And this epidemic of vulgarity, spreading to our own country, has made the England of 1802, which Wordsworth denounced for “glittering like a brook,” the England where “plain living and high thinking” were no more, appear like an island of pristine simplicity. Even the old families surrender to the new standard and—in the plaint of Dante—“_non heroico more, sed plebeo sequuntur superbiam_.”
What is to be done? What is to be done about it all? We writing men, to whom the highest British manhood is still Wordsworth in that country cottage where visitors must pay for anything beyond bread and cheese, we to whom the greatest American personality is still Walt Whitman in his Camden shanty, must at least preserve our divine gift of laughter, our one poor power of laughing at these vulgarians, whom even the occasional smuggling of an Old Master out of Italy cannot redeem from barbarism.
The purple pomp of kings, blatant though it be in comparison with true grandeur, is at least the expression of a public dignity: it is an official costume like the judge’s wig and gown. But because greatness must accept office at the hands of its otherwise helpless inferiors, and office must be suitably apparelled, a certain confusion has been established between splendour and greatness, as though because greatness means splendour, splendour must mean greatness. Of this confusion those are promptest to take advantage to whom the high road to consideration is closed. Private pomp is a confession of personal pettiness. The little soul must needs inflate itself by a great house-shell, and protract itself by a long retinue of servants. ’Tis almost too pathetic a meekness, this humility of the Magnificent Ones.
Cannot I breathe into you—O Magnificent Ones—a little proper pride? Ye buy the Past, watching one another in jealous competition; will no one buy the Future? Why not buy with your millions an earth renewed and regenerated, a solvent social order? Why not build a true civilisation on this malarious marsh, that shall rise like the spires and domes of Venice from her swamps? Surely that were a dream worthy of Magnificence! Come, let us build together a State-Galley where the oars shall be red and gold from blade to handle, and every man shall take his turn at them, and the fantasies of Art shall adorn the hull of Righteousness, and Justice and Peace shall no longer be ironic images carved for the complacency of the top-deck. So shall there dawn an Ascension Day on which the Doge shall go out with banners and music, not to marry the sea with a ring, but to celebrate the nuptials of Earth with Heaven.