rooting out from the ordinary commerce of society everything that is coarse in expression, or doubtful in conduct.  The natural tendency of this is to mark more strongly the limits of the realms of vice and virtue; and vice, as a matter of course, in order to obviate the detrimental effect which such a clear definition of her boundaries must produce, loses no opportunity of travelling over into the marches or debateable land which is left under the warden ship of decorum.

The name was not, perhaps, applied as now it is, in former years, but still the spirit existed, as may be seen by any one who takes up and reads the works of one of our purest but coldest of writers, Addison, who, about the time of the peace, which took place in the beginning of the eighteenth century, laments the loss of much of the delicacy (or, in other terns, decorum) of English society which was likely to ensue from a free intercourse with France.  It must, indeed, be admitted that at that period the reign of decorum had not made nearly so great a progress as it has at present.  It was then a constitutional monarchy, where it is now a despotism, but was probably not a bit less powerful from being decidedly more free.  People in those days did certainly speak of things that we now speak not of at all.  They called things by their plain straightforward names, for which we have since invented terms perhaps less definite and not more decent.  But people of refined minds and tastes were refined then as now, and loved and cultivated all those amenities, graces, and proprieties, which form not alone the greatest safeguards, but also the greatest charms of human existence.  Perhaps the difference was more in the thoughts than in the expressions, and that the refined of those days bound themselves to think more purely in the first place, so that there was less need of guarding their words so strictly.

We shall not pause to investigate whether it was that greater purity of thought, or any other cause, which produced a far more extensive liberty of action, especially in the female part of society, than that which is admitted at present.  It is certain, however, that it was so, and that there was something in virtue and innocence which in those days was a very strong safeguard against the attacks of scandal, calumny, and malice.  In the present day, even the servants of virtue are found to be the absolute slaves of decorum; but in those days, so long as they obeyed the high commands of their rightful mistress, they had but little occasion to apprehend that the scourge of calumny, or the fear thereof, would drive them continually back into one narrow and beaten path.

It is, indeed, the greatest satire upon human nature which the world has ever produced, that acts perfectly innocent, high, and pure as God’s holy light, cannot be permitted to persons even of tried virtue, simply because they would afford the opportunity of doing ill.  It is, in fact, to say, that no one is to be trusted; that there is nothing which keeps man or woman virtuous but want of opportunity.  It is a terrible satire; it is more than a satire; it is a foul libel, aimed by the vicious against those who are better than themselves.