e the mighty Gibbon with you), I think you will own that you
are beaten, and could point to a couple of professors at Cambridge and
Glasgow who know more Greek than was to be had in your time in all
the universities of Europe, including that of Athens, if such an one
existed. As for science, you were scarce more advanced than those
heathen to whom in literature you owned yourselves inferior. And in
public and private morality? Which is the better, this actual year 1858,
or its predecessor a century back? Gentlemen of Mr. Disraeli's House of
Commons! has every one of you his price, as in Walpole's or Newcastle's
time,--or (and that is the delicate question) have you almost all of you
had it? Ladies, I do not say that you are a society of Vestals--but the
chronicle of a hundred years since contains such an amount of scandal,
that you may be thankful you did not live in such dangerous times. No:
on my conscience, I believe that men and women are both better; not only
that the Susannas are more numerous, but that the Elders are not nearly
so wicked. Did you ever hear of such books as Clarissa, Tom Jones,
Roderick Random; paintings by contemporary artists, of the men and
women, the life and society, of their day? Suppose we were to describe
the doings of such a person as Mr. Lovelace or my Lady Bellaston, or
that wonderful "Lady of Quality" who lent her memoirs to the author of
Peregrine Pickle. How the pure and outraged Nineteenth Century would
blush, scream, run out of the room, call away the young ladies, and
order Mr. Mudie never to send one of that odious author's books again!
You are fifty-eight years old, madam, and it may be that you are too
squeamish, that you cry out before you are hurt, and when nobody had
any intention of offending your ladyship. Also, it may be that the
novelist's art is injured by the restraints put upon him as many an
honest, harmless statue at St. Peter's and the Vatican is spoiled by the
tin draperies in which ecclesiastical old women have swaddled the fair
limbs of the marble. But in your prudery there is reason. So there is in
the state censorship of the Press. The page may contain matter dangerous
to bonos mores. Out with your scissors, censor, and clip off the
prurient paragraph! We have nothing for it but to submit. Society, the
despot, has given his imperial decree. We may think the statue had been
seen to greater advantage without the tin drapery; we may plead that the
moral were better