It should be noted that in the graduated appreciation of
varieties of horses and of dogs, such as one meets with among
people of even moderately cultivated tastes in these matters,
there is also discernible another and more direct line of
influence of the leisure-class canons of reputability. In this
country, for instance, leisure-class tastes are to some extent
shaped on usages and habits which prevail, or which are
apprehended to prevail, among the leisure class of Great Britain.
In dogs this is true to a less extent than in horses. In horses,
more particularly in saddle horses -- which at their best serve
the purpose of wasteful display simply -- it will hold true in a
general way that a horse is more beautiful in proportion as he is
more English; the English leisure class being, for purposes of
reputable usage, the upper leisure class of this country, and so
the exemplar for the lower grades. This mimicry in the methods of
the apperception of beauty and in the forming of judgments of
taste need not result in a spurious, or at any rate not a
hypocritical or affected, predilection. The predilection is as
serious and as substantial an award of taste when it rests on
this basis as when it rests on any other, the difference is that
this taste is and as substantial an award of taste when it rests
on this basis as when it rests on any other; the difference is
that this taste is a taste for the reputably correct, not for the
aesthetically true.
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