60 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 



human functions up at auction to be bid for by any 

 creature capable of going upright on two legs. In some 

 places, we have arrived at a point at which civil society is 

 no longer possible, and already another reaction has begun, 

 not backwards to the old system, but towards fitness either 

 from natural aptitude or special training. But will it 

 always be safe to let evils work their own cure by becoming 

 unendurable? Every one of them leaves its taint in the 

 constitution of the body-politic, each in itself, perhaps, 

 trifling, yet altogether powerful for evil. 



But whatever we might do or leave undone, we were not 

 genteel, and it was uncomfortable to be continually 

 reminded that, though we should boast that we were the 

 Great West till we were black in the face, it did not bring 

 us an inch nearer to the world s West-End. That sacred 

 enclosure of respectability was tabooed to us. The Holy 

 Alliance did not inscribe us on its visiting-list. The Old 

 World of wigs and orders and liveries would shop with us, 

 but we must ring at the area-bell, and not venture to 

 awaken the most august clamours of the knocker. Our 

 manners, it must be granted, had none of those graces that 

 stamp the caste of Vere de Yere, in whatever museum of 

 British antiquities they may be hidden. In short, we were 

 vulgar. 



This was one of those horribly vague accusations, the 

 victim of which has no defence. An umbrella is of no 

 avail against a Scotch mist. It envelops you, it penetrates 

 at every pore, it wets you through without seeming to wet 

 you at all. Vulgarity is an eighth deadly sin, added to 

 the list in these latter days, and worse than all the others 

 put together, since it perils your salvation in this world, far 

 the more important of the two in the minds of most men. 

 It profits nothing to draw nice distinctions between 

 essential and conventional, for the convention in this case 

 is the essence, and you may break every command in the 

 decalogue with perfect good-breeding, nay, if you are not 

 adroit, without losing caste. We, indeed, had it not to lose, 

 for we had never gained it. &quot;How am I vulgar?&quot; asks 



