“The fact that your uncle and I have read it is an answer, dear,” said Lady Blount, with some dignity. “Then I will read it, too,” said Stella. She took it up to her room and opened it in the middle; but after a few pages her cheeks grew hot and her heart cold, and she threw the book far out of the window. It was a foul, corrupt world, and all the inhabitants thereof save herself gazed upon its foulness, and took part in its corruption, not only without a shudder, but positively with zest. In the sane lucidity of her mind, humanity was scarcely less intolerable than in the nightmare of her day and night of horror. To perform an act of ethical judgment, no matter how rough and elementary, one must have a standard. The fact, too, of ethical judgment being inherent in the conditions of human existence, implies faultiness in those conditions. In an ideal state of being, such as the evangelical heaven, where there is no faultiness, there can be no possible process of judgment, and thereby no standard whereby to measure right and wrong. If a dweller about the Throne were to visit the earth, and even limit his visit to Cheltenham or a New England township, the record of his impressions would be, from our point of view, both grotesque and unjust. He would have no standard, save the infinite purity of the Godhead (and an infinite standard is a contradiction in terms) whereby to measure human actions. He would be a lost and horrified seraph. His opinions would not be a criticism, but an utterly valueless denunciation of life.