Even if a young fellow cannot afford fine clothes, he can be neat, and I always welcome the slightest sign of fastidiousness, because it indicates self-respect.  The awful beings who wear felt hats swung on one side, glaring ties, obtrusive checks, and carry vulgar little sticks, are so abhorrent that I should journey a dozen miles to escape meeting one of them.  The cheap, nasty, gaudy garments are an index to a vast vulgarity of mind and soul; the cheap “swell” is a sham, and, as a sham, he is immoral and repulsive.  But the modest youth need not copy the wild unrestraint of the gentleman known as “’Arry”; he can contrive to make himself attractive without sullying his appearance by a trace of cheap and nasty adornment, and every attempt which he makes to look seemly and pleasing tends subtly to raise his own character.  Once or twice I have said that you cannot really love any one wholly unless you can sometimes laugh at him.  Now I cannot laugh at the invertebrate haunter of flashy bars and theatre-stalls, because he has not the lovable element in him which invites kindly laughter; but I do smile—­not unadmiringly—­at our dandy, and forgive him his little eccentricities because I know that what the Americans term the “hard pan” of his nature is sound.  It is all very well for unhandsome philosophers in duffel to snarl at our butterfly youth.  The dry dull person who devours blue-books and figures may mock at their fribbles; but persons who are tolerant take large and gentle views, and they indulge the dandy, and let him strut for his day unmolested, until the pressing hints given by the years cause him to modify his splendours and sink into unassuming sobriety of demeanour and raiment.

June, 1888.

GENIUS AND RESPECTABILITY.

A very lengthy biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley appeared recently, and the biographer thought it his duty to give the most minute and peculiar details concerning the poet’s private life.  In consequence, the book is a deplorable one in many respects, and no plain-minded person can read it without feeling sorry that our sweet singer should be presented to us in the guise of a weak-minded hypocrite.  One critic wrote a great many pages in which he bemoans the dreary and sordid family-life of the man who wrote the “Ode to the West Wind.”  I can hardly help sympathizing with the critic, for indeed Shelley’s proceedings rather test the patience of ordinary mortals, who do not think that poetic—­or rather artistic—­ability licenses its possessor to behave like a scoundrel.  Shelley wrote the most lovely verse in praise of purity; but he tempted a poor child to marry him, deserted her, insulted her, and finally left her to drown herself when brutal neglect and injury had driven her crazy.  Poor Harriet Westbrook!  She did not behave very discreetly after her precious husband left her; but she was young, and thrown on a hard world without any strength but her own to protect her.  While she was drifting