There was a great deal to censure in this dilettante world. The fashionable life of Rome had drifted into hopeless corruption, in spite of the efforts of good men and women to stem the tide. Long before, the Senate had ordered a temple to Venus Verticordia, the Venus that turns hearts to virtue; but the new goddess was not eminently successful among the votaries of pleasure, who preferred to offer incense to the more beautiful and less respectable one. The old patricians had their faults and sins, but the new moneyed aristocracy was a great deal worse, as the _noblesse oblige_ had ceased to exist, and there were no moral ideals to take the place of it. “First let us seek for fortune,” says the satirist; “virtue is of no importance. Hail to wealth!” “His Majesty Gold” was as powerful as he is to-day, and his worship was coarser. “He says silly things, but money serves for intellect,” remarks a wit of the time. Literature declined with morals. “These are only stores and shops, these schools in which wisdom is sold and supplied like goods,” said one who mourned over the degeneracy of the times. That women should suffer with the rest was inevitable. They are not faultless; indeed, they are very simply human. If they are usually found in the front ranks of great moral movements, they are not always able to stand individually against the resistless tide which we call the spirit of the age. III The changes which a century or so had wrought in the position and education of women reacted on manners. The pagan virtues were essentially masculine ones, and even women had always been more noted for courage and stoical heroism than for the softer Christian qualities which are called feminine. In the old days they had been subservient because they were virtually slaves. For the same reason they were expected to be blindly obedient. Their servile attitude toward men was a duty; tradition gave it the force of a sentiment. Nor did the fact that many Roman women had risen above their conditions, and shown great dignity and strength, alter this general relation. It was not in their nature, however, to be timid, or tender, or clinging. Sensibility was a weakness and a trait of inferior classes. Love was a passion, or a duty, or a habit, but not a sentiment. The new woman of the golden age of Augustus was strong, dignified, self-poised, and commanding. The fashionable set accented this tone and became haughty, arrogant, and masculine in manner. It looked upon the conservative matron who was disposed to preserve old traditions as antiquated. The change, in its various gradations, was quite similar to that which passed over Anglo-Saxon women in the century that has just closed. We also have our golden mean of poise and dignity, as represented by the conservative who are yet of the new age in culture, breadth, and intelligence; we, too, have a few of the emancipated who like to demonstrate their new-found independence by a defiance of social conventions; then we