s ever expect to be the wives and mothers of such, or have they, young
and fair as many of them seem, learnt already that recklessness as to the
future which robs life of all its glory, and incarcerates the soul in a
living grave? I can see, even here, a gaiety more sad than tears. But I
need not continue my description; dancing in public rooms in the
metropolis is much the same everywhere. Of course the place is all that
Mr Caldwell says it is. I believe with him that it is as respectably
conducted as establishments of the kind can be; but at the same time Mr
Caldwell confesses it leads to drinking, and that is quite reason enough,
independently of other obvious considerations, why I come away thankful
that no wife or sister of mine is amongst the parties nightly to be met
at Mr Caldwell's _soirees dansantes_.
CREMORNE.
"In a set of pictures illustrative of Greek customs, it was quite
impossible to leave out the _hetaerae_ who gave such a peculiar colouring
to Grecian levity, and exercised so potent a sway over the life of the
younger members of the community. Abundant materials for such a sketch
exist, for the Greeks made no secret of matters of this kind; the
difficulty has been not to sacrifice the vividness of the picture of the
ordinary intercourse with these women to the demands of our modern sense
of propriety," says Professor Becker, in his truly admirable work on the
Private Life of the Ancient Greeks. In the same manner, and for the same
reason, the modern sense of propriety is supposed to be in the way of any
very graphic description of Cremorne; yet we have hetaerae almost as
bewitching as Aspasia or the Corinthian Lais; and if our students, and
learned clergy, and holy bishops write long articles about the Athenian
Dionysia only held once a year, why should we not speak of ours which
last all the summer, and the scene of which is Cremorne? At the Dionysia
the most unbridled merriment and drunkenness were the order of the day,
and were held quite blameless. For a while the most sober-minded bade
adieu to the stringency of habit, following the well-known Greek maxim--
"Ne'er blush with drink to spice the feast's gay hour,
And, reeling, own the mighty wine-god's power."
So it is in Cremorne. If Corinth had her groves sacred to Aphrodite, so
has Cremorne. It offends our modern sense of propriety to speak of such
matters. English people only see what they wish to see. If you ar
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