Society was less than at any time in history in which circumstances have
been favourable to the artist.

The great wave of trade that carried the shop-keeper into the West-end
drawing-room strewed also the curtains and carpets with that outrageous
weed of _trade_ design which gave to the mid-Victorian world its
complexion of singular hideousness.

The æsthetic movement indicated the restlessness of some of the brighter
spirits with this condition, but many of its remedies were worse than
the disease. The _nouveau_ artist-craftsman stood less chance than
anybody of getting back to the secret of noble things, having forsaken
the path of pure utility which, wherever it may go for a time, always
leads back again to beauty. The disappearance of beauty for a time need
not have been a cause of despair. Beauty will always come back if it is
left alone. People had been swept off their feet with delight at what
machinery could do, and they expected beauty to come out of it as a
product at the same pace as everything else. It was not a mistake to
expect it from any source, but from this particular source it could only
come with time. There is evidence that it is on the way. And yet though
the results of crude mechanical industrialism spoilt the outward
appearance of the whole of the Victorian age, the earlier part at least
of that time was one of marked personal refinement. We have but to look
at portraits by George Richmond and others to receive a great impression
of distinction. And this fact enables us to throw into clearer light the
exact nature of du Maurier's work. If we seek for evidence in the old
volumes of _Punch_ for the distinction of the early Victorians we shall
not find it. We shall merely conceive instead a dislike for the type of
gentleman of the time. Leech and his contemporaries did nothing more for
their age than to make it look ridiculous for ever. But du Maurier gives