the most moral people on the face of the earth. It was
confidently asserted that an English woman of sixty would not read what
would bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of a maiden of any other
nation. But humiliation and sorrow were awaiting Mudie. True it is that we
still continued to subscribe to his library, true it is that we still
continued to go to church, true it is that we turned our faces away when
_Mdlle. de Maupin_ or the _Assommoir_ was spoken of; to all
appearance we were as good and chaste as even Mudie might wish us; and no
doubt he looked back upon his forty years of effort with pride; no doubt he
beat his manly breast and said, "I have scorched the evil one out of the
villa; the head of the serpent is crushed for evermore;" but lo, suddenly,
with all the horror of an earthquake, the slumbrous law courts awoke, and
the burning cinders of fornication and the blinding and suffocating smoke
of adultery were poured upon and hung over the land. Through the mighty
columns of our newspapers the terrible lava rolled unceasing, and in the
black stream the villa, with all its beautiful illusions, tumbled and
disappeared.

An awful and terrifying proof of the futility of human effort, that there
is neither bad work nor good work to do, nothing but to await the coming of
the Nirvana.

I have written much against the circulating library, and I have read a
feeble defence or two; but I have not seen the argument that might be
legitimately put forward in its favour. It seems to me this: the
circulating library is conservatism, art is always conservative; the
circulating library lifts the writer out of the precariousness and noise of
the wild street of popular fancy into a quiet place where passion is more
restrained and there is more reflection. The young and unknown writer is
placed at once in a place of comparative security, and he is not forced to
employ vile and degrading methods of attracting attention; the known
writer, having a certain market for his work, is enabled to think more of
it and less of the immediate acclamation of the crowd; but all these
possible advantages are destroyed and rendered _nil_ by the veracious
censorship exercised by the librarian.

* * * * *

There is one thing in England that is free, that is spontaneous, that
reminds me of the blitheness and nationalness of the Continent;--but there
is nothing French about it, it is wholly and essentially Eng