What, then, is the distinction between badness and ugliness? For our present purpose I believe it to be this: badness depends on immutable laws, while ugliness, at any rate that of the kind which concerns us here, is a matter of convention. Virtue, with all due apologies to Mr. Lecky and to many other eminent scholars, has certain standards that do not vary with place or time. Let us grant that a given act may be good to-day and bad to-morrow, good in Tasmania and bad in Pennsylvania; this is beside the question. We have here to do with the classification of this particular act in certain fixed categories that of themselves remain bad or good. The act of cutting off a man’s head may be good if the cutter is the public executioner, and bad if he be a private citizen; one may shoot an attacking highwayman but not an innocent friend. The reason for these differences, however, is that in one case the killing is murder while in the other it is not; murder itself always was and always will be bad. Impropriety or indecency, on the other hand, is purely arbitrary. Personally I am inclined to think this true of all beauty, but it is unnecessary to obtrude this view here. Impropriety is a violation of certain social customs, and although I should be the last to question the observance of those customs, we must grant, I think, that they rest on foundations quite other than those of right and wrong. In fact decency, instead of being on the same plane with morality, comes nearer to being properly ranked with those fixed categories mentioned above, which are themselves always good or bad, but which may or may not include a given act, according to circumstances. Murder is always bad, but whether the taking of life is or is not murder depends on the circumstances; it may depend entirely on motive. So indecency is always bad, but whether a given act or object is or is not indecent depends on circumstances; it may depend not only on motive but on locality or environment. Objects and acts of the highest sanctity in one country may be regarded as low and vulgar in another--the standard varies from class to class, from one occupation to another; almost from family to family. One may mention, in all innocence, that which may bring a blush to the cheek of some listener, simply because of this instability of standard in the matter of impropriety. To this class of things particularly refers the celebrated dictum: “There is no thing in heaven or earth, Horatio, but thinking makes it so.” This is unexceptionable Christian Science, but it is not quite true. A higher authority than Shakespeare has asserted that by thinking one cannot make a single hair white or black; and this surely accords with the results of experience. Likewise no one by thinking can make badness goodness or the reverse. But whether a thing be improper or not depends entirely on thinking. Thinking makes it so. It is improper for a Mohammedan woman to expose her face in