en cut, and so she went to the Paris Cremorne instead; but to write a
true book on England, she should have gone to Cremorne. Look at
Cremorne; is it not one, as Disraeli is reported to have said, of the
institutions of the country? {194} The gardens are beautiful, are kept
in fine order, are adorned with really fine trees, and are watered by the
Thames, here almost a silver stream. Though near London, on a summer
evening the air is fresh and balmy, the amusements are varied, the
company are genteel in appearance, and here, as in Paris, they dance
along the path to ruin with flowers and music. If Mrs Stowe gives the
preference to the Parisians, she may be right, but I am inclined to
dispute the grounds of that preference. The gin-palaces are filled with
our sots, with our utter wrecks, with all that is loathsome and low in
man or woman. Your son, fresh from home and its sacred influences, is
shy of entering a gin-palace at first. He goes there with a blush upon
his cheek, and a sense of shame at his heart. He shrinks from its foul
companionship, and when he has come out he resolves never to be what he
has seen under those accursed roofs. But you take him to Cremorne, or
you send him to the Lowther Arcade, or the Holborn Casino, and he is
surrounded by temptation that speaks to him with almost irresistible
power. The women are well-dressed and well-behaved. The drink does not
repel but merely stimulates the hot passions of youth, and lulls the
conscience. For one man that is ruined in a gin-shop there are twenty
that are ruined at Cremorne.

As to the morality of such places, that is not to be settled dogmatically
by me or by any one else. Tennyson talks of men fighting their doubts,
and gathering strength; in the same manner, men may fight temptation and
gather strength, and one man may merely spend a pleasant evening where
another may in the same interval of time ruin himself for life. The
tares and the wheat, in this confused world of ours, grow side by side.
Unnaturally, we bring up our sons only to pluck what we deem the wheat;
and immediately they are left to themselves, they begin gathering the
tares, which we have not taught them are such, and have for them at least
the charm of novelty. It does not do to say there is no pleasure in the
world; there is a great deal. The grass is green, though, it may be, sad
sinners tread it. The sun shines as sweetly on carrion as on the
Koh-i-noor. The lark hig