It gutters like a cheap
candle when contrasted with the steady brilliancy of the Parisian
article. Public opinion, too, holds amongst us a more formidable lash,
and wields it with a sterner and more frequent severity. But it is
impossible to deny that our society, however strict its professed code
may be, can and does produce examples of those lapses from propriety
which the superficial public deems to be typically and exclusively
continental. Not only are they produced, but their production and
their continuance are tolerated by a certain class, possibly limited,
but certainly influential.
[Illustration]
Amongst these examples, both of lapse and of toleration, the Tolerated
Husband holds a foremost place. Certain conditions are necessary
for his proper production. He must be not only easy-going, but
unprincipled,--unprincipled, that is, rather in the sense of having
no particular principles of any kind than in that of possessing
and practising notoriously bad ones. He must have a fine contempt
for steady respectability, and an irresistible inclination to that
glittering style of untrammelled life which is believed by those who
live it to be the true Bohemianism.
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