Some of them may like Rossetti’s pictures, and many of them Burne Jones’s, but as a rule they have an equal admiration for Raphael, Tintoretto, Correggio, and others. They cannot be classed among the mystics on that account. As few of them write books, they cannot be called graphomaniacs. Nor do they show any signs of being egomaniacs. Nor have they any physical stigmata of degenerates. The heads of this class are generally beautifully shaped, and the ears of the women are by all foreigners who visit this country proclaimed to be the finest and daintiest ears in the world. Personal beauty among this class is decidedly on the increase; for each generation seems to be better-looking, and the youngest is generally the most beautiful. The latter fact, we may mention, is no doubt due to the increasing tendency of the upper and middle classes in England to beautify their homes and to surround themselves with exquisite objects, as well as to a more intellectual education, pastimes, pleasures, and arts. Why then must these readers of Tolstoi’s works be classed as degenerate? It is not denied that in England there are people who exhibit signs of mental degeneration, but they are to be found more in literary and political circles than in the close ranks of the upper and middle classes. We would not undertake to class them under the headings established by the alienist, and it would be difficult even for Nordau to do so. Perhaps they are not sufficiently advanced in degeneracy to be so classed. Such signs as they exhibit are some of them as old as the hills, and others are clearly the manifestations of that intellectual and moral daze which generally follows on the destruction of the religious foundations of belief involved in the acceptance of belief in scientific atheism. But the most prevalent form of degeneracy is that which is palpably the result of financial depression, felt not only in financial but artistic and literary circles. For reasons which we leave to the economists to explain, England’s commerce and agriculture seem to have come to a dead-lock. The result seems to be diminished incomes all round. Many artists, _littérateurs_, and politicians are at their wits’ end how to make an income, and there can be little doubt that this has fostered a certain amount of demoralization. Extraordinary attempts are made to produce sensational pictures, to write eccentric poetry, to send forth books that will shock, and to treat of risky subjects on the stage. Politicians are obliged to make politics a profession, and, as popularity is indispensable to it as a profitable profession, they worship majorities. Any one who is acquainted with London cannot doubt for a moment that these forms of demoralization spring entirely from a necessity of making a living. Artists, authors, and politicians of this class are no more inclined to lunacy than the vast class of people who do distasteful work, as well as those who have to appear