j • ^ H J<;"R. E are an immense number of instances of works of art I and literature which have had great vogue, and have been enthusiastically extol ed for a while, but have soon vanished altogether into the limbo of things forgotten; except by the few whose duty it is to collect and certify illustrations of human fallibility. People commonly talk of such works as old-fashioned, and many think that explains everything. But as it is rather an unfriendly word it would be fairer to consider what

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... t originally meant. Some people evidently regard the word as synonymous with 'old,' and 'old' as synonymous with 'superseded,' They seem to labour under the curious misconception that a thing is oldfashioned because the fashion for it is past; while in reality the meaning of the word was that the thing referred to had been fashioned long ago, and that the fashioning of it was after a manner that had been superseded or dropped in the general progress of arts and social habits. In its original sense the thing that was old-fashioned could be, on that account, loveable, romantic, suffused with a pretty savour of quaint ancientness. But in course of time the meaning of the word has grown specialized in an unfavourable direction; and this partly on account of its association with the word 'fashion.' It was natural to think that the word 'old-fashioned' was derived from 'fashion'; but it is easy to see that the contrary was the fact, and that the latter word was derived from the former; and the slur which some people cast on a thing which is said to be 'old-fashioned' is owing to the attitude of mind which is engendered by much superfluous subservience to the standards of local and contemporary fashions. To such a type of mind ns at