In observing thus largely upon the religion of the Fashionable World, I have furnished a sufficient clue to their _moral_ character. If, from some hints which have been thrown out in this and the preceding chapter, rigid Christians should be led to infer, that it is no better than it should be, they must be reminded, that people of Fashion have a standard peculiar to themselves; and that, therefore, what are deviations from _our_ standard, are very often near approximations to _theirs_. In fact, they have acted in this respect with the same convenient policy by which they have been guided in framing every other part of their system. Pleasure being the object upon which a life of Fashion terminates, it was sagaciously enough foreseen, that an unbending morality would be utterly incompatible with the modes, and habits, and plans, of such a career. There remained therefore no alternative, but that of frittering away the strength and substance of the morality of the Gospel, till it became sufficiently tame and pliable for the sphere of accommodation in which it was to act. The consequence has been, that while they employ the same terms to denote their moral ideas, as are in use among Christians in general, yet they limit, or enlarge, their signification, as expediency requires. Thus modesty, honesty, humanity, and sobriety—names, with stricter moralists, for the purest virtues—are so modified and liberalized by Fashionable casuists, as to be capable of an alliance with a low degree of every vice to which they stand opposed. A woman may expose her bosom, paint her face, assume a forward air, gaze without emotion, and laugh without restraint, at the loosest scenes of theatrical licentiousness; and yet be, after all,—a _modest_ woman. A man may detain the money which he owes his tradesman, and contract new debts for ostentatious superfluities, while he has neither the means nor the inclination to pay his old ones; and yet be, after all,—a very _honest_ fellow. A woman of Fashion may disturb the repose of her family every night, abandon her children to mercenary nurses, and keep her horses and her servants in the streets till day-break,—without any impeachment of her _humanity_. So the gentleman of Fashion may swallow his two or three bottles a-day, and do all his friends the kindness to lay them under the table as often as they dine with him; yet, if constitution or habit secure him against the same ignominious effects, he claims to be considered—a _sober_ man.