Vulgarity.

was correct to be languid , weak , dyspeptic . Brummel thought he had once eaten a pea . Heroes of romance were pale , precocious youths , and the principal charm of their heroine was hereditary consumption or a spinal complaint . It was vulgar to wear

thick shoes or Avarm raiment , but you might laugh . The fashionable defects Avere all physical . These were the days of the wits , the tellers of good stories , the sayers of good things ; of the men and Avomen Avhose sparkling tittle-tattle has become a lost art , and Avhose recollections form a literature of their OAVII . It was not a

better age than this . The veneering bore a high polish , but it Avas very thin . I am recalling it simply to show what it considered vulgar , and thus demonstrate the instability of vulgarity . They Avere alloAved to be mentally natural—we to be so

physically . We may have the muscles of a prize-fighter , the appetite of Cormoran , wear two-inch soles to our brogues , aud ulsters under which our grandfathers Avould have fainted ; but ive may not laugh . If a new Sydney Smith Avere to come amongst

us he would hold the position assigned to the jester of the Middle Ages . We sneer at the raconteur of a party IIOAV and call him its'funny man . ' 'Fellow stood on his head all dinner time , by Jove ! ' Avould probably be the criticism of a second Macaulay by our golden youth . It is vulgar to be amusing ; ' bad form ' to be amused . Physical force prevails . Iu

poetry , fiction , ancl ou the stage a gross sensualism reigns paramount' To be interesting , the heroine of the period must have a splendid physique soiled by physical love making , and her soul trembling on the ' ragged edge' of impurity . I suppose that

spirits have ' rushed together at the touching of the lips' time out of mind ; only it has not always been considered decent to put all the details into print . Kissing Avas all right , ' consule planco , ' but talking about it Avas vulgar . "

NOAV in all this Ave fully concur , but Ave someAvhat doubt whether , after all , the Avriter has done more , so to say , than touch the outside circumference of the evil , whether he has not rather only just skimmed over the surface , not plunged certainly into the living depths below . For as Ave add , that as a general portion , all that he has advanced is quite true , yet he

might have gone much further and said freely and rightly a great deal more ' ad rem , ' than he has said . It may be that his modesty , or his ingenuousness , or any thing else you like , has spoiled a most admirable paper . But as his fault is clearly one of defect

not of excess , Ave venture to seek to sup . plement Avhat , for some reason or other best known to himself , he has omitted to point out , and which we feel , at all events that he will agree Avith us . " Vulgarity" per se has been a fair

theme for the satirist and the sarcastic . It has existed in all ages , under various forms , and the vulgarity of one age is not that of another , and , as the Avriter in " Temple Bar" fairly puts it , Avhat our forefathers considered vulgarity Ave do not

, and vice versa . Still Ave think that even on this point the Avriter has not been so lucid in his details as be might have been . Vulgarity may , we think , be more properly divided into Avhat is essential and Avhat is accidental .

Essential vulgarity is that which seems innate in some people , Avho never can rise above the level of grovelling ideas and loAv-lived tastes .

Many are vulgar in thought , in word , and in deed , in all their surroundings , and in all their habits . We have also to deal hourly , aud often offensively , Avith the vulgarity of Avealth , of the " rotourier" of the " parvenu , " of those Avho cannot ever lose si ght of No . 1 ,

and who are the most " exigeant , " the most intractable , the most intolerant , and the most overbearing of human beings ! To these society is nothing , life is nothing , their neighbours are nothing , their friends and relations are nothing , but as they

minister to the whims and fancies of a '' diseased imagination " or to that purseproud vulgarity Avhich is so odious and so antagonistic to the intellectual and the independent . There are some people Avho seem to fancy

that the Avorld is composed of " men , women , and themselves , " and their whole vieAv of everything and everyone is bounded ahvays by the narrow horizon of their own personal proclivities or individual op inions . Such persons remain vulgar , for the most part , to the end of the story—theirs is that " vulgaritas in se " which nothing can