The Parnassians and the Decadents have no proclaimed creed or any programme, and their own opinion of their philosophy is of the haziest kind. We are therefore far from asserting that we have here interpreted them as they would interpret themselves. Whatever may be said of their style and their writings, they have, at least, the merit of being frank and unsophisticated, and we think it must be recognised that, whether they know it or not, they hold themselves up as the “frightful examples” of the chaotic state into which creeds, principles, morals, are falling at the end of this century. To us the moral, both of their existence and of their writing, is that the world, and especially France, stands in sore need of better churches, of a better system of philosophy, and better principles of government. These authors have rendered a great service in tearing away the hypocritical mask which society is so anxious to maintain, and thus demonstrating the great need of regenerating agencies. Of late, England has been considerably influenced by France, and the æsthetic revolt just referred to naturally affected the English, but merely as a faint echo. When Nordau, who correctly points out the connection between the Decadents in France and the extreme æsthetes in England, insinuates that the whole of English society is affected by it, he labours under a wrong impression. We have had here—and we speak purposely in the past tense—a knot of people who have believed, as Nordau states, that a work of art is its own aim, that it may be immoral. But, as he himself has stated, the æsthetic awakening in England has forced art almost in the opposite direction. We have had poets who have imitated Baudelaire and other writers of the same class, but these imitators have, by imitating many others, displayed a weakness which debars them from any great influence. There was a time with us when a thoroughly immoral decadence had a spell of influence and created a sickly literature. But the influence of this sham æstheticism is fast vanishing, since its essence has been mercilessly exposed.