any sort of publicity.  And while husband and wife are one to each other, they are two in the eyes of other people, and it may well happen that a friend will desire to impart something to a discreet woman which she would not intrust to the babbling husband of that woman.  Every life must have its own privacy and its own place of retirement.  The letter is of all things the most personal and intimate thing.  Its bloom is gone when another eye sees it before the one for which it was intended.  Its aroma all escapes when it is first opened by another person.  One might as well wear second-hand clothing as get a second-hand letter.  Here, then, is a sacred right that ought to be respected, and can be respected without any injury to domestic life.  The habit in some families for the members of it to show each other’s letters is a most disenchanting one.  It is just in the family, between persons most intimate, that these delicacies of consideration for the privacy of each ought to be most respected.  No one can estimate probably how much of the refinement, of the delicacy of feeling, has been lost to the world by the introduction of the postal-card.  Anything written on a postal-card has no personality; it is banal, and has as little power of charming any one who receives it as an advertisement in the newspaper.  It is not simply the cheapness of the communication that is vulgar, but the publicity of it.  One may have perhaps only a cent’s worth of affection to send, but it seems worth much more when enclosed in an envelope.  We have no doubt, then, that on general principles the French decision is a mistake, and that it tends rather to vulgarize than to retain the purity and delicacy of the marriage relation.  And the judges, so long even as men only occupy the bench, will no doubt reverse it when the logical march of events forces upon them the question whether the wife may open her husband’s letters.

A LEISURE CLASS

Foreign critics have apologized for real or imagined social and literary shortcomings in this country on the ground that the American people have little leisure.  It is supposed that when we have a leisure class we shall not only make a better showing in these respects, but we shall be as agreeable—­having time to devote to the art of being agreeable—­as the English are.  But we already have a considerable and increasing number of people who can command their own time if we have not a leisure class, and the sociologist might begin to study the effect of this leisureliness upon society.  Are the people who, by reason of a competence or other accidents of good-fortune, have most leisure, becoming more agreeable? and are they devoting themselves to the elevation of the social tone, or to the improvement of our literature?  However this question is answered, a strong appeal might be made to the people of leisure to do not only what is expected of them by foreign observers, but