opinion demands absolute decorum from a leading man. Nelson, who intrigued with his friend's wife; Wellington, who was certainly not irreproachable; and Warren Hastings, who purchased a divorced wife from a needy foreigner, would scarcely be permitted now to save the Empire. A similar change, though not quite so strongly accentuated, may be noticed everywhere. The French nation has always been taxed with a disposition to regard immorality as inevitable and venial, and so long as it is not carried to excess, nothing more than one of "such wild tricks as gentlemen will have."[1] Headers of Rabelais, of Brantome, of Bussy Rabutin, of Duclos, of Voltaire, and of Champfort, find it difficult to believe that there was a moral French society between Francis I. and Louis XVI. The best observers tell us that, at present, provincial life in France is as pure as it is anywhere, and that Paris would not be perceptibly worse than any other great city if it was not the favourite resort of profligate and wealthy Bohemians from every part.[2] It is probably true to say that the rich men, who give a tone to society, are everywhere more liable to suffer from a social scandal, and consequently more anxious to avoid it, than they have been in any previous part of the world's history. It is also true that girls and young women are better protected by law than they have ever been, and that the disposition to protect them is only kept from going further than it does by practical difficulties. The old Poor-Law of England, for instance, which threw the whole cost of an illegiti-
- ↑ "The French, even when practically chaste in their own lives, regard adultery in the male sex, at least, with a sort of amusement, not unmingled with admiration." Hamerton's French and English, p. 232.
- ↑ Hamerton's French and English, pp. 206-232, and Hamerton's Round my House, pp. 178-181.
