FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
The jute fever has long since subsided, and the 
moneyed employer has satisfied all his individual physical 
wants, and is now trying to gratify his artistic cravings. 
He has no taste ; he is a business man, and taste has not 
been in his line. This he admits without the least shame, 
so he goes to the picture dealer and the artistic upholsterer 
who keep art in stock. These have neither taste nor 
conscience^ still they decorate the manufacturer's house. 
They dangle the clever things in gold frames from exhibi- 
tions over the walls, and fill the rooms with upholstery ; 
with a result that you, the reader, if you are a man of 
business, could not but fail to realise. 
The working classes have, perhaps, as little cultivation 
as their employers ; but want of means prevents them 
showing an unlimited amount of bad taste. Of necessity 
they are simple, and simplicity is the sine qua non of 
great art. They show some vitality in music, however. 
It is only the poorest workman who does not possess a 
harmonium on which his wife or daughter can play him 
the air of some soothing popular melody, or one of those 
martial hymns that have made such a noise in the world 
since the days of Sankey. Concertinas and melodeons 
are as common as blackberries, and the twilight hours are 
filled with their melody, poured forth by the enamoured 
youth at the stair-foot of his senorita's seven-floor tene- 
ment. 
Lately the Milo and other beautiful Greek and Egyptian 
works have been enshrined in a fine Gothic building in 
the centre of the town. A few people go to look at them, 
and enjoy them, and wonder why there is no Apollo, 
B 
