r,
like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as
to confirm our experience of it; to make assurance double, and take a
bond of fate. We must live our toilsome lives twice over, as it was
the mournful privilege of Ulysses to descend twice to the shades. All
that neutral ground of character which stood between vice and virtue;
or which, in fact, was indifferent to neither, where neither properly
was called in question--that happy breathing-place from the burden
of a perpetual moral questioning--the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia
of hunted casuistry--is broken up and disfranchised as injurious to
the interests of society. The privileges of the place are taken away
by law. We dare not dally with images or names of wrong. We bark
like foolish dogs at shadows. We dread infection from the scenic
representation of disorder; and fear a painted pustule. In our anxiety
that our morality should not take cold, we wrap it up in a great
blanket surtout of precaution against the breeze and sunshine.

I confess for myself that (with no great delinquencies to answer for)
I am glad for a season to take an airing beyond the diocese of the
strict conscience,--not to live always in the precincts of the law
courts,--but now and then, for a dream-while or so, to imagine a world
with no meddling restrictions--to get into recesses, whither the
hunter cannot follow me--

--Secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove--

I come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher and more healthy
for it. I wear my shackles more contentedly for having respired the
breath of an imaginary freedom. I do not know how it is with
others, but I feel the better always for the perusal of one of
Congreve's--nay, why should I not add even of Wycherley's--comedies. I
am the gayer at least for it; and I could never connect those sports
of a witty fancy in any shape with any result to be drawn from them to
imitation in real life. They are a world of themselves almost as much
as a fairyland. Take one of their characters, male or female (with
few exceptions they are alike), and place it in a modern play, and
my virtuous indignation shall rise against the profligate wretch as
warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire; because in a modern play
I am to judge of right and wrong, and the standard of _police_ is
the measure of _poetical justice_. The atmosphere will blight it.
It cannot thrive here. It is got