f Alceste and Celimene was ultimately understood and
applauded. In all countries the middle class presents the public which,
fighting the world, and with a good footing in the fight, knows the world
best. It may be the most selfish, but that is a question leading us into
sophistries. Cultivated men and women, who do not skim the cream of life,
and are attached to the duties, yet escape the harsher blows, make acute
and balanced observers. Moliere is their poet.

Of this class in England, a large body, neither Puritan nor Bacchanalian,
have a sentimental objection to face the study of the actual world. They
take up disdain of it, when its truths appear humiliating: when the facts
are not immediately forced on them, they take up the pride of
incredulity. They live in a hazy atmosphere that they suppose an ideal
one. Humorous writing they will endure, perhaps approve, if it mingles
with pathos to shake and elevate the feelings. They approve of Satire,
because, like the beak of the vulture, it smells of carrion, which they
are not. But of Comedy they have a shivering dread, for Comedy enfolds
them with the wretched host of the world, huddles them with us all in an
ignoble assimilation, and cannot be used by any exalted variety as a
scourge and a broom. Nay, to be an exalted variety is to come under the
calm curious eye of the Comic spirit, and be probed for what you are. Men
are seen among them, and very many cultivated women. You may distinguish
them by a favourite phrase: 'Surely we are not so bad!' and the remark:
'If that is human nature, save us from it!' as if it could be done: but
in the peculiar Paradise of the wilful people who will not see, the
exclamation assumes the saving grace.

Yet should you ask them whether they dislike sound sense, they vow they
do not. And question cultivated women whether it pleases them to be shown
moving on an intellectual level with men, they will answer that it does;
numbers of them claim the situation. Now, Comedy is the fountain of sound
sense; not the less perfectly sound on account of the sparkle: and Comedy
lifts women to a station offering them free play for their wit, as they
usually show it, when they have it, on the side of sound sense. The
higher the Comedy, the more prominent the part they enjoy in it. Dorine
in the Tartuffe is common-sense incarnate, though palpably a
waiting-maid. Celimene is undisputed mistress of the same attribute in
the Misanthrope; wiser as a woman