sedly as possible to the eyes of
the grinning public, or they sing in concert halls for the pleasure of
showing themselves off, and actually accept the vulgar applause of
unwashed crowds with a smile and a bow of gratitude! Ye gods! what has
become of the superb pride of the old regime--the pride which disdained
all ostentation and clung to honor more closely than life! What a
striking sign of the times too, is this: let a woman taint her virtue
BEFORE marriage, she is never forgiven--her sin is never forgotten; but
let her do what she will when she has a husband's name to screen her,
and society winks its eyes at her crimes. Couple this fact with the
general spirit of mockery that prevails in fashionable circles--mockery
of religion, mockery of sentiment, mockery of all that is best and
noblest in the human heart--add to it the general spread of
"free-thought," and THEREFORE of conflicting and unstable opinions--let
all these things together go on for a few years longer and England will
stare at her sister nations like a bold woman in a domino--her features
partly concealed from a pretense at shame, but her eyes glittering
coldly through the mask, betraying to all who look at her how she
secretly revels in her new code of lawlessness coupled with greed. For
she will always be avaricious--and the worst of it is, that her nature
being prosaic, there will be no redeeming grace to cast a glamour about
her. France is unvirtuous enough, God knows, yet there is a sunshiny
smile on her lips that cheers the heart. Italy is also unvirtuous, yet
her voice is full of bird-like melody, and her face is a dream of
perfect poetry! But England unvirtuous will be like a cautiously
calculating, somewhat shrewish matron, possessed of unnatural and
unbecoming friskiness, without either laugh, or song, or smile--her one
god, Gold, and her one commandment, the suggested eleventh, "Thou shall
not be found out!"

I slept that night on deck. The captain offered me the use of his
little cabin, and was, in his kind-hearted manner, truly distressed at
my persistent refusal to occupy it.

"It is bad to sleep in the moonlight, signor," he said, anxiously. "It
makes men mad, they say."

I smiled. Had madness been my destiny, I should have gone mad last
night, I thought!

"Have no fear!" I answered him, gently. "The moonlight is a joy to
me--it has no impression on my mind save that of peace. I shall rest
well here, my friend--do not trouble your