To estimate these breaches of decorum justly, we must remember how extremely recent the present English decorum is. It belongs almost exclusively to the present century, and is the mark of maturity in the public mind. In the youth of nations, as in that of individuals, grossness of a certain kind seems amusing. It makes schoolboys laugh, even when it is quite devoid of wit; and I have said that in contemporary French society it is tolerated only on condition of being witty. English society is older and graver, older by a hundred years, just as it is more experienced in politics and religion, having got through its great political and religious crises earlier. [Sidenote: External Strictness of Immoral Societies.] [Sidenote: French Reserve.] Here, as in other things, there are inequalities that quite put out the inexperienced observer. He is likely to imagine that the French have no decorum because he believes them to be immoral. He forgets that decorum is often of itself the morality of immoral societies, as going to church is the religion of the worldly. Venetian society, in Byron’s time, was extremely strict, not as to the realities of conduct, but in regard to certain outward appearances. French society, in the present day, is more strict in some respects than either English or Scotch. The behaviour of English girls, and still more that of American girls, is not positively wrong or immoral in French opinion, but it is indecorous. Even married ladies, in French country towns, have to be extremely careful not to incur the censure of public opinion, and in some towns they live in a kind of half-oriental retirement that English readers could not realise or believe. Before marriage anything more intimate than respectful politeness on the part of the gentleman, and reserve on that of the lady, is looked upon as a sign of ill breeding. After the marriage the husband’s masculine friends may remain for twenty years very distant acquaintances of his wife. It is certain that, in general, French decorum keeps up a much stronger barrier between the sexes than English decorum does. [Sidenote: French Decorum in regard to the Dead.] The French, too, are stricter observers of decorum in regard to the dead. They are very careful about funerals, and about subsequent references to the dead, either in ceremonies, such as visits to the tomb and services for the repose of the soul, or in conversation. The obligations felt by the living in consequence of a death are more stringent and more widely spread in France than in England. A French lady who knew her countrymen well enumerated a few things which were essential to any one who lived amongst them; and one of the chief of these was attendance at funerals, just as in Scotland one would recommend the observance of the Sabbath. [Sidenote: Decorum and Democracy.]