Seriously, it is a good thing that we have learned the value of leisure, and, for my own part, I regard the rushing yearly exodus from London, Liverpool, Birmingham, with serene satisfaction.  It is a pity that so many English folk persist in leaving their own most lovely land when our scenery and climate are at their best.  In too many cases they wear themselves with miserable and harassing journeys when they might be placidly rejoicing in the sweet midsummer days at home.  Snarling aesthetes may say what they choose, but England is not half explored yet, and anybody who takes the trouble may find out languorous nooks where life seems always dreamy, and where the tired nerves and brain are unhurt by a single disturbing influence.  There are tiny villages dotted here and there on the coast where the flaunting tourist never intrudes, and where the British cad cares not to show his unlovable face.  Still, if people like the stuffy Continental hotel and the unspeakable devices of the wily Swiss, they must take their choice.  I prefer beloved England; but I wish all joy to those who go far afield.

June, 1886.

DANDIES.

Perhaps there is no individual of all our race who is quite insensible to the pleasures of what children call “dressing-up.”  Even the cynic, the man who defiantly wears old and queer clothes, is merely suffering from a perversion of that animal instinct which causes the peacock to swagger in the sun and flaunt the splendour of his train, the instinct that makes the tiger-moth show the magnificence of his damask wing, and also makes the lion erect the horrors of his cloudy mane and paw proudly before his tawny mate.  We are all alike in essentials, and Diogenes with his dirty clouts was only a perverted brother of Prince Florizel with his peach-coloured coat and snowy ruffles.  I intend to handle the subject of dandies and their nature from a deeply philosophic starting-point, for, like Carlyle, I recognize the vast significance of the questions involved in the philosophy of clothes.  Let no flippant individual venture on a jeer, for I am in dead earnest.  A mocking critic may point to the Bond Street lounger and ask, “What are the net use and purport of that being’s existence?  Look at his suffering frame!  His linen stock almost decapitates him, his boots appear to hail from the chambers of the Inquisition, every garment tends to confine his muscles and dwarf his bodily powers; yet he chooses to smile in his torments and pretends to luxuriate in life.  Again, what are the net use and purport of his existence?” I can only deprecate our critic’s wrath by going gravely to first principles.  O savage and critical one, that suffering youth of Bond Street is but exhibiting in flaunting action a law that has influenced the breed of men since our forefathers dwelt in caves or trees!  Observe the conduct of the innocent and primitive beings who dwell in sunny archipelagos far away to the South; they suffer in the cause of