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 Prince's 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