110 MANNERS AND FASHION. 



must pass through some crisis, out of which it will como 

 purified and comparatively simple. 



How this crisis will be brought about, no one can with 

 any certainty say. Whether by the continuance and in 

 crease of individual protests, or whether by the union of 

 many persons for the practice and propagation of some 

 better system, the future alone can decide. The influence 

 of dissentients acting without co-operation, seems, under 

 the present state of things, inadequate. Standing severally 

 alone, and having no well-defined views ; frowned on by 

 conformists, and expostulated with even by those who 

 secretly sympathize with them ; subject to petty persecu 

 tions, and unable to trace any benefit produced by their 

 example ; they are apt, one by one, to give up their attempts 

 as hopeless. The young convention-breaker eventually 

 finds that he pays too heavily for his nonconformity. Hat- 

 inir, for example, everything that bears about it any rem 

 nant of servility, he determines, in the ardour of his inde 

 pendence, that he will uncover to no ono. But what lie 

 means simply as a general protest, lie finds that ladies in 

 terpret into a personal disrespect. Though lie sees that, 

 from the days of chivalry downwards, these marks of su 

 preme consideration paid to the other sex have been but 

 a hypocritical counterpart to the actual subjection in which 

 men have held them a pretended submission to compen 

 sate for a- real domination ; and though lie sees that 

 when the true dignity of women is recognised, the mock 

 dignities given to them will be abolished ; yet he does 

 not like to be thus misunderstood, and so hesitates in his 

 practice. 



In other cases, again, his courage fails him. Such of 

 Ms unconvcntionalities as can be attributed only to eccen 

 tricity, he has no qualms about : for, on the whole, he feels 

 rather complimented than otherwise in being considered a 

 disregarder of public opinion. But when they are liable tc 



