 was simple, though so excellent of its kind; and it was
made clear to us that this was no feast, only an ordinary meal. The glass,
crockery, and plate were very beautiful to my eyes, used to the study of
mediæval art; but a nineteenth-century club-haunter would, I daresay, have found
them rough and lacking in finish; the crockery being lead-glazed pot-ware,
though beautifully ornamented; the only porcelain being here and there a piece
of old oriental ware. The glass, again, though elegant and quaint, and very
varied in form, was somewhat bubbled and hornier in texture than the commercial
articles of the nineteenth century. The furniture and general fittings of the
hall were much of a piece with the table-gear, beautiful in form and highly
ornamented, but without the commercial finish of the joiners and cabinet-makers
of our time. Withal, there was a total absence of what the nineteenth century
calls comfort - that is, stuffy inconvenience; so that, even apart from the
delightful excitement of the day, I had never eaten my dinner so pleasantly
before.
    When we had done eating, and were sitting a little while, with a bottle of
very good Bordeaux wine before us, Clara came back to the question of the
subject-matter of the pictures, as though it had troubled her.
    She looked up at them, and said: »How is it that though we are so interested
with our life for the most part, yet when people take to writing poems or
painting pictures they seldom deal with our modern life, or if they do, take
good care to make their poems or pictures unlike that life? Are we not good
enough to paint ourselves? How is it that we find the dreadful times of the past
so interesting to us - in pictures and poetry?«
    Old Hammond smiled. »It always was so, and I suppose always will be,« said
he, »however it may be explained. It is true that in the nineteenth century,
when there was so little art and so much talk about it, there was a theory that
art and imaginative literature ought to deal with contemporary life; but they
never did so; for, if there was any pretence of it, the author always took care
(as Clara hinted just now) to disguise, or exaggerate, or idealise, and in some
way or another make it strange; so that, for all the verisimilitude there was,
he might just as well have dealt with the times of the Pharaohs.«
    »Well,
