“Is that really what the English did at the time of the Great Skirmish?” asked the Angel. “It is,” replied his dragoman solemnly. “Then they are a very fine people, and I can put up with much about them which seems to me distressing.” “Ah! sir, though, being an Englishman, I am sometimes inclined to disparage the English, I am yet convinced that you could not fly a week’s journey and come across another race with such a peculiar nobility, or such an unconquerable soul, if you will forgive my using a word whose meaning is much disputed. May I tempt you with a clam?” he added more lightly. “We now have them from America--in fair preservation, and very nasty they are, in my opinion.” The Angel took a clam. “My Lord!” he said, after a moment of deglutition. “Quite so!” replied his dragoman. “But kindly glance at the right-hand stage again. There is a _revue_ on now. What do you see?” The Angel made two holes with his forefingers and thumbs and, putting them to his eyes, bent a little forward. “Tut, tut!” he said; “I see some attractive young females with very few clothes on, walking up and down in front of what seem to me, indeed, to be two grown-up men in collars and jackets as of little boys. What precise criticism of life is this conveying?” His dragoman answered in reproachful accents: “Do you not feel, sir, from your own sensations, how marvellously this informs one of the secret passions of mankind? Is there not in it a striking revelation of the natural tendencies of the male population? Remark how the whole audience, including your august self, is leaning forward and looking through their thumb-holes?” The Angel sat back hurriedly. “True,” he said, “I was carried away. But that is not the criticism of life which art demands. If it had been, the audience, myself included, would have been sitting back with their lips curled dry, instead of watering.” “For all that,” replied his dragoman, “it is the best we can give you; anything which induces the detached mood of which you spoke, has been banned from the stage since the days of the Great Skirmish; it is so very bad for business.” “Pity!” said the Angel, imperceptibly edging forward; “the mission of art is to elevate.” “It is plain, sir,” said his dragoman, “that you have lost touch with the world as it is. The mission of art--now truly democratic--is to level--in principle up, in practice down. Do not forget, sir, that the English have ever regarded æstheticism as unmanly, and grace as immoral; when to that basic principle you add the principle of serving the taste of the majority, you have perfect conditions for a sure and gradual decrescendo.” “Does taste, then, no longer exist?” asked the Angel.