That there has always been a mixture of good and bad in society is only another way of saying that society is part of mankind; but, if I am right in my survey, the bad just now is flagrant and ostentatious to a degree which we have not known in England since 1837. There was once a moralist who spoke of the narrow path which lay between right and wrong, and similarly there used to be a Debatable Land which lay between the good and evil districts of society. It was inhabited by the people who, having no ethical convictions of their own, go very much as they are led. It was written of them long ago that-- "They eat, they drink, they sleep, they plod, They go to church on Sunday; And many are afraid of God, And more of Mrs. Grundy." As long as Mrs. Grundy was a real, though comical, guardian of social propriety--as long as the highest influences in the social system tended towards virtue and decorum--the inhabitants of the Debatable Land were even painfully respectable. But now that the "trend" (as Pennialinus calls it) is all the other way, and Mrs. Grundy has been deposed as a bore and an anachronism, they willingly follow the "smart" multitude to do evil; and so the area covered by social wickedness is much larger than in former times. In other words, the evil of society is both worse in quality and larger in quantity than it was fifty--or even twenty--years ago. Now if this be true--and I hold it to be unquestionable--what have we to set against it? I reply, the greatly increased activity of those who are really good. In old days the good were good in a quiescent and lethargic way. They were punctual in religious observances, public and private; exemplary in the home and the family, and generous to the poor. But their religion could scarcely be called active, except in so far as pottering about among the cottages, or teaching a class of well-washed children in the Sunday School, can be reckoned as active employments; and even such activities as these were as a rule confined to women. Sir Walter Scott believed that "there were few young men, and those very sturdy moralists, who would not rather be taxed with some moral peccadillo than with want of horsemanship." And, in days much more recent than the beloved Sir Walter's, men, if they were religious, studiously kept their light under a bushel, and took the utmost pains to avoid being detected in acts of charity or devotion.