OF FRENCH SOCIETY. 45 It is indeed wounding to delicacy to speak. explicitly on things which should not be so much as named. Yet though it is painful to touch on such topics, how shall we be so likely to prevent evils, as by exposing them ? Perhaps it may check the desire of imitation, lightly to touch oh a fewof the bad characters who presided.over these good societies. That many have escaped their pollu- tion, is a thing more to inspire wonder than to excite imitation. All do not die of the plague where the plague rages but the preservation of the few is no proof of the salubrity of the air, where so many have been infected. In certain societies, the difficulty of being witty is materially diminished by the readiness of the speaker to make any sacrifice, both of piety andmodesty, to the good thing he is about to utter. While the feeling of that very sacrifice may per- haps give a keener .relish to the pleasure of the profane hearer, the Christian, not inferior in talent, rejects with horror the
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=