devoted to the practical worship of Venus without
neglecting Priapus. He has forgotten the immortal letter of Pliny, and
the dead Roman sentinel at the post of duty. He acts like a foreigner
who should describe London from his experience at a brothel.

Philosophy comes next. Mr. Watkinson puts in a superior way the
clap-trap of Christian Evidence lecturers. If man is purely material,
and the law of causation is universal, where, he asks, "is the place for
virtue, for praise, for blame?" Has Mr. Watkinson never read the answer
to these questions? If he has not, he has much to learn; if he has, he
should refute them. Merely positing and repositing an old question is
a very stale trick in religious controversy. It imposes on some people,
but they belong to the "mostly fools."

"Morality is in as much peril as faith," cries Mr. Watkinson. Well,
the clergy have been crying that for two centuries, yet our criminal
statistics lessen, society improves, and literature grows cleaner. As
for the "nasty nude figures" that offend Mr. Watkinson's eyes in the
French Salon, we would remind him that God Almighty makes everybody
naked, clothes being a human invention. With respect to the Shelley
Society "representing the _Cenci_ and other monstrous themes," we
conclude that Mr. Watkinson does not know what he is talking about.
There is incest in the _Cenci_, but it is treated in a high dramatic
spirit as a frightful crime, ending in bloodshed and desolation. There
is also incest in the Bible, commonplace, vulgar, bestial incest,
recorded without a word of disapprobation. Surely when a Christian
minister, who says the Bible is God's Word, knowing it contains the
beastly story of Lot and his daughters, cries out against Shelley's
_Cenci_ as "monstrous," he invites inextinguishable Rabelaisian
laughter. No other reply is fitting for such a "monstrous" absurdity,
and we leave our readers to shake their sides at Mr. Watkinson's
expense.

Mr. Watkinson asks whether infidelity has "produced new and higher types
of character." Naturally he answers the question in the negative. "The
lives of infidel teachers," he exclaims, "are in saddest contrast to
their pretentious philosophies and bland assumptions." He then passes in
review a picked number of these upstarts, dealing with each of them in
a Watkinsonian manner. His rough-and-ready method is this. Carefully
leaving out of sight all the good they did, and the high example of
honest thought th