TITHONUS


"It was resolved," said the morning paper, "to colour the borders of the
panels and other spaces of Portland stone with arabesques and other
patterns, but that no paint should be used, as paint would need renewing
from time to time. The colours, therefore,"--and here is the passage to
be noted--"are all mixed with wax liquefied with petroleum; and the wax
surface sets as hard as marble. . . The wax is left time to form an
imperishable surface of ornament, which would have to be cut out of the
stone with a chisel if it was desired to remove it." Not, apparently,
that a new surface is formed which, by much violence and perseverance,
could, years hence, be chipped off again; but that the "ornament" is
driven in and incorporate, burnt in and absorbed, so that there is
nothing possible to cut away by any industry. In this humorous form of
ornament we are beforehand with Posterity. Posterity is baffled.

Will this victory over our sons' sons be the last resolute tyranny
prepared by one age for the coercion, constraint, and defeat of the
future? To impose that compulsion has been hitherto one of the strongest
of human desires. It is one, doubtless, to be outgrown by the human
race; but how slowly that growth creeps onwards, let this success in the
stencilling of St Paul's teach us, to our confusion. There is evidently
a man--a group of men--happy at this moment because it has been possible,
by great ingenuity, to force our posterity to have their cupola of St
Paul's with the stone mouldings stencilled and "picked out" with niggling