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garbage and the sensual attractions which the English people listen to and contemplate. Far better would it be that the door of every entertainment in London should be closed than that this condition of

things should continue. Our poor are fast becoming brutal and our rich licentious. Historians speak with disgust of the age of Charles II., while the purveyors of our pleasures are endeavouring to reproduce it. If this calamity is to be prevented, no time can be lost. It will not do for our moral philosophers to console themselves with the reflection that things might right themselves at the last. In the face of Grand Duchesses (et hoc genus omne), sensational trials, and all other distinctive glories of this much-vaunted age, instant action is needed, and those who have power or influence with mankind are terribly culpable if it is not at once put into force. No gloomy picture of society has been drawn; at least if it be gloomy it is true, as the impartial surveyor of the present condition of things will allow. A pure press must be accompanied by a pure stage, if the prestige of the country is not to wane, and the much-dreaded shooting of that fearful Niagara is to be avoided. Space is needed to pursue the analogy, or it might be shown that our taste in music, like our taste in the matter of the drama, is becoming low and vitiated. We must, however, acknowledge, that a sturdy fight to uphold classical musicwhich means good music-is being maintained by the directors of the Monday Popular Concerts, and those lovers of music who are striving to rehabilitate the English Opera at the Crystal Palace and other places. Yet, on the whole, it will be admitted that the most glorious performances yield, in point of pecuniary success, to the inane songs of the music-hall, and the lower we go the greater is the pecuniary profit reaped. This, perhaps, is partly owing to the combination of beer with music at most of the music-halls. John Bull apparently likes to wash down his melody with a mixture of cocculus indicus and other mysterious ingredients, called in the aggregate beer, or the national beverage. So that wherever we go we find that the one great desideratum of the present age is purity. Let us hope that we may get it, though it is but too evident that the Augean stable of our morals forbids the accomplishment of the wish for some time to come.

Further one buttress of our national morality at the present day is especially weak, viz., the pulpit. There never was an age when it exhibited such a hopeless mass of well-nigh unrelieved incompetency and dulness. There are numbers of ministers, both in the Church and amongst the Dissenters, who would be better employed in hewing wood and drawing water than in meddling with things which are too

high for them. If we ask them from whence they draw their diploma of fitness for the work in which they are ostensibly engaged, they answer, "It is the Lord's doing;" to which we can only add, "and it is marvellous in our eyes." Earnestness, the quality most in demand at this moment of the world's need, is most lacking where it ought to be most abundant. The Devil seems to have really the most active votaries. And yet there is no stint of a sentimental craving after purity in the pulpit; but what is required is a terrible denunciation of the wrongs and vices of the time, not a mealy-mouthed company of preachers whose only mission seems to be to scatter flowers on some imaginary path to Heaven. While our priests feebly enter a protest against Satan and his achievements generally, the world is being ruined. The kid-gloved drones of the pulpit tell us languidly of the betrayal in the Garden, while England is one great Gethsemane of treachery and hypocrisy with respect to principles which she professedly holds dear. There is room for more than one John Knox at this day, if such men were but to rise. When we couple the vices of the age with its credulity-specially noting in the latter category the infatuation of intellectual men who accept the doctrine of the infallibility of a human being-we may well ask whether the English nation is not about to shoot Niagara. And next to the undeniable cruelty and laxity of the time may be classed the boast about England being so pre-eminently a religious nation. Long-suffering indeed must be that Creator who hears us boast so loudly of our piety in the midst of much that disgusts even His creatures. What we want now, and what we must have, is more Christ and less Christianity. Narrow creeds must give place to a broader sympathy. We must also tear the mask of insincerity from the brow of mankind, where it has so long been worn. Some progress is being made, but it is in intellect, and not in morals. Our politics have very little to do with our regeneration as a people. It is in vain to work out political freedom if moral slavery is allowed to remain. With all our enlightenment, it must be confessed that the forces of evil have been gradually gathering strength of late years. It may suit some, in their intellectual pride, to deny this statement, but a close examination of society and literature generally will but establish its truth. Individual effort, combined with the labours of an honest press and a fearless pulpit, may yet avert from us the total social ruin predicted by certain studious observers of the signs of the times; but the strong arm must be stretched forth to save. It would indeed be lamentable were the English oak, which has given the acorn-seed of progress to other nations, to wither and die ere it attained the maturity which is

within its reach. The poet sighs after the golden year, and truly foreshadows it when he says,

"That unto him who works, and feels he works,

This same grand year is ever at the doors."

But no solid and glorious works can be accomplished while one half the world is running after some new and foolish thing, and the other half is engaged in providing the idols clamoured for. Yet, after all, to sum up, we must and shall rise to something better. There are signs of such desired consummation-faint streaks in the midnight darkness. But the sun will have only truly risen when our present enervating tendencies die and true manliness arises. To "respectability" must succeed virtue; to cant, religion; to creeds,

God.

GEORGE SMITH.

THE FALL OF PARIS.

A DIARY OF THE PRUSSIAN OCCUPATION OF VERSAILLES.

BY A BRITISH RESIDENT.

Versailles, Wednesday, Oct. 5.
The historical

HE KING got in at six this evening.

event was great, but the show was small. His Prussian Majesty was in a solitary carriage with his son, both most unroyally dusty (dust is like death, it respects nothing), and if the Staff in all its glory had not been assembled outside the Prefecture, Versailles would really have seen no sign of the coming of its conqueror.

How the other great men came in, I cannot tell; I know that Moltke, Bismarck, Steinmetz, Roon, have all arrived, but they must have carefully kept out of sight, for there has been no sign of them to common eyes like ours. And yet I and Marie stood patiently in the crowd for something like two hours, so impatient were we to look at Bismarck. We whiled away the time by looking for new uniforms amongst the Staff, which was waiting like ourselves, as if it was made up of nobodies. It gave us a lofty notion of the tremendous deference with which the King is treated to see those dukes and princes and those two hundred officers biding the coming of their master, all of them with their best clothes on. Russell's jacket was there again -this time it was a brown one; all the dukes were talking to him. Landells was leaning against a tree, with clear space all round him, sketching the scene for the Illustrated London News and chatting to the Prince of Weimar; Skinner, of the Daily News, was propped up against the railings of the Prefecture. I saw no other correspondents, but England was specially represented by Colonel Walker, whose red coat stood out in a blaze of glory amongst the Prussian uniforms; it was as luminous as a tropical sun.

We went home through the dust and the crowd of officers, all breaking off in every direction to their dinners. We told what we had seen, but nobody seemed to care, though Marie was in imaginative mood, and gave a highly decorated description of the sight. Indeed, I rather think that Amélie and I have been more sulky than

ever this evening, possibly as a mute, unconscious protest against the presence of King William. It is really abominably hard to live in a conquered town, and to see your invaders treat it as if they were at home.

Thursday, Oct. 6.

To-day we have seen a show which all the idlers in Europe would have wished to look at; and which, momentarily at least, has diminished our ill-temper, for it has given us an emotion and provided us with something to talk about.

We heard this morning that the fountains were to play before the King at two o'clock. We thought it wonderful that his Majesty should be in such a hurry on the subject; but that, after all, was no affair of ours, and we supposed either that he does not mean to stop here, or that he is so enthusiastic an admirer of falling water that he could not stifle his impatience.

Our first idea was to stay at home, for we had seen both King and fountains a good many times before. But we were assured that all the new comers would be there, and that we should be able to look at them in detail. So we went, though Amélie hesitated to the last moment, urging "Ce n'est pas la place d'une Française."

"See

The great terrace was absolutely filled with officers, many of them bearing royal or historic names; all of them in the splendour of bright uniforms, with decorations glittering in the sun; and with that special interest round them which always attaches to men who are fresh from deeds of valour with which the world has rung. Russell stood there with us telling us who they were, and though I didn't catch the hard German names he gave them, I never shall forget his animated description of their acts. that man in light-blue, with the yellow collar. He is colonel of dragoons. He led twelve hundred men at Gravelotte; he charged five times, and brought back two hundred. He was himself the only officer untouched. And look! that slight young fellow with the iron cross, there behind the Prince, he had seventeen wounds at Woerth; none of them were dangerous—and here he is again. Ah! there goes Count Seckendorff, a most charming fellow. He is aide-decamp to the Princess Royal, who has lent him to her husband for the campaign; he was with the English army in Abyssinia. And here comes. . . "Monsieur Russell," interrupted Amélie; "voici un soldat Français que j'ai l'honneur de vous présenter ; je ne connais pas son nom, mais je vous jure qu'il a du se battre aussi bravement que tous ces horribles Prussiens." And Amélie, with deep emotion, held out her parasol towards a poor wounded Frenchman who was

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