ndaries must produce, loses no opportunity of travelling over
into the marches or debateable land which is left under the warden
ship of decorum.
The name was not, perhaps, applied as now it is, in former years, but
still the spirit existed, as may be seen by any one who takes up and
reads the works of one of our purest but coldest of writers, Addison,
who, about the time of the peace, which took place in the beginning
of the eighteenth century, laments the loss of much of the delicacy
(or, in other terns, decorum) of English society which was likely to
ensue from a free intercourse with France. It must, indeed, be
admitted that at that period the reign of decorum had not made nearly
so great a progress as it has at present. It was then a constitutional
monarchy, where it is now a despotism, but was probably not a bit
less powerful from being decidedly more free. People in those days
did certainly speak of things that we now speak not of at all. They
called things by their plain straightforward names, for which we have
since invented terms perhaps less definite and not more decent. But
people of refined minds and tastes were refined then as now, and
loved and cultivated all those amenities, graces, and proprieties,
which form not alone the greatest safeguards, but also the greatest
charms of human existence. Perhaps the difference was more in the
thoughts than in the expressions, and that the refined of those days
bound themselves to think more purely in the first place, so that
there was less need of guarding their words so strictly.
We shall not pause to investigate whether it was that greater purity
of thought, or any other cause, which produced a far more extensive
liberty of action, especially in the female part of society, than
that which is admitted at present. It is certain, however, that it
was so, and that there was something in virtue and innocence which in
those days was a very strong safeguard against the attacks of
scandal, calumny, and malice. In the present day, even the servants
of virtue are found to be the absolute slaves of decorum; but in
those days, so long as they obeyed the high commands of their
rightful mistress, they had but little occasion to apprehend that the
scourge of calumny, or the fear thereof, would drive them continually
back into one narrow and beaten path.
It is, indeed, the greatest satire upon human nature which the world
has ever produced, that acts perfectly innocent, high, and pure as
God's holy light, cannot