walk down the Strand with hair streaming down his back is looked
at as a curiosity and a crank, and we all join in that delightful addition
to the Litany which Moody invented: "From long-haired men and short-haired
women, Good Lord, deliver us." But who shall say that our children will not
reverse the prayer?

Even in my own brief span I have seen men's faces pass through every
hirsute change under the Protean influence of "good taste." I remember
when, to be really a student of good form, a man wore long side-whiskers of
the Dundreary type. Then "mutton chops" and a moustache were the thing;
then only a moustache; now we have got back to the Romans and the clean
shave. But where is the absolute "good taste" in all this? Or take
trousers. If you had lived a hundred years ago and had dared to go about in
trousers instead of knee-breeches you would have been written down a vulgar
fellow. Even the great Duke of Wellington in 1814 was refused admittance to
Almack's because he presented himself in trousers. Now we relegate
knee-breeches to fancy dress balls and Court functions.

But sometimes the canons of good taste are astonishingly irrational. Who
was it who set Christendom wearing black, sad, hopeless black as the symbol
of mourning? The Roman ladies, who had never heard of the doctrine of the
Resurrection, clothed themselves in white for mourning. It is left for the
Christian world, which looks beyond the grave, to wear the habiliments of
despair. If I go to a funeral I am as conventional as anybody else, for I
have not the courage of a distinguished statesman whom I saw at his
brother's funeral wearing a blue overcoat, check trousers, and a grey
waistcoat, and carrying a green umbrella. I can give you his name if you
doubt me--a great name, too. And he would not deny the impeachment. I am
not prepared to endorse his idea of good taste; but I hate black. "Why
should I wear black for the guests of God?" asked Ruskin. And there is no
answer. Perhaps among the consequences of the war there will be a
repudiation of this false code of taste.

ON A HAWTHORN HEDGE

As I turned into the lane that climbs the hillside to the cottage under the
high beech woods I was conscious of a sort of mild expectation that I could
not explain. It was late evening. Venus, who looks down with such calm
splendour upon this troubled earth in these summer nights, had disappeared,
but the moon had not yet risen. The air was heavy with tho