rds severity and economy, leisure and unlimited means
involve relaxation and demand the adventitious interest of decoration.
The shareholder will be the decorative influence in the State. So far as
there will be a typical shareholder's house, we may hazard that it will
have rich colours, elaborate hangings, stained glass adornments, and
added interests in great abundance. This "leisure class" will certainly
employ the greater proportion of the artists, decorators, fabric makers,
and the like, of the coming time. It will dominate the world of
art--and we may say, with some confidence, that it will influence it in
certain directions. For example, standing apart from the movement of the
world, as they will do to a very large extent, the archaic, opulently
done, will appeal irresistibly to very many of these irresponsible rich
as the very quintessence of art. They will come to art with uncritical,
cultured minds, full of past achievements, ignorant of present
necessities. Art will be something added to life--something stuck on and
richly reminiscent--not a manner pervading all real things. We may be
pretty sure that very few will grasp the fact that an iron bridge or a
railway engine may be artistically done--these will not be "art"
objects, but hostile novelties. And, on the other hand, we can pretty
confidently foretell a spacious future and much amplification for that
turgid, costly, and deliberately anti-contemporary group of styles of
which William Morris and his associates have been the fortunate
pioneers. And the same principles will apply to costume. A
non-functional class of people cannot have a functional costume, the
whole scheme of costume, as it will be worn by the wealthy classes in
the coming years, will necessarily be of that character which is called
fancy dress. Few people will trouble to discover the most convenient
forms and materials, and endeavour to simplify them and reduce them to
beautiful forms, while endless enterprising tradesmen will be alert for
a perpetual succession of striking novelties. The women will ransack the
ages for becoming and alluring anachronisms, the men will appear in the
elaborate uniforms of "games," in modifications of "court" dress, in
picturesque revivals of national costumes, in epidemic fashions of the
most astonishing sort....

Now, these people, so far as they are spenders of money, and so far as
he is a spender of money, will stand to this ideal engineering sort of
per