Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 4.pdf/123

 of art standing apart from the movement of the world as they will do to a very large extent. They will come to art with uncritical, cultured minds, full of past achievements, ignorant of present necessities. Art will be something added to life—something stuck on and richly reminiscent—not a manner pervading all real things. We may be pretty sure that very few will grasp the fact that an iron bridge or a railway engine may be artistically done—these will not be "art" objects, but hostile novelties. And, on the other hand, we can confidently foretell a spacious future and much amplification for that turgid, costly, and deliberately anti-contemporary group of styles of which William Morris and his associates have been the fortunate pioneers. And the same principles will apply to costume. A non-functional class of people cannot have a functional costume; the whole scheme of costume, as it will be worn by the wealthy classes in the coming years, will necessarily be of that kind which is called fancy dress. Few people will trouble to discover the most convenient shapes and materials and endeavour to simplify them and reduce them to beautiful forms, while endless enterprising tradesmen will be alert for a perpetual succession of striking novelties. The women will ransack the ages for becoming and alluring anachronisms, the men will appear in the elaborate uniforms of "games," in modifications of "court" dress, in picturesque revivals of national costumes, in epidemic fashions of the most astonishing sort. . ..

Now these people, so far as they are spenders of money, and so far as he is a spender of money, will