WHEN the American passes from his own country into this, he supposes that he is passing out of a country where voluntaryism reigns, into a country where endowment is equally supreme. Familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of the "voluntary principle," of which he may have been the champion or the victim, or, in other words, harrow or toad, according to circumstances over which he had no control, he is curious to see the working of an opposite state of things. He has heard of the ecclesiastical endowments, the educational endowments, the eleemosynary endowments, and all the rest of the endowments which have been accumulating for centuries in Great Britain; and he longs to enjoy the sight of them and their working. It will be a great relief to his mind, not to say a welcome respite to his pocket. He exults at the prospect of getting beyond the reach of the dun for subscriptions to church or college; and, even if he has done the dunning, he is glad of a vacation. The most controversially-minded partisan of voluntaryism anticipates a sense of rest in coming to endowed Old England, where he imagines the subscription-paper has long since given place to the will with its munificent legacy, and where the voice of the reverend mendicant has become an ancient tradition.

What is the amazement of the American, then, upon landing in this land of endowments, to see on every hand the inscription, "Supported by voluntary contributions," and to hear upon every turn an appeal in the language of the same "voluntary principle"! Nay, before leaving the steamer, you are reminded that "Britannia rules the wave in the interests of this principle. Her compulsory system of voluntary contributions is suggested by the "steward's fee." You may have been long enough in a voyage by river or lakes in the United States to have come to London, or gone to Stockholm, without ever having heard of such a thing as the "steward's fee." You never heard before of paying the company for your passage, and the steward for your accommodations. As the land heaves in sight, you hear whispers of questions like "Is it possible?" "Are "How much do they expect? you sure?" "What is about the customary figure?" Oil Shoddy, Esq., doesn't care, and says so; and the Veneerings take the opportunity to make the first display of their vulgar generosity; but the poor student, who has all the expenses of his European tour down in his notebook, listens with consternation. In a word, we all find out at last that we are mistaken, the first disillusion of that kind ever experienced by many an American. It is a new phase to him.

My first suspicion that the social and commercial life of this country was more artificial and unreal than that of mine came to me when I learned, while gliding up the Mersey, that we had not paid our passage in full, although we were given to understand in New York that we had; and that the servants of the So-and-so Steamship Company ("Limited ") were supported by the "voluntary contributions" of the passengers instead of the wages of their employers. The steward's fee means, "We hire him: you must pay him." The poor student assists in paying the wages of the servant of a wealthy steamship-company. He winces. I can see him wince, and bite his lip. It is a new experience to him, and sets him thinking. The sovereign he gave to the steward would have given him two invaluable days on the Continent: "If this sort of thing is to continue, I must make a new budget when I get ashore." Why should we be obliged to pay the wages of the waiter who brings us our food, any more than the wages of the sailors, without whose fidelity we should never reach our destination?

At the hotel I find that the principle — the "voluntary principle" — is the same. To my surprise (verdant Amer

ican that I am) I find in my bill, "Service one shilling sixpence per day." The price of the room was to be two shillings sixpence it really is four shillings. You pay two shillings sixpence for the room, and one shilling sixpence additional for the use of it. An American friend of mine (a professor of logic, as you might suspect) was so impressed with this (to him) novel legerdemain financial, that he put it to the test by taking a room, which he was told would be two shillings sixpence per day or night, and did not go near it or the hotel again until a few days had elapsed, when, to his astonishment, he found the "service" down all the same. "But I have had no service: I have not been here since I took the room," remonstrated the logician. "Can't help it, sir: that's our rule," retorted the landlord; in which response the waiter and boots risibly joined as the vanquished logician fell back in bad order out of the hotel.

Then you do not pay your bill at the counter as with us. That would be the direct method. The indirect, or the "inductive" method, as our professor of logic might call it, is preferred. It saves the " voluntary principle." The waiter takes the amount of your bill, in which "service" is charged, and looks an additional sixpence or shilling out of you for the "service" of paying your bill for you with your money; and unless this is the last straw of voluntaryism which breaks the camel's back of your forbearance, you will hand another piece of silver to the boots for the service he renders you of looking at you in the language of “No gentleman, sir, no gentleman, unless you tip me a shilling." Shoddy does, and the paternal Veneering does tip him a shilling with a gusto. But how about the poor student all this time? He learns a lesson in the relations of labor and capital he never heard of before. He learns that labor is about as good as capital at grinding the faces of the poor; and that, between the upper millstone of capital and the lower millstone of labor, the intellectual working-classes are ground up.

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I am told that this putting of the "service" in the bill is a modern innovation. It is considered a step forward; and I have no doubt it is, as far as the landlords are concerned. But my friend, the professor of logic, says the principle is the same, and only illustrates the English axiom, that the English are not governed by logic." They would resent the charge of four shillings for the room, and the hotel might be mobbed in consequence of it; but when the charge is divided into two parts, one for matriculation to the hotel, and one for being waited on in it, the British public is perfectly satisfied.

I can recall my surprise when I first heard "Waiter, sir," in the restaurant. I found by the bill of fare that my dinner would cost me exactly three shillings; and found, upon coming to pay for it, that it had cost me three shillings and threepence: three shillings for the dinner, and threepence for the opportunity of eating it. Some say when they are overreached, "It's not the amount I care for: it's the principle of the thing." The poor student says the principle is of no consequence to him, while the amount is. In this instance, service at restaurants, say ninepence a day, or five shillings and threepence per week, amounts to twenty-one shillings (the price of a pair of trousers) a month.

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The uninitiated American makes another discovery of the same (voluntary) principle when he finds that the railway servants, from the guard in full uniform down to the most insignificant employé, all tattered and torn, are similarly supported." They have an eye for "voluntary contributions," cultivated to the highest degree of countenance and ubiquity. They are so expert at it that it would be impossible for their left hand to know what their right hand does. For the most paltry attentions you are looked out of countenance and pocket. Persons who have only just enough shillings to take them through (and these include all the Americans who do not smell of oil) studiously abstain from even so much as catching the guard's eye, much less venturing to ask him the name of the next station. In the United States the railway servants are obliged to answer the reasonable questions of the passengers; and, without further reward than their excellent wages, must look

after the multitude of ladies who may and do travel alone in the United States.

When I came to be ogled out of a sixpence by the woman who had furnished me with a seat in the church, I confess I (please do not forget how ignorant I was of English institutions when I arrived in England) was astounded. She watched for me: I caught her eye before I was half way to the door, where she met me with a smile and a courtesy, and with "'Ope you 'ad a comfortable seat, sir." In some churches and chapels strangers are enjoined to abstain from giving gratuities to the vergers, and the vergers are forbidden to receive any on pain of dismissal. Here and there follows the suggestion, that, if the visitor has any voluntary contributions to spare he will find a box to receive them in the vestibule.

You buy a ticket to the theatre, and pay the attendant for the privilege of sitting down, and pay him also for a programme of the performance. In some theatres pennies are spurned: "Only silver is taken here as "voluntary

contributions."

How

But my astonishment did not reach its highest pitch until I detected this principle of compulsory voluntaryism standing sentinel behind my chair at the private dinner-table, and surrounding me with its protection when I came to leave the house. "Waiter, sir," again it was, or "Maid, sir," this time, perhaps, not by word of mouth, but by a multitude of little ways and means which a British servant can perpetrate with so much dexterity and success. loudly a servant can speak without saying any thing is known only to those who have played the part of audience to him or her. Such darting and lurking; such plucking at the forehead; such being everywhere at once, and doing every thing and nothing at the same moment; such bustling assiduity, and solicitous proximity, and obsequious adroitness! Every wish is anticipated, every infinitesimal desire is gratified. "Have you got every thing, sir? Yes, thanks." "Shall I run up and see, sir?" "Is this yours, sir?" No, that is not yours. "Shall I 'elp you on with your coat, sir?" "Is that your 'at, sir? It is. "It must be brushed." It is brushed. You are shown the door of the house and the cab-door; and you are passed through both with a deferential grace of unmistakable meaning. It means, "We are supported by voluntary contributions." When the poor student first heard the solution of this servantine suavity he was obliged to regret that he could not accept the invitation to dinner of his father's very particular friend, "who wished to see him so much." But the note did not read, " As I have to pay a shilling to get to your dinner-table, or, rather, to get away from it, and as I have not one shilling to spare from my hungry brain, I must, with many regrets, decline your kind invitation."

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I commend to the cunning hand which does the cartooning for Punch that exquisite tableau of the grotesque, a fatcheeked, heavy-calved flunkey of a " great house" taking "service" from a poverty-nagged curate, who trudges home on foot through slush and rain because he cannot afford the cab hire and the flunkey hire both.

Since I wrote the last sentence, I stumbled upon some observations on this topic by an English writer, who tells us that the amount of these "donations to the servants of your host is " according to the wealth of the donor; but, as a rule, the men-servants in large houses expect gold." After this we should not be surprised to hear that "these gratuities are really a great tax upon people's purses; and the question whether to accept an invitation is often decided in the negative by the thought of the expenses entailed, not by railway tickets and cabs, but by the men and the maids" who cook your victuals, call you to dinner, and make your bed. From this writer, also, I learn, what more than one person has freely acknowledged to me, that the exaction is considered a scandal upon the fine old grace of hospitality. Indeed this, by no means unusual, opinion justifies my-I will not say animadversions, because I wish to pass for an amiable philosopher, rather than a choleric satirist. I will say, then, that my philosophical observations are excusable on the ground that they are shared by my readers. There are houses, I know,

in which the guest is warned, and the servants admonished against this custom, by which the goddess Hospitality is bereaved of her chivalry and charm. You may dine out in Boston, Baltimore, or Chicago, without a penny in your pocket. The clergyman, or author, or any of the rest of the poor that we have always with us, may spend a night in a friend's house without paying the wages of his friend's servant for the time being. The servant and the chairs, and the very wag of the dog's tail, are his to command.

But perhaps some English reader of mine will exclaim, "How is this? I have travelled in America; and I never found any difficulty in getting my fees accepted by the American waiters." Exactly so. I am well aware, that, if the English institution of servants' fees is not introduced into America, it will not be the fault of English travellers. They are doing their utmost to poison our system with this feature of theirs, for which they receive no thanks from us. They ask a question of a railway employé, and, to the man's amazement, pay him for his answer. I have even known them to offer a half-dollar to the proprietor of the hotel in return for his courteous parting recognition, which was quickly transformed into lofty indignation. If, as is (justly) complained, spendthrift Americans are spoiling the hotel servants of the Continent, it is no less true that the hotel servants of America are in danger of demoralization at the hands of economical Englishmen.

Probably, however, the person who puts in this exclamation was not long (or deep) enough in America to observe that what the English servant expects as a right, the American servant receives as a gift. The former insists upon it with an insinuative insolence, which only he knows how to inflict: the latter can be brow-beaten with a single look, which he knows very well how to interpret. In England the servant does the browbeating, in America the served. In America the eye of the waiter cowers, in England the eye of the guest. There is a wide difference here, and an indicative one, as we shall see presently.

To-day I met a recently-arrived American gentleman, who tells me that he made some inquiries of a group of working-men, who, upon his leaving, asked him for money. He says he was so unused to such impertinence that he was surprised into expressing his disgust at it; whereupon the men laughed at his ignorance of the custom of the country. This gentleman says this custom of gratuities fills him with the sense of shame which he sees wanting in those who pursue him with it. He thinks somebody should be ashamed of it, and has concluded to take that duty upon himself. He observes a singular blending of the sneaking and furtive with the insolent and bold in the whole class of laborers, servants, and smaller shopkeepers. Then his perplexity with respect to the voluntary contribution amounts to an unhappiness. One half the time he forgets to give it, and the other half he is at a loss to know how much to give. Now he is restrained by delicacy, and now by forgetfulness; and yet nobody would ever dream of imputing remissness in this case, or in the case of any American, to a lack of generosity. The Americans are, do believe, the most generous and hospitable people in the world; nor will your writer hesitate to add that he came of a pedigree and a section noted for hospitality.

I quite appreciate my friend's perplexity. It requires considerable experience to get rid of it. Surely, you think, this man will be offended by the proffered shilling, - he is so careful in his attire, and so dignified in his bearing. But try him, and see your mistake; or evade him, and see how expertly he will remind you of your mistake.

So, what with your American delicacy on the subject, and your English lackey's ambiguous deportment on the subject, you are bothered to know whether to give or not; and, if you give, whether to give it "straight from the shoulder," or crookedly from the small of the back, as if all parties to the custom were ashamed of it. In other places than the churches there are prohibitions on the walls; and in these places your faithful guide expects you to be a little careful how you do it. Many travellers, I know, make up their minds at last that no personage, how

placed the standard of education too high for rural districts. The education given in the village schools should be suitable to the requirements of the rural population. It became a very serious question whether they should force upon village children an amount of instruction calculated to drive them from agricultural pursuits." The American who has lived through the great antislavery agitation is so familiar with this kind of reasoning that he can hardly refrain from recognizing it as an old acquaintance, and treating it as an old enemy. The laws of the Southern States forbade the teaching of the slaves, because initiation into the mysteries of the spelling-book was "calculated to drive them from agricultural pursuits." Education deforms "the common mind" of a servile class. Where one class is born saddled and bridled, and another booted and spurred, the schoolhouse is a fruitful source of unhappiness and discontent. Astronomy points out the north star to the slave; and "thrilling" oratory indicates the way out to the serf. As the producer's ignorance is the consumer's wisdom, it is folly for the latter to make the former wise. But for the "Revised Code," we should have been spared the agricultural laborers' strike.

What is the difference between this picture of what is going on in England and that picture of what has passed away in America? A difference there is, certainly; but a resemblance as well. Nations that have adopted liberty as a theory never admit that they can practise oppression.

A free people "can do no wrong." If the agricultural laborers of England were technically, what they are substantially, serfs, they might count on parliamentary measures for their relief. But as they are, technically speaking, free-born Britons, who "never will be slaves," and therefore breathe an atmosphere of theoretical justice, they can count on nobody but themselves, and on nothing but their own persistency in their fight, empty-pursed and emptybellied, with the owners and consumers of the "fat of the land." A real slave, however comfortable, is sure of emancipation so long as Exeter Hall can vociferate, or Parliament legislate: a virtual slave, however miserable, may perish in his misery for all the deliverance he can get from legislator or philanthropist.

There is just enough legal responsibility laid upon and felt by the slaveholder to secure at least the physical " condition" of the slave. Hence, however long may be the catalogue of his wrongs, you will seldom find starvation among them. The serf-holder, on the contrary, is free from such responsibility in a free country, and may read, without annoyance from either constable or conscience, a paragraph like this, for example, which appears among the interesting incidents of the "dictatorial attitude" of the farm laborers:

"On Tuesday an inquest was held at Tooting, on the body of James Sewington, aged thirty-five, a farm-laborer, who had died of starvation. It was shown in evidence that the deceased had not tasted meat for weeks; and that his family had had nothing but dry bread and tea and sugar for the last fortnight. The jury returned a verdict, That the deceased died from exhaustion through want of food and proper nourishment.' An equally accurate verdict would have been, "Died from being supported by voluntary contributions instead of adequate wages."

Let England be glad of the restive spirit of her agricultural laborers. It was necessary for the enlightenment of that public opinion, which, in a free country, is understood to be always fired and harnessed, ready to plunge out at a moment's notice in pursuit of any conflagration, industrial or political, which may menace the commonwealth. What does fair-play-loving England know of the condition of her agricultural population, until, in their extremity, they cry out in hunger and anger for enough of the bread they raise to keep them from starvation? It was conceded at a council of landlords and farmers the other day that "the publicity which has been given to the strike has greatly annoyed the land-owners, and they are now less disposed than they were at first to dismiss the laborers for joining the union."

ART AND MORALITY.

SPINOZA says somewhere that our passions all imply confusion of thought; and of course he proves this with all the parade of geometrical method, which is so satisfying to some, and so tedious to others. But everybody can verify the aphorism for himself by observing that he becomes calm as soon as he can attend to what it is that has disturbed him. And this suggests that passion and art must be enemies, so far as passion is a temptation, and so far as art is perfect; for certainly every one would agree that it is a perfection of art to present, and therefore to conceive, its subject as clearly and as adequately as may be. The subject of the" Epithalamium of Mallius," or of the " Vigil of Venus," is full, in one sense, of danger to morality; but the danger is that our feeling for the subject should be too strong for the poetry which inspired it; that we should abandon ourselves to a blind glow of pleasurable emotion, and lose sight of the vivid train of clear, articulate images which set our hearts on fire at first. And there is another safeguard to morality: perfect art must be more than adequate; it must be satisfactory; it is condemned by its own standard till it can produce a type which can be contemplated upon all sides, and throughout all time. The situation of Maggie Tulliver in the boat with her cousin's betrothed has many elements of artistic beauty: it is romantic, intense, and elevated; but it is not satisfactory ideally, because it is not satisfactory morally like Maggie, we cannot forget the beginning: we cannot but look forward to the end. It is well that the dream should be broken. Though the voyage on the flood to Tom and to death has less charm, it has more peace: the imagination can dwell upon it. The new pagan treatment of the Tannhäuser legend seems capable of a more musical intensity than the traditional Christian treatment; yet it can hardly be doubted that Heine was right, on purely artistic grounds, in giving up this intensity, and following his own temper, and turning all to irony. Mr. Swinburne has to undertake the impossible task of reconciling us to the thought of a hell too intensely realized to be poetical: the knight has to promise that he will remember and rejoice in Venus there. We could not have believed it of a saint. Perfect art does not deal in paradoxes. This carries us a step farther. In order that art may be adequate and satisfactory, it must be sane and rational; it must be the expression, not of revolt, but of harmony; it must assume and reflect an ideal order in the world. impulse of revolt is strong both in Byron and Shelley, and they are among the greatest of poets; but the law holds good in them. The grandest canto of "Childe Harold" is the last, where despair and disdain are passing into a calm that at least is half resigned. Shelley's anguish for himself and for mankind goes off incessantly into mere shrieking whenever it takes the form of a revolt against the tyranny of kings and priests: it becomes musical again when it blends with the mute sorrow of "The World's Wanderers," and becomes a voice in the universal chorus of the whole creation that groaneth and travaileth in pain together. It is not required of art to be cheerful, neither is it required of morality as such. Marcus Aurelius and George Eliot present "altruism" under a form that makes the Epicurean burden "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die "- glad tidings of great joy to flesh and blood. But though George Eliot's fascination is painful, it is complete there is nothing to disgust and emancipate us; for her art rests upon the acknowledgment of an order to which all must be subject whether they will or no; though the order exists for other ends than the happiness, or even the perfection, of the creatures under it. We need not inquire whether such a morality is enough for life; but, in its obedience, art finds perfect freedom; or, rather, absolute art is not subject to absolute morality, but both are expressions of one ideal order, which must always be conceived as holy, just, and good, though it is not always conceived as giving life and peace.

:

The

The art which is always claiming to be emancipated from morality is not the absolute art; perhaps the morality

which it rebels against is hardly the absolute morality. The practical question has to be discussed on a lower level; but it is not to be dismissed as though the art which comes into conflict with morality were spurious because it is not the highest. True, the perfections of art are its safeguards; but art may be so much without being perfect. Its perfection exists rather for itself than for us, though we rejoice in it afar off. What we need is, that it should be stimulating; and this, too, is what the artist needs; for he, too, is of the same clay as we. Like us, he desires fresher emotions than the ordinary round of life supplies, though this, too, has a satisfaction of its own for those who cherish its affections; and the craving which is occasional with us is habitual with him. He refuses the false gratification that might be found for it if he would make virtue always culminate in some kind of lord-mayor's show. Life loses such flavor as it has in the attempt to make it just a little better, and a little easier, and a little prettier. If the artist will not idealize ordinary life by falsifying it, and cannot idealize it in the light of the higher law, nor sustain himself upon the level of ideal action, it remains for him to go beyond the world, since he cannot rise above it. He tries to escape from the hackneyed routine of domestic duties and felicities into an unsatisfactory fairy-land of extreme passions, of untried desires, of unfettered impulses, working themselves out within the exciting complexities of abnormal situations. Since he cannot have the true ideal, and will not put up with the false, he demands the whole range of the real, and chooses to be always gleaning on the outskirts of possibility. The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, are not really ideal; but they have their ideal moments, or they could not tempt us; and there comes a time when art finds it hard to part with one of these. The only justification that has yet been put forward for the persistent attempt to pluck the "flowers of evil" is, that the artist shares the general dislike to their fruit, and that, whether he plucks or no, the world is sure to wear them. There are very few like John Foster, to whom almost all art, especially all classical art, was essentially immoral because it nourished the pride of life. Art that appeals merely to curiosity, or to the extreme sense of beauty, is always thought safe and respectable. When we speak of immoral art, we mean art that deals with sensual impulses, or rouses rebellion against the order of society. Perhaps, too, there are many who object to the first because it results in the second; and even on this point public opinion is rather emphatic than clear. It would be hard to find a popular definition of literary immorality which would not condemn the episode of Paolo and Francesca. It is almost as if Dante had come to curse them; and lo! he blessed them altogether: they are always together, and they always love. There are more who could learn to look to such a hell with yearning than choose to enter the purgatory of Gerontius. The laureate may seem as unimpeachable on this score as Dante; yet it is hard not to think "Aylmer's Field" an immoral poem. The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God; and the only outcome of "Aylmer's Field" is the wrath of man. We have an evil action represented in an evil spirit: if we are not to condemn this, how are we to condemn such a poem as "The Leper," à priori, merely because Mr. Swinburne follows Luther's maxim, pecca fortiter? In truth, the question within what limits it is safe to pursue "art for art" is hardly one that could be asked in an ideal state of things. Then art would be continually enriched by life, and life illuminated by art. It never occurred to Shakspeare, or Titian, or Leonardo, that the choice of Hercules lay between life and art. Art in its supreme epochs has always been nourished and exalted by the chastened or unchastened pride of life. When we speak of choosing art for art, we acknowledge that the pride of life does not need any longer to be mortified, because it is dead. When life and art are parted, –

"Stratus humi palmes viduas desiderat ulmos."

But the gleaning of the vintage still is sweet: only when a man has renounced the rewards of life for art, he has not

escaped its obligations. If any were mad enough to lose his soul for art, he would find he had lost art too. We cannot expect an ideal answer to a question which it is a misfortune to have to ask. Artists who have not attained the vision of eternal and ideal beauty have no right to an ideal liberty; and we have no right to try their work by an ideal standard till we have tried ourselves. Every one must apply as he can the principle that all art is lawful for a man which can be produced or enjoyed within the limits of a safe and wholesome life. When we know that Etty lived quietly and soberly with his sister, and was grateful to her for finding him respectable models, we know that he had succeeded for himself in finding a true relation between morality and art. Yet we should think hardly of a man who collected exclusively what Etty produced exclusively. An idle man might get all the pleasure from Etty's pictures that they can give; and that is not a safe pleasure for an idle man: but the pictures themselves were the work of honest labor; and qui laborat orat. The safeguard that the artist has in the very necessity of working we may bring from our own work, and then we shall be most likely to find it anew in strenuous sympathy with his. To the pure all things are pure: it is recorded of one of the best public men of America that even the ballet always filled him with religious rapture.

It is fortunate to possess such a temper: it would be silly and dangerous to aim at it. Individuals must be guided by their own desire for virtue, and by the consent of virtuous and cultivated men. It is suggestive to observe that the limits of their toleration vary according to the medium in which the artist works. In music there are hardly any limits at all we can hardly imagine such a thing as a melody immoral in itself; though there are melodies which do not seem profaned when fitted to immoral words. Plastic art has less liberty; yet even here almost every thing is permitted short of the direct instigation of the senses to rebellion. It is impossible to draw the line earlier when we have once sanctioned the representation of the nude. After all, Eye Gate does not lead far into the town of Mansoul. It is only when we come to the literature that the conflict becomes serious, and that honest artists wish to handle matters which honest men of the world wish to suppress. This points to a distinction which is not without practical value. Literature is the most complex form of art, -the form which touches reality at most points; and, therefore, the mind passes most easily from literature back to life; and, therefore, what is dangerous in life is dangerous in literature, though it may be innocent in other forms of art which in themselves are more intense. The first impression of a great picture or a great symphony is more vivid than the first impression of a great poem: it is at the same time more definite, and more completely determined by the intention of the artist. A great picture, a great symphony, are in one way infinitely complex; but both take their keynote from a single movement of the subject. Few subjects are too unsatisfactory to present at least one noble aspect, to strike at least one noble chord. In literature it is difficult to isolate the aesthetic side of a subject so completely, because literature tells by the result of a great many incomplete suggestions which the reader has to work out for himself; so that there is no security that he will be able to keep entirely within the intention of the writer. And the writer, too, finds it harder to subordinate the intellectual and the emotional sides of his subject to the aesthetical; and morality is certainly justified in proscribing any thing that can make familiarity with those sides of an immoral subject less unwelcome and disgusting. Still, it is possible to maintain a certain ideal abstractness of treatment, even in literature, which has its use. Every one feels the difference between the diseased, insolent pruriency with which Byron keeps flaunting the sin in our faces in all the loves of Don Juan, and the sad, gracious naïveté of Mallory, as he sets forth the passion of Lancelot and Guinevere. Some, indeed, might think that it was better to let us rest upon the nobleness of Lancelot than to try to save morality by demonstrating the superiority of Arthur. Demonstration involves discussion; and discussion might leave us sceptical