APING OUR ANCESTORS.

Press, Volume XXXI, Issue 4264, 29 March 1879, Page 3

APING OUR ANCESTORS.

_« The World."] There is something delightfully innocent, as well as picturesque, in the scheme which is now engaging the attention of a few aesthetic and amiable ladies to revive, for the benefit of nineteenth century England, the feminine costume fashionable in classic Greece. The j design forms a definite and intelligible item in the Hellenic renaissance whioh, in art or literature, is so conspicuous a feature of onr time*. Probably in a little while we may i_- j prove even upon this experiment, and seek ideas for the attire of our wives and daughters in the primitive apparel of Paradise. It may even be said that a tendency in this direction has long been visible; and when Mrs Pfoiffer tells us that she i* developing a reform in dress based upon the chiton as worn by the ladies of ancient Athens, she may be thought to have executed a somewhat retrograde movement. Early last year, it seems, this excellent lady gave a ball, at which Attic costume was compulsory : and ths project, then fantastically ventilated, is about to yield some practical results. A weekly contemporary is shortly to publish a full explanation of the new toilette; and Mr* Pfeiffer writes as if she really contemplated that its simplicity and economy would speedily cause it to come permanently into vogue, end to supersede t_« costly and elaborate clothing of to-day. It ia a pity to ; seem to discourage so fond a delusion j but it is necessary to ask whether Mrs Pfeiffer and j her friends think that dilettante enthusiasm alone will same© to float such a project. Our modern social history ia not without the record of analogous attempt*. A quarter of a century ago, and there were those who considered Bloomerism practicable. The chiton agitation is the natural successor of the Bloomer movement, and it will probably do neither more nor less than the Bloomer movement did. Unless a certain measure of fashionable patronage is forthcoming, all social reforms languish. If some recognised leader of society were to appear in the Park during the forthcoming season clad in a dress which was the facsimile of that worn by Aspaaia, chitons would immediately be the rage. It is true the fashion would be ephemeral, but while it lasted it would extensively prevail. Mrs Pfeiffer seems to have misapprehended the dominant spirit of tbe age. Doubtless she knows well enough that precisely the same enterprise which engages her fancy now was actively adopted in revolutionary France. Then, indeed, it was something more than a mere freak of fancy or eocentrieity of taste. It was the outward expression of the conviction that possessed the mind* of the popular leaders that society needed reorganisation; that to be reorganised it was' imperative to begin anew, and that the best point of departure to adopt was that of the classical period. At the time of tbe Frenoh Revolution, the feminine costnme worn was a protest against the contemporary developments of society, and had really a profound moral and political significance. Who would think of accusing Mrs Pfeiffer of harboring any such subversive designs ? Who would hint that, by the compliment she pay* the robe in favour with the ladies of Republican Athens, ■he wished to insinuate her approval of Republican institutions ? Nothing could be more harmless, innocent, or pleasing than the neo-classicalism of the drawing room; and nothing, in the contrast which it suggests with the spirit of the days when classicalism was full of meaning, could better illustrate the temper of our own times. All the ideas, it may be said, that have ever animated men or women at any period of history may be seen in a subdued state of operation among us just now. Politics, art, religion, literature, society, dress, all the varied element* of each of these which an analysis of their condition at successive periods suggests, may be witnessed in the present year of grace, held in a sort of rose-water solution. Every known theory of statesmanship, from the doctrine of the right divine of kings down to the most uncompromiting tenets of Republicanism, is reflected among our latter-day political controversialists. In theology, in painting, and in letters there may be discovered the old issues which have divided schools and given the signal for persecution, disguised by new names, and discussed in every strain of temper and language. In the same way society at large i* an amalgam of every kind of ethical standard and practice, from that of the Athens of Pericles down to the England of the Regency. What holds true of these graver matter* ia true pre-eminently of dress. The costume of English ladies is a sort of eclectic reproduction of their toilette* at all previous epoch*. Here we have ' the coiffure of the early Engliah period, here a fragment of that popular in Republican Rome. A* it is with the headgear, bo it is with the dresses. The conception of some ia severely classical, the pattern of others ia genuinely British. Now the prototype must be sought in the paintings of Lely, and now in the Court of Louis XIV.

This is what may be called the cosmopolitanism of the centuries, and in England it is certainly witnessed for the first time. It would be curious to know whether there is any chance of the old spirit, at which existing modes faintly hint, breaking out into active life; whether the languid pulses of the fine ladies and gentlemen of to-day may be roused to a point at which taste will give way to conviction, and active enthusiasm will take the place of a speculative dilettanteism. For there ia no doubt that, sometimes partially concealed and sometimes seriously qualified, there exist* in England each of those forces which, «__ t■*!cly _-.ertir_ them-'

_ *- 2 '? JL __,£ - <**£' £&* ->>-& *_-? **"4 _, , ? tsntf at' different eras rf —ft -*b_t,° havesufficed to accomplish wholesale ..jwvolutions. A thousand fires on . all »c« are kindled, but their flames are kept under decorous control, and we do not at present feel their heat. J—t as the race of great dames, who were leaders of fashion, ha* been followed by a miscellany of ladies who ask nothing.more?than that their drawingrooms should be fairly filled on Sunday afternoons, or whenever else they may choose to hold 'their reception-days, who confuse; notoriety with fame, and intrigue with power; so does the spirit which would have once placed itself at the head of a movement that might have inaugurated a new era in politics, literature, or art, now find its ambition gratified in a nine days' wonder and an insignificant cabsL If we cannot follow heroic examples nowadays, we can at least burlesque; them. If we cannot create, we can caricature; and never was there a time when the spirit of caricature was so comprehensive, or when the Shadows of great originals cast such pale and frivolous reflections.