were to take her boys to
see a burlesque Socrates, with swollen legs, dying in the utterance of
cockney puns, and were to hang up a sketch of this comic scene among
their bedroom prints, she would think this preparation not at all to the
prejudice of their emotions on hearing their tutor read that narrative
of the _Apology_ which has been consecrated by the reverent gratitude of
ages. This is the impoverishment that threatens our posterity:--a new
Famine, a meagre fiend with lewd grin and clumsy hoof, is breathing a
moral mildew over the harvest of our human sentiments. These are the
most delicate elements of our too easily perishable civilisation. And
here again I like to quote a French testimony. Sainte Beuve, referring
to a time of insurrectionary disturbance, says: "Rien de plus prompt a
baisser que la civilisation dans des crises comme celle-ci; on perd en
trois semaines le resultat de plusieurs siecles. La civilisation, la
_vie_ est une chose apprise et inventee, qu'on le sache bien: '_Inventas
aut qui vitam excoluere per artes_.' Les hommes apres quelques annees de
paix oublient trop cette verite: ils arrivent a croire que la _culture_
est chose innee, qu'elle est la meme chose que la _nature_. La
sauvagerie est toujours la a deux pas, et, des qu'on lache pied, elle
recommence." We have been severely enough taught (if we were willing to
learn) that our civilisation, considered as a splendid material fabric,
is helplessly in peril without the spiritual police of sentiments or
ideal feelings. And it is this invisible police which we had need, as a
community, strive to maintain in efficient force. How if a dangerous
"Swing" were sometimes disguised in a versatile entertainer devoted to
the amusement of mixed audiences? And I confess that sometimes when I
see a certain style of young lady, who checks our tender admiration with
rouge and henna and all the blazonry of an extravagant expenditure, with
slang and bold _brusquerie_ intended to signify her emancipated view of
things, and with cynical mockery which she mistakes for penetration, I
am sorely tempted to hiss out "_Petroleuse!_" It is a small matter to
have our palaces set aflame compared with the misery of having our sense
of a noble womanhood, which is the inspiration of a purifying shame, the
promise of life--penetrating affection, stained and blotted out by
images of repulsiveness. These things come--not of higher education,
but--of dull ignorance fostered in