The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-12-13


 to believe. Divorce can be obtained only on the ground of conjagal in- fidelity, accompanied, if the charge is made against the husband, by cruelty. The number of divorces does not appear to increase faster than the growth of population, so that we have no special uneasiness on this score since the first two or thres years of the courts working. There seems to be no ground for assum- ing any decline in the morality of the middle classes, or of what may be called the non fashionable section of the upper class. Much, however, is said about the fashionable section, which, although small in numbers, is influential from the wealth and rank of those who compose it, and attracts public notice to a degree even beyond its political influe7ce. Peo- pie say .thatsnot only are irregularities increasingly frequent, but that there is less decorum In manners, less reserve in the intercourse of men with women, less regard for propriety in language Ger tain 1t is that the ladies in some of these fashionable sets, the married quite as much as the unmarried ones, permit themselves to be more easy and familiar in the company of men than would have been approved by their mothers or grand mothers thirty years ago. Some will romp; others frequent the smoking-room at the country house where they are stay ing; others seek to join in mems amuse- ments, and learn to talk about shooting or racing. Subjects are discussed, books are owned to have been read, which would not be tolerated outside these fashionable circles. Evep where goss p, which, of course, is very rife in such a society, has no positive transgression to suspect, there is an unmistakable tendency towards fastness in conduct ard slanginess in language. Within the last decade there has arisen a groupof journals devoted to social gossip, which may be seen on the drawing room tables ot these persons, al though their contents are sometimes scandalous, and often unpleas antly suggestive. They are read with avidity by a part of the middle class, and go even to India, where people fancy that through them they keep abreast of the doings of high society; but 1t is also the fashionable class which supports them, for its members enjoy the importance of being written about, and sometimes are not above earning a disgraceful guinea by contributing malicious paragraphs In book ofrecollections published lately by the brother of duke, he owned to having done this, and everybody knows of other instances.
 It must not be supposed that this infec- tion has spread far. The great bulk of our cultivated society is untouched by it One may live in the capital of England and haya l. sires, of the kind which an intelligent stranger would most wish to see-the company of men of letters and science, the heads of the great professions, the prominent figures in politics without knowing anything except by hearsay of the doings of these fashionable sets They are not the best society; they are only a section even of the people of rank and wealth and the fuss made about them, both in our own journals and in the letters of correspondents to newspa- peis in the colonies and in foreign coun- tries, gives an exaggerated impression of their actual influence on English life England is doubtless the oh osen home of snobbishness, as Thackeray explained to the world long ago; yet she is not so snobbish as casual visitors or the super fcial readers ofher press are apt to fancy.
 Whatever be the area over which the deterioration spreads, it is generally ad- | mitted to exist, and people busy them 1 selves with accounting for it in the way which least wounds our national self-es- ! teem. Some set 1t down.to the influence of French literature. Paris is doubtless a sort of poison manufactory for the rest of l Europe The novels which profess to paint the life of her most depraved classes 1 are read with avidity, not only in new or raw countries which have little imagin- tive literature of their own, like Russia. | Greece, Rum ania-one may perhaps add | Spain and Porugal-but also in Eng l land and Germany. The children of luxury find our English fiction, which, | however sensational, is always decent, ! not high-spiced enough and one is told | by booksellers and the owners of circu- lating libraries in London that the de- mand for French fiction is very large, and 1 not confined to men. If this IS not . cause, 1t is at any rate a symptom, and | one which tends to aggravate the dis ease.
 Another explanation which people tre- quenty offer, and which recollect to uo'S SSSA oSsiSuS0 III lnc E EOEHtag E05L some months ago, is the influence of the heir to the throne, and those who sur round him. Although he is personally good and agreeable man, his ex- ample has not been good one, and is the more to be regretted when one com pares it with that set by his parents. The most serious, and indeed the only charge that can be brought against the queen is, that since her husbands death she has virtually abdicated her headship of so- ciety, abandoning those opportunities of maintaining the level of good morals and good manners which she used so well while she kept court in London. The social duties of the crown are now its main duties, and the way-she and her husband discharged them almos, marked new era in the history of our monarchy, which could not long survive any grave scandal attached to the sovereign. But too much i'm 2ortance has been assigned