The Writing On the Ground

Stay! If so well you play the réles, Why not enact dramatic scrolls ? You would be welcome of the stage To amuse and to instruct the age— A shining light in Opera-Bouffe : Giton, and Judas, and Tartufe! To which I need only append one brief allusion to cold evidence. A GALAHAD IN GOMORRAH. It is very fortunate that even in times when the greatest laxity of morals prevails, in England at least there is always found some austere and noble soul to protest against decadence ; to be a witness in the midst of corruption, that there is a standard of pure and lofty thought, a City of the Soul, forti- fied against all evil, and whose artillery can over- whelm the savage hordes of impurity. We do not think any one will accuse us of flat- tery in saying that Lord Alfred Douglas is just such a person, and this is the more striking pheno- menon as it is so rare to find true moral greatness associated with poetical genius. We write thus in order to direct his attention to a little book published some years ago in Paris, but reprinted in an expur- gated form in England; a book of so abominable a character that I am sure it is only necessary to direct his lordship’s attention to it to raise a very considerable turmoil. We quote one or two passages > “ Their (men’s) eyes for beauty are but sightless holes, Spurned in the dust, Uranian passion lies. Dull fools decree the sweet unfruitful love, In Hellas counted more than half divine, Less than half human now.’” And again :— “0, food to my starved eyes, (That gaze unmoved on wanton charms of girls) Fair as the lad on Latmian hills asleep.’ 5