will see how false the claim is
that we bring forward of superior morality. The aristocracy who are so
eager to maintain, were, of course, not the last to feel annoyance of
the legislative restrictions on the Sabbath, and eagerly seized upon
that happy invention for dissipating the gloom and ennui ordered by Act
of Parliament to prevail on that day--the Sunday paper. It might be read
in a club-room, where the poor could not see how their betters
ordained one thing for the vulgar, and another for themselves; or in an
easy-chair, in the study, whither my lord retires every Sunday for
his devotions. It dealt in private scandal and ribaldry, only the more
piquant for its pretty flimsy veil of double-entendre. It was a fortune
to the publisher, and it became a necessary to the reader, which
he could not do without, any more than without his snuff-box, his
opera-box, or his chasse after coffee. The delightful novelty could not
for any time be kept exclusively for the haut ton; and from my lord it
descended to his valet or tradesmen, and from Grosvenor Square it spread
all the town through; so that now the lower classes have their scandal
and ribaldry organs, as well as their betters (the rogues, they WILL
imitate them!) and as their tastes are somewhat coarser than my lord's,
and their numbers a thousand to one, why of course the prints have
increased, and the profligacy has been diffused in a ratio exactly
proportionable to the demand, until the town is infested with such a
number of monstrous publications of the kind as would have put Abbe
Dubois to the blush, or made Louis XV. cry shame. Talk of English
morality!--the worst licentiousness, in the worst period of the French
monarchy, scarcely equalled the wickedness of this Sabbath-keeping
country of ours.

The reader will be glad, at last, to come to the conclusion that we
would fain draw from all these descriptions--why does this immorality
exist? Because the people MUST be amused, and have not been taught HOW;
because the upper classes, frightened by stupid cant, or absorbed in
material wants, have not as yet learned the refinement which only the
cultivation of art can give; and when their intellects are uneducated,
and their tastes are coarse, the tastes and amusements of classes still
more ignorant must be coarse and vicious likewise, in an increased
proportion.

Such discussions and violent attacks upon high and low, Sabbath Bills,
politicians, and what not, may ap