Yet its wickedness is a subject that touches us less than its stupidity; for it is less of a daily experience, and has more denouncers to lash it. We also know less of its brilliancy than of its meanness; for the latter is visible in the smallest gathering and in the most insignificant place, while the former exists but in half a dozen great capitals, and even there only among one or two circles or strata of society. Paris and Vienna have their dull and respectable society, as well as other places, and they are by far the most numerous, and, we will venture to say it, the meanest. Downright license seems, strangely enough, to carry with it a certain reckless _bonhomie_ which, while it is far from Christian charity, yet has many outward signs of it. The most abandoned are often found to be the most generous, or even philanthropic, while the pharisaical little‐ mindedness of many eminently “respectable” members of society is a constant reproach to the faith on which they pride themselves. The “milk of human kindness” is often scarce amid “saints” of a certain school. _Noli me tangere_ is their motto, and an appropriate one, indeed; for you might tap their hearts till doomsday, and never draw from them one drop of the generous wine of sympathy. Not that all persons whose path of life crosses your own by the chances bred of social conventionalities are of this type; many are generous, kind‐hearted, impulsive; but it is part of the indictment we bring against “society” that its rules so smother this amiable individuality as seldom to allow it to be revealed to you save by some chance occurrence. You may have a “calling acquaintance” with a woman apparently frivolous (though obviously good‐natured), and whose mind you judge to be probably as shallow as her conversation. Some sudden misfortune comes upon you, and, of all your acquaintances, this is, perhaps, the only one who will blossom into a friend. In emergencies, her native good sense and affectionate heart burst their artificial bonds, resume their proper place, and flow out in deeds of refined and considerate kindness. She will prove to have presence of mind, delicacy of heart, an active power of sympathy. This is the sort of woman you would choose to have by your dying‐bed, or to whom you would consign the care of your children under unhappy circumstances, whether of poverty or absence—the woman whose nerve would not fail her in a hospital, and who would march boldly into a prison with bright looks and cheerful words, ever thinking of others before herself. But had it not been for an untoward accident, you might never have distinguished her from the herd of ordinary morning‐callers. She goes through her part in society as glibly and cheerfully as your gray parrot, who is ever ready to repeat his lesson when the proper cue is given him, or as readily as your pet lap‐dog, which has no objection to stand on its hind legs in a corner, and