that steals its name until the real thing is loathed because the
imposture is loathsome. Literary traditions spring up in which the
libertine and profligate--Tom Jones and Charles Surface are the
heroes, and decorous, law-abiding persons--Blifil and Joseph
Surface--are the villains and butts. People like to believe that
Nell Gwynne has every amiable quality and the Bishop's wife every
odious one. Poor Mr. Pecksniff, who is generally no worse than a
humbug with a turn for pompous talking, is represented as a
criminal instead of as a very typical English paterfamilias
keeping a roof over the head of himself and his daughters by
inducing people to pay him more for his services than they are
worth. In the extreme instances of reaction against convention,
female murderers get sheaves of offers of marriage; and when
Nature throws up that rare phenomenon, an unscrupulous libertine,
his success among "well brought-up" girls is so easy, and the
devotion he inspires so extravagant, that it is impossible not to
see that the revolt against conventional respectability has
transfigured a commonplace rascal into a sort of Anarchist
Saviour. As to the respectable voluptuary, who joins Omar Khayyam
clubs and vibrates to Swinburne's invocation of Dolores to "come
down and redeem us from virtue," he is to be found in every
suburb.


TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

We must be reasonable in our domestic ideals. I do not think that
life at a public school is altogether good for a boy any more than
barrack life is altogether good for a soldier. But neither is home
life altogether good. Such good as it does, I should say, is due