Fashion is, for the most part, nothing but the ostentation of riches.
This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks -- to have a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines, no wires, no controls. -- Michael Swanwick, "Vacuum Flowers"
Madame Magloire had, in fact, only placed the three sets of forks and spoons which were absolutely necessary. Now, it was the usage of the house, when the Bishop had any one to supper, to lay out the whole six sets of silver on the table-cloth--an innocent ostentation. This graceful semblance of luxury was a kind of child's play, which was full of charm in that gentle and severe household, which raised poverty into dignity.
And can it be a dream, that in the end man will find his joy only in deeds of light and mercy, and not in cruel pleasures as now, in gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting and envious rivalry of one with the other? I firmly believe that it is not and that the time is at hand. People laugh and ask: "When will that time come and does it look like coming?" I believe that with Christ's help we shall accomplish this great thing. And how many ideas there have been on earth in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared! Yet when their destined hour had come, they came forth and spread over the whole earth. So it will be with us, and our people will shine forth in the world, and all men will say: "The stone which the builders rejected has become the corner-stone of the building."
Alas, put no faith in such a bond of union. Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous fancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual envy, for luxury and ostentation. To have dinners, visits, carriages, rank and slaves to wait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, honor and human feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing among those who are not rich, while the poor drown their unsatisfied need and their envy in drunkenness. But soon they will drink blood instead of wine, they are being led on to it. I ask you is such a man free? I knew one "champion of freedom" who told me himself that, when he was deprived of tobacco in prison, he was so wretched at the privation that he almost went and betrayed his cause for the sake of getting tobacco again! And such a man says, "I am fighting for the cause of humanity."
"I know you do; and it is _that_ which makes the wonder. With _your_ good sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and nonsense of others! Affectation of candour is common enough--one meets with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design--to take the good of everybody's character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad--belongs to you alone. And so you like this man's sisters, too, do you? Their manners are not equal to his."
The gossip who did this thing was a gorgon named Madame Victurnien, the guardian and door-keeper of every one's virtue. Madame Victurnien was fifty-six, and re-enforced the mask of ugliness with the mask of age. A quavering voice, a whimsical mind. This old dame had once been young--astonishing fact! In her youth, in '93, she had married a monk who had fled from his cloister in a red cap, and passed from the Bernardines to the Jacobins. She was dry, rough, peevish, sharp, captious, almost venomous; all this in memory of her monk, whose widow she was, and who had ruled over her masterfully and bent her to his will. She was a nettle in which the rustle of the cassock was visible. At the Restoration she had turned bigot, and that with so much energy that the priests had forgiven her her monk. She had a small property, which she bequeathed with much ostentation to a religious community. She was in high favor at the episcopal palace of Arras. So this Madame Victurnien went to Montfermeil, and returned with the remark, "I have seen the child."
He did in fact find his father still at table. Though there was a dining- room in the house, the table was laid as usual in the drawing-room, which was the largest room, and furnished with old-fashioned ostentation. The furniture was white and very old, upholstered in old, red, silky material. In the spaces between the windows there were mirrors in elaborate white and gilt frames, of old-fashioned carving. On the walls, covered with white paper, which was torn in many places, there hung two large portraits--one of some prince who had been governor of the district thirty years before, and the other of some bishop, also long since dead. In the corner opposite the door there were several ikons, before which a lamp was lighted at nightfall ... not so much for devotional purposes as to light the room. Fyodor Pavlovitch used to go to bed very late, at three or four o'clock in the morning, and would wander about the room at night or sit in an arm-chair, thinking. This had become a habit with him. He often slept quite alone in the house, sending his servants to the lodge; but usually Smerdyakov remained, sleeping on a bench in the hall.
As the school quieted down Tom made an honest effort to study, but the turmoil within him was too great. In turn he took his place in the reading class and made a botch of it; then in the geography class and turned lakes into mountains, mountains into rivers, and rivers into continents, till chaos was come again; then in the spelling class, and got "turned down," by a succession of mere baby words, till he brought up at the foot and yielded up the pewter medal which he had worn with ostentation for months.
ARTS AND CRAFTS, a comprehensive title for the arts of decorative design and handicraft--all those which, in association with the mother-craft of building (or architecture), go to the making of the house beautiful. Accounts of these will be found under separate headings. "Arts and crafts" are also associated with the movement generally understood as the English revival of decorative art, which began about 1875. The title itself only came into general use when the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society was founded, and held its first exhibition at the New Gallery, London, in the autumn of 1888, since which time arts and crafts exhibitions have been common all over Great Britain. The idea of forming a society for the purpose of showing contemporary work in design and handicraft really arose out of a movement of revolt or protest against the exclusive view of art encouraged by the Royal Academy exhibitions, in which oil paintings in gilt frames claimed almost exclusive attention--sculpture, architecture and the arts of decorative design being relegated to quite subordinate positions. In 1886, out of a feeling of discontent among artists as to the inadequacy of the Royal Academy exhibitions, considered as representing the art of Great Britain, a demand arose for a national exhibition to include all the arts of design. One of the points of this demand was for the annual election of the hanging committee by the whole body of artists. After many meetings the group representing the arts and crafts (who belonged to a larger body of artists and craftsmen called the Art-workers' Guild, founded in 1884),[1] perceiving that the painters, especially the leading group of a school not hitherto well represented in the Academy exhibitions, only cherished the hope of forcing certain reforms on the Academy, and were by no means prepared to lose their chances of admission to its privileges, still less to run any risk in the establishment of a really comprehensive national exhibition of art, decided to organize an exhibition themselves in which artists and craftsmen might show their productions, so that contemporary work in decorative art should be displayed to the public on the same footing, and with the same advantages as had hitherto been monopolized by pictorial art. For many years previously there had been great activity in the study and revival in the practice of many of the neglected decorative handicrafts. Amateur societies and classes were in existence, like the Home Arts and Industries Association, which had established village classes in wood-carving, metal work, spinning and weaving, needlework, pottery and basket-work, and the public interest in handicraft was steadily growing. The machine production of an industrial century had laid its iron hands upon what had formerly been the exclusive province of the handicraftsman, who only lingered on in a few obscure trades and in forgotten corners of England for the most part. The ideal of mechanical perfection dominated British workmen, and the factory system, first by extreme division of labour, and then by the further specialization of the workman under machine production, left no room for individual artistic feeling among craftsmen trained and working under such conditions. The demand of the world-market ruled the character and quality of production, and to the few who would seek some humanity, simplicity of construction or artistic feeling in their domestic decorations and furniture, the only choice was that of the tradesman or salesman, or a plunge into costly and doubtful experiments in original design. From the 'forties onward there had been much research and study of medieval art in England; there had been many able designers, architects and antiquaries, such as the Pugins and Henry Shaw (1800-1873) and later William Burges (1827-1881), William Butterfield (1814-1900) and G.E. Street and others. The school of pre-Raphaelite painters, by their careful and thorough methods, and their sympathy with medieval design, were among the first to turn attention to beauty of design, colour and significance in the accessories of daily life, and artists like D.G. Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, and W. Holman Hunt themselves designed and painted furniture. The most successful and most practical effort indeed towards the revival of sounder ideas of construction and workmanship may be said to have arisen out of the work of this group of artists, and may be traced to the workshop of William Morris and his associates in Queen Square, London. William Morris, whose name covers so large a field of artistic as well as literary and social work, came well equipped to his task of raising the arts of design and handicraft, of changing the taste of his countrymen from the corrupt and vulgar ostentation of the Second Empire, and its cheap imitations, which prevailed in the 'fifties and 'sixties, and of winning them back, for a time at least, to the massive simplicity of plain oak furniture, or the delicate beauty of inlays of choice woods, or the charm of painted work, the richness and frank colour of formal floral and heraldic pattern in silk textiles and wall-hangings and carpets, the gaiety and freshness of printed cotton, or the romantic splendour of arras tapestry. Both William Morris and his artistic comrade and lifelong friend, Edward Burne-Jones, were no doubt much influenced at the outset by the imaginative insight, the passionate artistic feeling, and the love of medieval romance and colour of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who remains so remarkable a figure in the great artistic and poetic revival of the latter half of the 19th century. To William Morris himself, in his artistic career, it was no small advantage to gain the ear of the English public first by his poetry. His verse-craft helped his handicraft, but both lived side by side. The secret of Morris's great influence in the revival was no doubt to be attributed to his way of personally mastering the working details and handling of each craft he took up in turn, as well as to his power of inspiring his helpers and followers. He was painter, designer, scribe, illuminator, wood-engraver, dyer, weaver and finally printer and papermaker, and having mastered these crafts he could effectively direct and criticize the work of others. His own work and that of Burne-Jones were well known to the public, and in high favour long before the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society was formed, and though largely helped and inspired by the work of these two artists, the aims and objects of the society rather represented those of a younger generation, and were in some measure a fresh development both of the social and the artistic ideas which were represented by Ruskin, Rossetti and Morris, though the society includes men of different schools. Other sources of influence might be named, such as the work of Norman Shaw and Philip Webb in architecture and decoration, of Lewis Day in surface pattern, and William de Morgan in pottery. The demand for the acknowledgment of the personality of each responsible craftsman in a co-operative work was new, and it had direct bearing upon the social and economic conditions of artistic production. The principle, too, of regarding the material, object, method and purpose of a work as essential conditions of its artistic expression, the form and character of which must always be controlled by such conditions, had never before been so emphatically stated, though it practically endorsed the somewhat vague aspirations current for the unity of beauty with utility. Again, a very notable return to extreme simplicity of design in furniture and surface decoration may be remarked; and a certain reserve in the use of colour and ornament, and a love of abstract forms in decoration generally, which are characteristic of later taste. Not less remarkable has been the new development in the design and workmanship of jewelry, gold- and silversmiths' work, and enamels, with which the names of Alexander Fisher, Henry Wilson, Nelson Dawson and C.R. Ashbee are associated. Among the arts and crafts of design which have blossomed into new life in recent years-and there is hardly one which has not been touched by the new spirit--book-binding must be named as having attained a fresh and tasteful development through the work of Mr Cobden-Sanderson and his pupils. The art and craft of the needle also must not be forgotten, and its progress is a good criterion of taste in design, choice of colour and treatment. The work of Mrs Morris, of Miss Burden (sometime instructress at the Royal School of Art Needlework, which has carried on its work from 1875), of Miss May Morris, of Miss Una Taylor, of Miss Buckle, of Mrs Walter Crane, of Mrs Newbery, besides many other skilled needlewomen, has been frequently exhibited. Good work is often seen in the national competition works of the students of the English art schools, shown at South Kensington in July. The increase of late years in these exhibitions of designs worked out in the actual material for which they were intended is very remarkable, and is an evidence of the spread of the arts and crafts movement (fostered no doubt by the increase of technical schools, especially of the type of the Central School of Arts and Crafts under the Technical Education Board of the London County Council), of which it may be said that if it has not turned all British craftsmen into artists or all British artists into craftsmen, it had done not a little to expand and socialize the idea of art, and (perhaps it is not too much to say) has made the tasteful English house with its furniture and decorations a model for the civilized world. (W. Cr.) Entry: ARTS
Bacon's grand motive in his attempt to found the sciences anew was the intense conviction that the knowledge man possessed was of little service to him. "The knowledge whereof the world is now possessed, especially that of nature, extendeth not to magnitude and certainty of works."[49] Man's sovereignty over nature, which is founded on knowledge alone, had been lost, and instead of the free relation between things and the human mind, there was nothing but vain notions and blind experiments. To restore the original commerce between man and nature, and to recover the _imperium hominis_, is the grand object of all science. The want of success which had hitherto attended efforts in the same direction had been due to many causes, but chiefly to the want of appreciation of the nature of philosophy and its real aim. Philosophy is not the science of things divine and human; it is not the search after truth. "I find that even those that have sought knowledge for itself, and not for benefit or ostentation, or any practical enablement in the course of their life, have nevertheless propounded to themselves a wrong mark, namely, satisfaction (which men call Truth) and not operation."[50] "Is there any such happiness as for a man's mind to be raised above the confusion of things, where he may have the prospect of the order of nature and error of man? But is this a view of delight only and not of discovery? of contentment and not of benefit? Shall he not as well discern the riches of nature's warehouse as the beauty of her shop? Is truth ever barren? Shall he not be able thereby to produce worthy effects, and to endow the life of man with infinite commodities?"[51] Philosophy is altogether practical; it is of little matter to the fortunes of humanity what abstract notions one may entertain concerning the nature and the principles of things.[52] This truth, however, has never yet been recognized;[53] it has not yet been seen that the true aim of all science is "to endow the condition and life of man with new powers or works,"[54] or "to extend more widely the limits of the power and greatness of man."[55] Nevertheless, it is not to be imagined that by this being proposed as the great object of search there is thereby excluded all that has hitherto been looked upon as the higher aims of human life, such as the contemplation of truth. Not so, but by following the new aim we shall also arrive at a _true_ knowledge of the universe in which we are, for without knowledge there is no power; truth and utility are in ultimate aspect the same; "works themselves are of greater value as pledges of truth than as contributing to the comforts of life."[56] Such was the conception of philosophy with which Bacon started, and in which he felt himself to be thoroughly original. As his object was new and hitherto unproposed, so the method he intended to employ was different from all modes of investigation hitherto attempted. "It would be," as he says, "an unsound fancy and self-contradictory, to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried."[57] There were many obstacles in his way, and he seems always to have felt that the first part of the new scheme must be a _pars destruens_, a destructive criticism of all other methods. Opposition was to be expected, not only from previous philosophies, but especially from the human mind itself. In the first place, natural antagonism might be looked for from the two opposed sects, the one of whom, in despair of knowledge, maintained that all science was impossible; while the other, resting on authority and on the learning that had been handed down from the Greeks, declared that science was already completely known, and consequently devoted their energies to methodizing and elaborating it. Secondly, within the domain of science itself, properly so called, there were two "kind of rovers" who must be dismissed. The first were the speculative or logical philosophers, who construe the universe _ex analogia hominis_, and not _ex analogia mundi_, who fashion nature according to preconceived ideas, and who employ in their investigations syllogism and abstract reasoning. The second class, who were equally offensive, consisted of those who practised blind experience, which is mere [v.03 p.0146] groping in the dark (_vaga experientia mera palpatio est_), who occasionally hit upon good works or inventions, which, like Atalanta's apples, distracted them from further steady and gradual progress towards universal truth. In place of these straggling efforts of the unassisted human mind, a graduated system of helps was to be supplied, by the use of which the mind, when placed on the right road, would proceed with unerring and mechanical certainty to the invention of new arts and sciences. Entry: VI
KARA MUSTAFA (d. 1683), Turkish vizier, surnamed "Merzifunli," was a son of Uruj Bey, a notable Sipahi of Merzifun (Marsovan), and brother-in-law to Ahmed Kuprili, whom he succeeded as grand vizier in 1676, after having for some years held the office of Kaimmakam or _locum tenens_. His greed and ostentation were equalled by his incapacity, and he behaved with characteristic insolence to the foreign ambassadors, from whom he extorted large bribes. After conducting a campaign in Poland which terminated unfortunately, he gave a ready response to the appeal for aid made by the Hungarians under Imre Thököly (q.v.) when they rose against Austria, his hope being to form out of the Habsburg dominions a Mussulman empire of the West, of which he should be the sultan. The plan was foiled in part by his own lack of military skill, but chiefly through the heroic resistance of Vienna and its timely relief by John Sobieski, king of Poland. Kara Mustafa paid for his defeat with his life; he was beheaded at Belgrade in 1683 and his head was brought to the sultan on a silver dish. Entry: KARA
The national attire of the men is a badly-cured goatskin, confined at the waist by a leather belt studded with nails, supporting the I-hilted dagger, strong but clumsy, of slave manufacture, sheathed in wood covered with iron or brass, and often prettily ornamented. Women are dressed in a long, very dark tunic of wool, ample below the shoulders, and edged with red. This is fastened at the bosom by an iron pin, a thorn, or a fibula; it is gathered round the body by a woven band, an inch wide, knotted in front to dangle down in tassels. On this girdle is carried a fantastically handled knife in a leather covering. The woman's tunic is sometimes worn by men. As worn by women its shape is something between a long frock-coat and an Inverness cape. Its hue and the blackness of the hairy goatskin give the name of Siah-Posh, "black-robed," to the majority of the clans. The other tribes wear such articles of cotton attire as they can obtain by barter, by theft, or by killing beyond the border, for only woollen cloth is made in the country. Of late years long robes from Chitral and Badakshan have been imported by the wealthy, as well as the material for loose cotton trousers and wide shirts. Clothing, always hard to obtain, is precious property. Formerly little girls, the children of slaves, or else poor relations, used to be sold in exchange for clothes and ammunition. Mahommedans eagerly bought the children, which enabled them in one transaction to acquire a female slave and to convert an infidel. Men go bareheaded, which wrinkles them prematurely, or they wear Chitral caps. Certain priests, and others of like degree, wind a strip of cotton cloth round their brows. Siah-Posh women wear curious horned caps or a small square white head-dress upon informal occasions. Females of other tribes bind their heads with turbans ornamented with shells and other finery. Excellent snow gaiters are made of goat's hair for both sexes, and of woollen material for women. Boots, strongly sewn, of soft red leather cannot be used in the snow or when it is wet, because they are imperfectly tanned. For the ceremonial dances all manner of gay-coloured articles of attire, made of cheap silk, cotton velvet, and sham cloth-of-gold, are displayed, and false jewelry and tawdry ornaments; but they are not manufactured in the country, but brought from Peshawar by pedlars. Woollen blankets and goat's-hair mats cover the bedsteads--four-legged wooden frames laced across with string or leather thongs. Low square stools, 18 in. broad, made upon the same principle as the bedsteads, are peculiar to the Kafirs and their half-breed neighbours of the border. Iron tripod tables, singularly Greek in design, are fashioned in Waigul. A warrior's weapons are a matchlock (rarely a flintlock), a bow and arrows, a spear and the dagger which he never puts aside day or night. The axes, often carried, are light and weak, and chiefly indicate rank. Clubs, carefully ornamented by carving, are of little use in a quarrel; their purpose is that of a walking-stick. As they are somewhat long, these walking-clubs have been often supposed to be leaping-poles. Swords are rarely seen, and shields, carried purely for ostentation, seldom. Soft stone is quarried to make large utensils, and great grim chests of wood become grain boxes or coffins indifferently. Prettily carved bowls with handles, or with dummy spouts, hold milk, butter, water or small quantities of flour. Wine, grain, everything else, is stored or carried in goatskin bags. Musical instruments are represented by reed flageolets, small drums, primitive fiddles, and a kind of harp. Entry: KAFIRISTAN