irreligious. Having no faith, they perceive no faith anywhere. Ingenious almost to diablerie, they will prove to you by critical theory that art is simply the method of getting most sweets out of one's living sensations—the knack, to put it metaphorically, of sucking your lollipop so as to extract out of it the best possible flavour. If a man speaks to them earnestly, they will smile and style him "didactic." If a man writes for them religiously, they will inwardly congratulate themselves on having passed quite beyond "that sort of thing." These men—and alas! these women—compose some of our poetry, paint some of our pictures, write a good deal of our formal criticism. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the poor bewildered public shakes its head over the terrible accounts put before it, and begins slowly but surely to share the scepticism and flippancy it at first considered so shocking? Is it any wonder that Leg-literature flourishes? Is it any wonder that wise men like Mr. Ruskin rail, and philosophers like Mr. Carlyle despair? There lies the seat of the cancer—there, in the Bohemian fringe of society. Will no courageous hand essay to cut it out? Will no physician come to put his finger in the true seat of the sore? There it is, spreading daily like all cancerous diseases, foul in itself and creating foulness. If we cannot destroy it altogether with some terrible caustic, let us at least take precautions to prevent it from spreading. The disease is worth the remedy, the remedy is worth a prayer.
It is my business in the present pages to deal only with one form of the moral phenomenon, to regard Sensualism only in so far as it affects contemporary poetry. My plan
