It is principally for the sake of the leg that a change in the dress of
man is so much to be desired. The leg, completing as it does the form of
man, should make a great part of that human scenery which is at least as
important as the scenery of geological structure, or the scenery of
architecture, or the scenery of vegetation, but which the lovers of
mountains and the preservers of ancient buildings have consented to
ignore. The leg is the best part of the figure, inasmuch as it has the
finest lines and therewith those slender, diminishing forms which, coming
at the base of the human structure, show it to be a thing of life by its
unstable equilibrium. A lifeless structure is in stable equilibrium; the
body, springing, poised, upon its fine ankles and narrow feet, never
stands without implying and expressing life. It is the leg that first
suggested the phantasy of flight. We imagine wings to the figure that is
erect upon the vital and tense legs of man; and the herald Mercury,
because of his station, looks new-lighted. All this is true of the best
leg, and the best leg is the man's. That of the young child, in which
the Italian schools of painting delighted, has neither movement nor
supporting strength. In the case of the woman's figure it is the foot,
with its extreme proportional smallness, that gives the precious
instability, the spring and balance that are so organic. But man should
no longer disguise the long lines, the strong forms, in those lengths of
piping or tubing that are of all garments the most stupid. Inexpressive
of what they clothe as no kind of concealing drapery could ever be, they
are neither implicitly nor explicitly good raiment. It is hardly
possible to err by violence in denouncing them. Why, when an indifferent
writer is praised for "clothing his thought," it is to modern raiment
that one's agile fancy flies--fain of completing the metaphor!
The human scenery: yes, costume could make a crowd something other than
the mass of sooty colour--dark without depth--and the multiplication of
undignified forms that fill the streets, and demonstrate, and meet, and
listen to the speaker. For the undistinguished are very important by
their numbers. These are they who make the look of the artificial world.
They are man generalized; as units they inevitably lack something of
interest; all the more they have cumulative effect. It would be well if
we could persuade the average man to take on a certain human dignity in
the clothing of his average body. Unfortunately he will be slow to be
changed. And as to the poorer part of the mass, so wretched are their
national customs--and the wretchedest of them all the wearing of other
men's old raiment--that they must wait for reform until the reformed
dress, which the reformers have not yet put on, shall have turned second-
hand.