t
skirt, slouch hat, and brown boots, style has gone out and ease come
in; and with ease, it would seem, easy, not to say free-and-easy,
manners. I speak not of the "nineties" when a young degenerate could
lightly say,

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion,

and be praised for it, but rather of the Georgians, of whom a golden
lad, who happily lived long enough to do better, wrote thus of a lady
of his love:

And I shall find some girl, perhaps,
And a better one than you,
With eyes as wise, but kindlier,
And lips as soft, but true.
And I daresay she will do.

If that is not slouch-hat and brown boots, I don't know what to call
it. For that golden lad I think _The Shropshire Lad_ must answer, who
perhaps brought corduroys into the drawing-room. And if that is to be
the way of it, we should do well to go back to Lovelace or Waller, and
make believe with a difference. I shall find myself watching the sunny
side of Bond Street for a revival--because while one does not ask for
passion, or even object to the tart flavours of satiety, I feel that
there is a standard somewhere, and a line to be drawn. Taste draws it.
I trouble myself very little with the morals of the matter, yet must
think manners very nearly half of the conduct of life. And the manners
which are expressed in clothes are those which are instilled in art.
They are symptomatic alike and correlated. There is nothing surprising
about it, or even curious. It would be so, and it is so. If Milton
had not on a prim white collar and a doctor's gown I misread _Paradise
Lost_ and _Lycidas_ too.

POLYOLBION

How precisely does the Englishman love England? I remember saying some
years ago that he was not patriotic in the ordinary sense, because
though he loved the land, he had very little feeling for the political
entity called England--whereas both will be loved by the true patriot.
On recent consideration of the matter I am beginning to ask whether he
does, after all, love the land itself, as the Irishman loves his, the
Scot his, the Switzer his, and the Greek his. I must say that I doubt
it. There is this, I think, to be noted of fervent patriots, that the
object of their devotion will have had a distressful story. That is
the case with the four nations just remarked upon. It has been the
case with France ever since France was the passion of the French.

Every man loves his home, for reasons not necessarily connected wi