We are prepared, then, to find that the æsthetic or artistic faculty of the present day is deplorably narrow in its scope, and is so ignorant of the true relationship of humanity and art that it actually prides itself on omitting from its ken all humane considerations, while it diligently searches for the beautiful and the picturesque, as if beauty were a thing detached from the realities of every-day life! The bare idea that there is an æsthetic side to the diet question, beyond the mere delicacies of cookery and embellishments of the dining-table, would be scouted as ridiculous by ninety-nine out of a hundred of our artists or literary men; for the very force of habit which has made them so quick to resent the least technical flaw in their special departments of work, has left them blindly indifferent to the hideous and revolting aspects of flesh-eating. To these æsthetes, so-called, the sight of an ugly house, for example, is a sore trouble and grievance, but the slaughter-house, with all its gruesome doings, is a matter of supreme unconcern—nay, rather a thing to be indirectly patronised and defended. I have known a case where an æsthetic lady, of great personal culture, and the centre of a polished circle, stained the floor of her charming suburban villa with bullock's blood brought from the shambles in a bucket. Yet the æsthete does not usually vindicate his carnivorous diet and its appurtenances with the old unhesitating heartiness of the barbarian; he is somewhat ashamed of himself—unconsciously, perhaps—in these latter days, even as the cannibal is ashamed when the discussion turns upon "long pig." Like all the apologists of flesh-eating, in their respective spheres, he is shifty and evasive in his defences, and is not too proud, in his moment of extremity, to have recourse to the "consistency trick," and to try to trip up his vegetarian persecutor with the retort of "You're another." From which signs of grace it may be surmised that the æsthete, in spite of his brave exterior, is not quite at ease in his dietetic philosophy, and that the products of butchery are, in a very real sense, the "skeleton in the cupboard" (the larder cupboard) of literature and art. ÆSTHETE: Pray, why do you address yourself to _me_ in that significant manner? VEGETARIAN: Because I understand that you cultivate the artistic sense. You love to have beautiful things about you, do you not? So you must needs wish to be a vegetarian. ÆSTHETE: I love beautiful things, certainly. Art is my vocation. But what has vegetarianism to do with it? VEGETARIAN: Have the arrangements of the dinner-table nothing to do with it—the cloth, the silver, the glasses, the dessert, the flowers? ÆSTHETE: A great deal, obviously. There is much art in dining well. VEGETARIAN: Yet the meats that are served at the table have nothing to do with it! Is not that rather contradictory?