ablaze with sinister rumour--and then hey and halloo for a reckless, degrading, humiliating, miserable human stampede! Like infuriated maniacs men shriek and stamp and wrestle;--with brains on fire, they forget that they were born to be reasoning creatures capable of self-control;--their much boasted-of “education” avails them nothing,--and they offer to the gods a spectacle of frantic fear and ignominy of which even an untaught savage might well be ashamed. But perhaps the most noxious sign of the blight in the social atmosphere is the openly increasing laxity of morals, and the frankly disgraceful disregard of the marriage tie. Herein the British aristocracy take the lead as the choicest examples of the age. Whatever Europe or America may show in the way of godless and dissolute living, we are unhappily forced to realize that there are men in Great Britain, renowned for their historic names and exclusive positions, who are content to stand by, the tame witnesses of their own marital dishonour, accepting, with a cowardice too contemptible for horsewhipping, other men’s children as their own, all the time knowing them to be bastards. We have heard of a certain “nobleman” who,--to quote Holy Writ,--“neighed after” another man’s wife to such an extent, that to stop the noise, the obliging husband accepted £60,000, a trifling sum, which was duly handed over. Whether the gentleman who neighed, or the gentleman who paid, was the worst rascal, must be left to others to determine. It was all hushed up quite nicely,--and both parties are received “in the best society,” with even more attention than would be shown to them if they were clean and honest, instead of being soiled and disreputable. The portrait of the lady whose damaged virtue was plastered up for £60,000 is often seen in pictorials, with appended letterpress suitably describing her as a lily-white dove of sweet purity and peace. One blames the sinners in this sordid comedy less than the “fashionable” folk who tolerate and excuse their conduct. Sinners there are, and sinners there always will be,--modern Davids will always exist who seek after Bathsheba, and do their level best to get Uriah the Hittite comfortably out of the way,--but that they should be encouraged in their sins and commended for them, is quite another story. Apart from the pernicious influence they exercise on their own particular “set,” the example of conduct they give to the nation at large, not only arouses national contempt, but in some cases, where certain notable politicians are concerned, may breed national disaster.