art which is pursued
directly under the eye of the public is always far more amenable
to fashion than is an art with which the public is but vicariously
concerned. Those standards to which artists have gradually accustomed it
the public will not see lightly set at naught. Very rigid, for example,
are the traditions of the theatre. If my brother were to declaim his
lines at the Haymarket in the florotund manner of Macready, what a row
there would be in the gallery! It is only by the impalpable process of
evolution that change comes to the theatre. Likewise in the sphere
of costume no swift rebellion can succeed, as was exemplified by the
Princes effort to revive knee-breeches. Had his Royal Highness elected,
in his wisdom, to wear tight trousers strapped under his boots,
'smalls' might, in their turn, have reappeared, and at length--who
knows?--knee-breeches. It is only by the trifling addition or
elimination, modification or extension, made by this or that dandy and
copied by the rest, that the mode proceeds. The young dandy will find
certain laws to which he must conform. If he outrage them he will be
hooted by the urchins of the street, not unjustly, for he will have
outraged the slowly constructed laws of artists who have preceded him.
Let him reflect that fashion is no bondage imposed by alien hands, but
the last wisdom of his own kind, and that true dandyism is the result of
an artistic temperament working upon a fine body within the wide limits
of fashion. Through this habit of conformity, which it inculcates, the
army has given us nearly all our finest dandies, from Alcibiades to
Colonel Br*b*z*n de nos jours. Even Mr. Brummell, though he defied his
Colonel, must have owed some of his success to the military spirit. Any
parent intending his son to be a dandy will do well to send him first
into the army, there to learn humility, as did his archetype, Apollo, in
the house of Admetus. A sojourn at one of the Public Schools is also to
be commended. The University it were well to avoid.

Of course, the dandy, like any other artist, has moments when his own
period, palling, inclines him to antique modes. A fellow-student once
told me that, after a long vacation spent in touch with modern life, he
had hammered at the little gate of Merton and felt of a sudden his hat
assume plumes and an expansive curl, the impress of a ruff about his
neck, the dangle of a cloak and a sword. I, too, have my Eliza-bethan,
my Caroline mo