Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/695

1885.] subtle perception of what is and is not practicable in the way of ornament, especially in the lower classes, which are superior to ours in this particular in almost every respect. But that air of perfect personal purity, the absence of anything that is soiled, or crumpled, or less than complete, is nowhere so universal. Look at these young men half-a-dozen abreast (which perhaps is less than perfect politeness demands in a thoroughfare running over with women), there is not a speck, a crease, or even a suspicion of a crease or speck, in all their raiment of price. They are clean to distraction, and fresh as the May, yet as easy as if they were in the oldest clothes, and as little self-denying or disposed to do without their favourite indulgences for the sake of appearances as any costermonger. The ladies are scarcely so wonderful, for they have less temptation and less likelihood of rubbing off the down of perfect bloom; but the men, who are no better than other men, or, as the gracious mother in her seat under that tree, who has just been shedding upon them the sunshine of a maternal smile, will tell you, with a shake of her head, perhaps much worse – how do they keep themselves up to that mark of physical perfection? It is not the fashion to conceal any peccadilloes, or to give themselves out as better than they are. They are like their horses, who keep much letter hours, and smoke no cigarettes: is it the grooming in both cases, – the perfection of the valet rather than the master? The question is difficult to answer: but it is certain that the watery eye and shaking hand, which in a different class betray so quickly the infraction of natural laws, show not in this, or only after years have sprained the strength and exhausted the reservoirs of youthful vigour. It is unpleasant to speak of men and women in the same terms which we employ in discussing the less privileged but often much more respectable animals which add in their proportion to the beauty of this scene. But these are in reality the most fit terms to use. Heart and soul are harder things to judge of, and do not show in those gay interchanges of the surface talk of society; but in the aspect of the young men and women who crowd the spectator out, and sweep him away, there is a perfection of everything physical, which raises the same kind of admiration with which we look at the horses. Nothing more splendid in the production and exhibition of the human animal has ever been. To see how perfect it can be, how easily it can carry its trappings, and to what a high pitch of physical discipline it can be brought, there is nothing like Rotten Row in May.

The old are not so happy. It is indeed in the presence of all this physical perfection that it becomes least agreeable to grow old; and the contempt of the light literature and lighter talk, for everything past its prime, finds justification. What terrible old faces look out upon us from lace and feathers under those canopies of spring! – faces only to be paralleled in the lowest slump, with eyes red with spent passions, with the fever of a forced renunciation, with habits still all inappropriate to the age of peace. But on the other hand, here and there, what a lovely old lady, more sought and courted, more gay, than her grandchildren, – sweet with surroundings of old friendship and the tender worship of the new – a fragile figure, that is still "up to everything," and bright old eyes that still can smile when all the young ones are dim with sleep and weary