supposed to possess in some sphere Wakefield's time-and what poor pretender was the demi-monde Demi-monde is accepted in England, not from any resources it may possess of agreeability, not from its clever fac-simile of something infinitely better than it, but simply because it is supposed to be fashionable-just as Brown drinks dry champagne, making believe the while that he likes it best. Exactly the same result occurs when demi-monde invades "the Family." Even in the Vicar of Au fond the nation is not enamoured of wickedness, and the English people never tried, as the French did, to put Virtue in the dock and arraign her by an indictment. Their fault is, however, a poor and slavish adulation of whatever is done by somebody higher and richer than themselves, and an abortive struggle to imitate it at any sacrifice. The Frenchman likes libertinage, partly because of the license it gives him to be whatever his humour prompts him, and chiefly because he knows it to be wrong. The Italian likes it because it conduces to the indulgence of that indolence which finds even the commonest observances of society a bore and an infliction. The German likes it as a sort of spice thrown into the flat beer of his daily existence-a something to heighten flavour, and yet not invalidate the liquor. But John Bull has no sympathy with any of these tastes, and he would reject the practice and repudiate the principle to-morrow if he had not observed that they found favour with some distinguished individual who lived in Belgravia, and of whose receptions he read in the "Morning Post." We are, in fact, as to morals, pretty much what the French were as to religion in '95. Wraxill tells us that once, when getting his hair dressed by a barber in Paris, he chanced to inquire if the man were a Catholic; on which he let fall his comb and scissors in horror, and, stepping back, exclaimed "Monsieur! I am a humble man, it is true, and a barber; but I'd beg you to understand that I have just as little religion as any man in France." If we wanted a proof that demimonde is not congenial to our national tastes, we have it in our divorce courts. No people of Europe know so little how to conciliate vice with decorum as the English. We understand none of those refinements by which wickedness is to be draped into something gracefully mysterious and attractive. With our unromantic realism, we want to seem as vicious as we are; and hence we exhibit a picture of conjugal life in these actions for separation unequalled throughout the world for their coarseness. I will not say that they "do these things better in France," but they do them more decently, more becomingly. The great difference is perhaps this: infidelity with us is a commercial transaction; foreigners make seduction à branch of the fine arts. For my own part, I am always afraid for the future of an individual who wants to have his vices cheap; I have the same foreboding for the destiny of a nation that desires to be wicked at small cost. There is some check to abandonment when its indulgence requires a strong purse; there is none when it can be practised without trenching on fortune, or invading those resources by which people exhibit themselves to their neighbours as decorous citizens, thoroughly respectable ” ! ! I will not say how many years it is since I first saw Florence. Of course, I was only a boy, a mere child at the time; but certainly there was not, throughout Europe, a city to compare with it in social excellence and enjoyment. Though only a grand-ducal Court, many of the ministers accredited to it took rank as ambassadors. Our own was Lord Burghersh, than whom none sustained the honour of his country with more dignity, or dispensed the hospitalities of a high station with more elegance and urbanity. Many noble English families were amongst the residents; and Prince Demidoff-the Old Prince, as he was distinctively called-kept almost open house at San Donato, and maintained, besides, an admirable corps of French actors, who gave, twice a-week, representations at his private theatre, to which, without invitation, all persons presented to the Prince were free; and, if they pleased to come in evening dress, were also eligible to partake of the splendid supper which followed the close of the entertainment. At Lord Burghersh's there was an amateur opera given every week, admirably sustained, the chief parts being filled by the two Princes Poniatowsky, and the prima donna being the present Princess Poniatowsky. The chief direction, it is needless to say, was intrusted to the noble host, a musician of the highest attainments. Besides these, Lord Mulgrave gave his English theatricals, probably never surpassed in the ability of those who figured in them, nor in the subsequent distinction that awaited them in life. Charles Mathews, I believe, made his first appearance on these boards, and, if I mistake not, once played in a piece where three of his fellow-actors lived to be Secretaries of State in England. reverence due to those of station, as separated from others of neither station nor character-the past has much to boast over the present. It was a fatal mistake for women to suffer the present free-and-easy tone in their salons. In lesing the especial prestige that belonged to much that divided them from a class who, in mere looks and toilette, can always be their rivals: and I will say it, that he who had attempted the lounging impertinence, the self sufficient indifference to others, and the blank vacuity in all that regards agreeability, in the times I speak of, would have as certainly found himself excluded from society as the knave or the blackleg. Lord Burghersh kept a pack of harriers, and hunted thrice a-week, There was a Jockey Club and a good racing subscription; and what with riding parties, whist, dancing, ecarté, and flirting, it was wonderful how rapidly time flew over, and how grave our faces grew when the calls of Parliament and the de-them as ladies, they surrendered mands of the London season came to throw their shadows over the glorious spring-time in the Cascine. I am certain it is not the mere spirit of the laudator temporis acti that prompts me to speak of these things in such eulogy. I can acknowledge bow in many ways the world of the present day has gained on the world of my boyhood. One travels better and faster; one dines better at small cost; the newspapers are more interesting, more varied, better written, and in a tore more congenial to the best spirit of society. Intercourse, generally, is safer than it used to be; we have some Bores, but few Bullies; but I say it advisedly-society has not now, as it bad then, that marvellous flavour of high-hearted pleasure, that racy enjoyment of people who were not too languid to be brilliant, nor too lackadaisical to be It is certainly a great day- -3 witty. The salt of the cleverest grand era-for the stupid people! men and the most engaging women none so dull that he cannot be inseasoned all intercourse; and the solent, none so stolid but he can effort was to keep up to the level of smoke. the pleasantest, and not, as we see it now, to bring all down to the uniform dulness of those Lord Dundrearies, who, except in their clever satirist, are the heaviest social in fliction ever an age was cursed with. The Haw-haw tone of those crea tures, whose whiskers are so familiar to us in Punch,' did not exist in those days. It was the fashion for men to be manly and for women to be feminine. I will not say that, morally speaking, there was much to the advantage of the period. It was not better, though assuredly not worse, than our present day; and in all that regards externals-in fitting delerence to ladies, in the distinctive A certain amount of bad morals has always passed muster in the world; but the ingredient never did real mischief till it was associated with bad mauners. It was a poison, but it was a poison in a well-stoppered phial. Now, the custom is not only to uncork the bottle, but, like the Swedish Prince with his scent flacon, to sprinkle the company. We have taken the level of the lowest capacities as our social standard, and voted as vulgar all capacities above the dreary insufficiency of our dullest! Make the most of it, ye ensigns and small civil servants. It can't last for ever-no more than the Whig Govermment, nor the shoddy aristocracy in America. Now they have it certainly all their Own way; and I'd back Gumsley of the 109th, with his green complexion and bis cat's mustaches, for a social success against Brinsley Sheridan, if you could bring him back, with all the wit of 'The Rivals' and all the fun of 'The Critic.' I suspect in our taste for tobacco we have grown to be Turkified, and place our El Dorado in a state of perfect "donothingness." To tell the really pleasant people of the world to take their tone from such as these, is like ordering a regiment to take their time from a corps of cripples, and to march with a shuffle to suit the step of the lame. But the thing is done, and we see it, and there is no help for it; and now, to come back to this poor city, of which I am tempted to say, as the Emperor did on his return from Elba, แ Qu'avez vous fait de cette (Florence) que je vous ai laissée si belle?" The passion for making large States may conduce to that pleasant Utopia called the Balance of Power, though I have grave doubts of it; but assuredly it does not conduce to the happiness of mankind. If so humble an obj et as happiness could occupy the lofty intelligences of statesmen, it might be worth while to consider for a moment whether small States had not, from the very fact of their unambitious position and narrow limits, immense advantages in this respect. Saxe- Weimar and Tuscany, as I knew them above thirty years ago, are the witnesses I should like to put in the box. Weimar was of course very inferior in all claims to wealth, luxury, or refinement. It was a small village-like capital, with a miniature palace, a miniature theatre, a quaint old park, and a quaint old Piatz. The Court dined at four o'clock, and, rising at six, went out to stroll, grand duke and duchess and all, in the park. Dear me! what a strange medley of simplicity and forinality, rural enjoyment and etiquette, cowslips and curtsies, many syllabled compliments and tobaccosmoke! but very soothing and tranquilising withal. If you sat down to whist with the Hoch-Wohl-Gebo ren, Herr Geheimerath, or the Staats Secretar, you could scarcely be ruined at groschen points any more than you would be driven to suicide by an unhappy passion for his yellow daughter. Then life had nothing startling, nothing sensational. There was a nice soft drowsy dulness that aided digestion, and conduced to pleasant dreams. In the evening the "society" rendezvoused in a sombre old house, with narrow windows in front and a small somewhat gloomy-looking garden behind, where lived a large old white haired man with his niece. Though a man of grand presence and imposing mien, with much dignity in his aldress, he was very fond of mixing with the young people of the company, an especi ally with a number of young Englishmen who at that period resided at Weinar for the advantages of military education, At the time I tell of, there was amongst them one who is now a duke, with one of the greatest historic names in Europe. With these generally this old gentleman frequently conversed, or, more frequently still, discoursed, telling of his travels in Italy, the objects which had held the chief place in his memory, the galleries he bad seen, the society he had frequented, the distinguished men whose acquaintance he had made; and all these with occasional touches of picturesque description, traits of humour, and now and then a deep feeling which held his little auditory in rapt astonishment that he could hold them there entranced, while they could not, when he had done, recall any of the magic by which he worked his spell. I say this because I myself remember to have tried to repeat a story he told, and once, more hazardous still, to convey some impression of how he talked; and with what lamentable failure let my present confession atone for. The task would have tried a better man, for he whom I essayed to represent was Goethe. It was only a few years before that very time I speak of, that the choice society of Florence was wont to assemble each evening at a large palace on the Arno. It is the third as you pass down from the Ponte St. Trinita. There a royal personage, albeit she had de flected from her bright sphere, re- thinker. He was witty, but with ceived, and all that was great and noble and brilliant, or, better still, beautiful, came to talk or to listen, be flattered or be worshipped, or, what I am half given to believe is nearly as good, to flatter and worship-not doing the thing grudgingly, or in any fashion of constraint, as in our prudish England we should do it, but "going in" with a will, and giving to those liquid vowels of the soft south all the ring and resonance of a deep-felt sentiment. It was a good type, that same society, of the mingled passion and weakness, the apathy, the earnestness, the vigorous energy and the voluptuous indolence of Italian life. One talker was a tall, dark-complexioned, stern-looking man, with closely-set black eyes, pre-eminent above all for that sort of brilliant discursive talk which has its charm at times for the veriest trifler and the deepest a scathing, withering, blasting wit REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY AND R. NEWMAN. through. And they much lament that, owing to his lack of judgment, higher interests than the personal reputation of a rash man should be endangered. For Mr. Kingsley is entirely and wantonly the aggressor in this dispute, Without any provocation given, he went out of his way to fling against Dr. Newman a charge to which no gentleman can patiently submit; and then, instead of retracting or apologising. for what never ought to have been written, he aggravated the offence by trying to account for it. The circumstances of the case are briefly these:- A DUEL in dialectics between Dr. Newman and Mr. Charles Kingsley is not in any sense of the term an agreeable spectacle. Both are, indeed, men of some note, each in his own way. Both have endeavoured, not without a certain measure of success, to give a bias through their writings to public opinion; and each bas his own circle of admirers, who will, doubtless, be ready to accept and to applaud whatever their favourite champion may affirm. But impartial judges see the matter in a different point of view. They regret, for very many reasons, that such a collision should have occurred. They. In the number of Macmillan's perceive that truth, which is or Magazine' for January of this year, ought to be the end of all contro- Mr. Kingsley reviewed the seventh versy, can never be elicited from and ei.hth volumes of Froude's such a war of words as ths. They "History of England,' assuming, as therefore blame Mr. Kingsley for is his wont, a high moral tone involving himself in a dispute throughout the essay, and exulting which, from the constitution of in his own and his country's Prohis mind, he was ill able to carry testantism. We are far from finding |