edged lover, and that
man not her husband. The intrigues which are carried on by married
people in Paris, would shock sober people in America, or at least,
outside our largest and wickedest cities.

The social state of France is exceedingly bad, and when American
religious writers profess to be shocked at the theories of the French
Socialists, I am inclined to ask them what they think of the _actual
condition_ of the French people. Some of the Socialists have been driven
to extremes, because Paris has no conception of the home and the family.
The enemies of Socialism in France are, in practice, worse than their
enemies in theory. Who is the man now ruling France? Does the world not
know him to have long been an open and thoroughly debauched libertine?
The same is true of other distinguished friends of "law and order."

The outward condition of the streets of Paris often deceives the
stranger as to the morality of the city. Said one gentleman to me, who
had spent several weeks at a fashionable Paris hotel, "Paris is one of
the quietest, pleasantest towns in the world, and as for its morals, I
can see nothing which justifies its bad reputation abroad." After a
week's stay in it, such was my own opinion. Things which are tolerated
in London and New York streets, are not permitted in the streets of
Paris. A street-walker ventured to accost an Englishman in Paris at
night, and was taken in charge by the police. But this outward fairness
only indicates that in Paris, even the vices are regulated by the state.
Bad women cannot make a display and accost men in the street, but they
abound, and what is far worse, in all the circles and gradations of
society. It is society which is corrupt there. One need but to look at
the morals of its great men, to see this at once. What is the moral
character of the first men in the empire? Bad, as no Frenchman will
deny. Some of the very men who have won in America golden opinions for
their noble and eloquent advocacy of liberty, have been in their private
lives devoid of all virtue. It only shows the social condition of the
country. Some writers deny these allegations against Paris, but no man
will who has lived in it, and is honest and candid. Paris abounds with
illegitimate children. The statistics tell the story. Ten thousand
illegitimate children are born every year in that city! What can be the
morality of any town, while such facts exist in reference to its
condition?

I hate all ca