pity it was that the art of dressing--its relation to life--was not
better understood. What beauty-hating devil had prompted the workers to
discard their characteristic costumes that had been both beautiful and
serviceable for these hateful slop-shop clothes that made them look like
walking scarecrows. Why had the coming of Democracy coincided seemingly
with the spread of ugliness: dull towns, mean streets, paper-strewn
parks, corrugated iron roofs, Christian chapels that would be an insult
to a heathen idol; hideous factories (Why need they be hideous!); chimney-
pot hats, baggy trousers, vulgar advertisements, stupid fashions for
women that spoilt every line of their figure: dinginess, drabness,
monotony everywhere. It was ugliness that was strangling the soul of the
people; stealing from them all dignity, all self-respect, all honour for
one another; robbing them of hope, of reverence, of joy in life.

Beauty. That was the key to the riddle. All Nature: its golden sunsets
and its silvery dawns; the glory of piled-up clouds, the mystery of
moonlit glades; its rivers winding through the meadows; the calling of
its restless seas; the tender witchery of Spring; the blazonry of autumn
woods; its purple moors and the wonder of its silent mountains; its
cobwebs glittering with a thousand jewels; the pageantry of starry
nights. Form, colour, music! The feathered choristers of bush and brake
raising their matin and their evensong, the whispering of the leaves, the
singing of the waters, the voices of the winds. Beauty and grace in
every living thing, but man. The leaping of the hares, the grouping of
cattle, the flight of swallows, the dainty loveliness of insects' wings,
the glossy skin of horses rising and falling to the play of mighty
muscles. Was it not seeking to make plain to us that God's language was
beauty. Man must learn beauty that he may understand God.

She saw the London of the future. Not the vision popular just then: a