It is a distinct libel. No one save a historian would now
read the corrupting works of Mrs. Aphra Behn; and yet it is a fact
that those novels were read aloud among companies of ladies. A man
winces now if he is obliged to turn to them; the girls in the "good
old times" heard them with never a blush. Wherever we turn we find the
same steady advance. Can any creature be more dainty, more sweet, more
pure, than the ordinary English girl of our day? Will any one bring
evidence to show that the girls of the last century, or of any other,
were superior to our own maidens? No evidence has been produced from
literature, from journals, from family correspondence, and I am pretty
certain that no evidence exists. Practically speaking, the complaints
of the decline of morality are merely uttered as a mode of showing the
talker's own superiority.
XVI.
"RAISING THE LEVEL OF AMUSEMENTS."
It is really most kind on the part of certain good people to
reorganise the amusements of the people; but, as each reorganiser
fancies himself to be the only man who has the right notion, it
follows that matters are becoming more and more complicated. For
example, to begin with literature, a simple person who has no taste
for profundities likes to read the old sort of stories about love's
pretty fever; the simple person wants to hear about the trials and
crosses of true lovers, the defeat of villains--to enjoy the kindly
finish where faith and virtue are rewarded, and where the unambitious
imagination may picture the coming of a long life of homely toil and
homely pleasure.
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