have to be of the nature, not of the
painting or sculpture of old days, of the architecture which made each
single cathedral an individual organism, but of the nature rather of
process engraving, of lithography (are not our posters, Cheret's, for
instance, the only thing which our masses see, as their distant forbears
saw frescoes in churches and _campo santos_?), of book printing, in
short; and will not literature and music become more and more the
typical kinds of art, the creation of one brain projected over millions
of acres and through mere wires and cylinders? And think also of the
difference in locomotion. Say what you will, people who rode in coaches
were bound to be more like people who rode in litters, for all the
difference between Rome under Caesar and England under George III., than
like people who go by train. That is all on the surface, serious persons
will answer: the pace at which people's body and goods are conveyed
along may alter without their thoughts or feelings being changed the
least bit. Perhaps. But are we so absolutely sure of that?

For instance, are we sure we should have been able to get on for half an
hour together with even our own great-grandparents of little more than a
hundred years ago? There they hang, our great-grandfathers and mothers
and uncles and aunts (or some one's else, more likely), painted by
Reynolds or Raeburn, delightful persons whose ghosts we would give
anything to meet. Their ghosts; aye, there's the rub. For their ghosts
would have altered with posthumous experience, would have had glimpses
of the world we live in, and somewhat conformed to its habits; but could
we really get on with the living men and women of former days? It is
true that we understand and enjoy the books which they read, or rather
a small number of pages out of a smaller number of books. But did they
read them in the same way? I should not wonder if the different sense in
which we took their favourite authors, or rather the different sense in
which we discovered that they were in the habit of taking them, created
considerable coolness, not to say irritation, between the ghosts of the
readers of "The Vicar of Wakefield," or "Werther," or the "Nouvelle
Heloise" and ourselves. Besides, they would be monstrously shocked at
our ways. They would think us marvellously ill-bred. While we! I dare
scarcely harbour the thought, much less express it. Anyway, it is
certain that they occasionally allowed Sherida