Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1882 — The Original Aesthete. [ARTICLE]

The Original Aesthete.

A New York dispatch says that Oscar Wilde lectured to a large and fashionable audience at Chickering Hall. He was dressed to a black dress coat, white vest extremely low cut, shirt, with flowing white silk cravat, black kneebreeches, brown stockings and slippers. He chose as his subject “The English Renaissance,” which he said was the work of esthetics. Decoration, he said, was a science of art, and all teachings would amount to nothing if the workmen were not surrounded by beautiful things. For if they did not see them they could not make them. Art should not be, as in the past, only contrast with surrounding misery. In conclusion he said: “You have all heard of those two flowers dear to the esthetic’s heart, the rose and lily; but we do not love them for the reason given by Gilbert, nor for any vegetable preference, but because they are the most perfect specimens of design—the rose, with its leonine beauty, and the lily, the emblem of chastity and purity. Then why look further for the secret of life when the secret of life is out?"