Then, again, as to money. In the "Sacred Circle of the Great-Grandmotherhood" I never heard the slightest reference to income. Not that the Whigs despised money. They were at least as fond of it as other people, and, even when it took the shape of slum-rents, its odour was not displeasing. But it was not a subject for conversation. People did not chatter about their neighbours' incomes; and, if they made their own money in trades or professions, they did not regale us with statistics of profit and loss. To-day every one seems to be, if I may use the favourite colloquialism, "on the make"; and the sincerity of the devotion with which people worship money pervades their whole conversation and colours their whole view of life. "Scions of aristocracy," to use the good old phrase of Pennialinus, will produce samples of tea or floor-cloth from their pockets, and sue quite winningly for custom. A speculative bottle of extraordinarily cheap peach-brandy will arrive with the compliments of Lord Tom Noddy, who has just gone into the wine trade, and Lord Magnus Charters will tell you that, if you are going to put in the electric light, his firm has got some really good fittings which he can let you have on specially easy terms. But, if in old days Health and Money were subjects eschewed in polite conversation, even more rigid was the avoidance of "risky" topics. To-day no scandal is too gross, no gossip too prurient. Respectable mothers chatter quite freely about that "nest of spicery" over which Sir Gorell Barnes presides, and canvass abominations with a self-possession worthy of Gibbon or Zola. In fact, as regards our topics of conversation, we seem to have reached the condition in which the Paris correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_ found himself when Mr. Matthew Arnold (in "Friendship's Garland") spoke to him of Delicacy. "He seemed inexplicably struck by this word _delicacy_, which he kept repeating to himself. 'Delicacy,' said he; 'delicacy, surely I have heard that word before! Yes, in other days,' he went on dreamily, 'in my fresh enthusiastic youth, before I knew Sala, before I wrote for that infernal paper----.' 'Collect yourself, my friend,' said I, laying my hand on his shoulder, 'you are unmanned.'" A similar emotion would probably be caused by any one so old-fashioned as to protest that any conceivable topic was ill-adapted for discussion in general society. An extreme decorum of phrase accompanied this salutary restriction of topics. To a boisterous youth who, just setting out for a choral festival in a country church, said that he always thought a musical service very jolly, an old Whig lady said in a tone of dignified amendment, "I trust, dear Mr. F----, that we shall derive not only pleasure but profit from the solemnity of this afternoon."