lligencer_; let it include besides
divorce news, all cases whatever that have an interest of the same
nature for the public mind; distribute it _gratis_ to mechanics'
institutes, workmen's halls, seminaries for the young (these latter more
especially), and then you will be giving the principle of publicity a
full trial. This is what I often say to Arminius; and, when he looks
astounded, I reassure him with a sentence which, I know very well, the
moment I make it public will be stolen by the Liberal newspapers. But it
is getting near Christmas-time, and I do not mind making them a present
of it. It is this: _The spear of freedom, like that of Achilles, has the
power to heal the wounds which itself makes_."

In _Friendship's Garland_, from the very structure of the book, his
serious judgments have to be delivered by the mouth of his Prussian
friend; and here is his judgment on our public concessions to
pruriency--"By shooting all this garbage on your public, you are
preparing and assuring for your English people an immorality as deep and
wide as that which destroys the Latin nations."

But his "hedge of the law" had other thorns besides those with which he
pierced the Divorce Court and its hideous literature. He had shrewd
sarcasms for all who, by whatever method, sought to gratify "that double
craving so characteristic of our Philistine, and so eminently
exemplified in that crowned Philistine, Henry the Eighth--the craving
for forbidden fruit and the craving for legality." He poured scorn on
the newspapers which glorified "the great sexual insurrection of the
Anglo-Teutonic race," and the author who extolled the domestic life of
Mormonism. "Mr. Hepworth Dixon may almost be called the Colenso of Love
and Marriage--such a revolution does he make in our ideas on these
matters, just as Dr. Colenso does in our ideas on religion." He thus
forecasts the doings of a Philistine House of Commons in 1871. "Mr. T.
Chambers will again introduce that enfranchising measure, against which
I have had some prejudices--the Bill for enabling a man to marry his
deceased wife's sister. The devoted adversaries of the Contagious
Diseases Act will spread through the length and breadth of the land a
salutary discussion of this equivocal measure and of all matters
connected with it; and will thus, at the same time that they oppose
immorality, enable the followers of even the very straitest sects of
Puritanism to see life." All these various attem