ether this sort of thing is done
purposely, like glass beads for Africa, or whether it is the gift of
heaven, natural and unconscious, like chickweed.

One would be grateful for direction in this. The matter is of some
importance, because either the producers or the readers are in a bad
way; and it would be disheartening to suppose it is the readers, for
probably there are more readers than editors, and so less chance of a
cure. I do not want to believe it is the readers. It is more
comforting to suppose those poor people must put up with what they can
get in a hurry ten minutes before the train starts, only to find, as
they might have guessed, that vacuity is behind the smirk of a girl with
a face like that. They are forced to stuff their literature behind them,
so that ownership of it shall not openly shame them before their
fellow-passengers.

With several exceptions, the mass of English magazines and reviews may be
dismissed in a few seconds. The exceptions usually are not out yet, or
one has seen them. It used not to be so, and that is what makes me think
it is the producers, and not the readers, who require skilled attention.
It is startling to turn to the magazines of twenty or thirty years ago,
and to compare them with what is thought good enough for us. I was
looking through such a magazine recently, and found a poem by Swinburne,
a prose-romance by William Morris, and much more work of a quality you
would no more expect to find in a current magazine than you would palm
trees in Whitechapel.

Of all the periodicals which reach the British front, the two for which
there is most competition in any officers' mess are _La Vie Parisienne_
and New York _Life_. The impudent periodical from Paris is universal on
our front. The work of its artists decorates every dug-out. I should say
almost every mess subscribes for it. It is true it is usual to account
for this as being naughty chance. Youth has been separated from the sober
influence of its English home, is away from the mild and tranquil light
of Oxford Street feminity, is given to death, and therefore snatches in
abandon at amusement which otherwise would not amuse. Do not believe it.
_La Vie Parisienne_, it is true, is certainly not a paper for the English
family. I should be embarrassed if my respected aunts found it on my
table, pointed to its drawings, and asked me what I saw in them. What
makes it popular with young Englishmen in France is not the audacity o