently to image our moods--to look glad when we are glad, sorry when
we are sorry, angry in anger, and lovely in love.

The impassivity of the modern young man is indeed a weird and wonderful
thing. Is it a mark to hide from us the appalling sins he none the less
openly affects? Is it meant to conceal that once in his life he paid a
wild visit to 'The Empire'--by kind indulgence of the County Council?
that he once chucked a barmaid under the chin, that he once nearly got
drunk, that he once spoke to a young lady he did not know--and then ran
away?

One sighs for the young men of the days of Gautier and Hugo, the young
men with red waistcoats who made asses of themselves at first nights and
on the barricades, young men with romance in their hearts and passion in
their blood, fearlessly sentimental and picturesquely everything.

The lover then was not ashamed that you should catch radiant glimpses of
his love in his eyes--nay! if you smiled kindly on him, he would take
you by the arm and insist on your breaking a bottle with him in honour
of his mistress. Joy and sorrow then wore their appropriate colours,
according, so to say, to the natural sumptuary laws of the emotions--one
of which is that the right place for the heart is the sleeve.

It is the duty of those who are great, or to whom great destinies of joy
or sorrow have been dealt, to wear their distinctions for the world to
see. It is good for the world, which in its crude way indicates the
rudiments of this dramatic art of life, when it decrees that the bride
shall walk radiant in orange blossom, and the mourner sadden our streets
with black--symbols ever passing before us of the moving vicissitudes of
life.

The mourner cannot always be sad, or the bride merry; the bride indeed
sometimes weeps at the altar, and the mourner laughs a savage cynical
laugh at the grave; but for those moments in which they a