ames
you will--yet, from an aesthetic point of view, those ancient days of
the Colour Revolt were the glorious childhood of Art in Flatland--a
childhood, alas, that never ripened into manhood, nor even reached the
blossom of youth. To live was then in itself a delight, because living
implied seeing. Even at a small party, the company was a pleasure to
behold; the richly varied hues of the assembly in a church or theatre
are said to have more than once proved too distracting for our greatest
teachers and actors; but most ravishing of all is said to have been the
unspeakable magnificence of a military review.

The sight of a line of battle of twenty thousand Isosceles suddenly
facing about, and exchanging the sombre black of their bases for the
orange and purple of the two sides including their acute angle; the
militia of the Equilateral Triangles tricoloured in red, white, and
blue; the mauve, ultra-marine, gamboge, and burnt umber of the Square
artillerymen rapidly rotating near their vermilion guns; the dashing
and flashing of the five-coloured and six-coloured Pentagons and
Hexagons careering across the field in their offices of surgeons,
geometricians and aides-de-camp--all these may well have been
sufficient to render credible the famous story how an illustrious
Circle, overcome by the artistic beauty of the forces under his
command, threw aside his marshal's baton and his royal crown,
exclaiming that he henceforth exchanged them for the artist's pencil.
How great and glorious the sensuous development of these days must have
been is in part indicated by the very language and vocabulary of the
period. The commonest utterances of the commonest citizens in the time
of the Colour Revolt seem to have been suffused with a richer tinge of
word or thought; and to that era we are even now indebted for our
finest poetry and for whatever rhythm still remains in the more
scientific utterance of these modern days.

Section 9. Of the Universal Colour Bill

But meanwhile the intellectual Arts were fast decaying.

The Art of Sight Recognition, being no longer needed, was no longer
practised; and the studies of Geometry, Statics, Kinetics, and other
kindred subjects, came soon to be considered superfluous, and fell into
disrespect and neglect even at our University. The inferior Art of
Feeling speedily experienced the same fate at our Elementary Schools.
Then the Isosceles classes, asserting that the Specimens wer