itions confine themselves
exclusively to the subject of art. When they gossip it is about the
pictures, the painters, and the sculpture. True, of course, this is
their job, and then, these persons go on press days and so only see,
outside of that which is intentionally exhibited, other critics.

Now, there is nothing in all the world quite like art exhibitions.
Beyond any other sort of show they possess a spirit which (to use a pet
and an excellent critical expression of one of our foremost art critics)
is "grand, gloomy, and peculiar." You feel this charged atmosphere at
once at an art exhibition. You walk softly, you speak low, and you
endeavour to become as intelligent as possible. Art exhibitions, in
short, present various features indigenous to themselves which, so far as
I am aware, have not before been adequately commented upon. The
principal observations which they solicit are as follows:

First, art exhibitions are attended by two classes of people: very
fine-looking people, and funny-looking people. There is a very striking
kind of a young man goes to art exhibitions that I myself never
accomplish seeing anywhere else, though sometimes I see pictures of him.
This young man is superbly patrician. You may have remarked this
singular phenomenon. All the young men in all the advertisements in the
magazine _Vanity Fair_ are the same young man, whether riding in a
splendid motor car, elegantly attending the play, or doing a little
shooting of birds. You know him, for one thing, by his exquisite
moustache. This fastidiously groomed, exclusively tailored young man, to
be seen in the pages spoken of and at art exhibitions, is certainly not
of Art, nor is he of business. He takes no account whatever, apparently,
of time, as men of business do; and manifestly one could not work in such
a moustache and such clothes without mussing them. He is, in fine, of
Vanity Fair. Oscar Wilde was, as usual, wrong when he said that all
beautiful things were quite useless. This immaculate young man's
practical function at art exhibitions, as perhaps elsewhere, is that of
escort.

He is escort to groups of very handsome and very expensive-looking young
ladies; and these fragrant, rustling groups, with the waxen, patrician
young man in tow, stroll slowly about, catalogues unnoticed in hand,
without pause skirting the picture-hung walls. They are very still, and
they gaze upon the art that they pass with the look of a doe