Taxes on Civilization. | 553 
suffice for present notions of propriety, still the fair sex 
err now almost as much inthe opposite extreme, and are 
net only extravagant to such a degree that they injure 
their matrimonial market, but at the same time are thought- 
less and inconsiderate with regard to their poorer sisters, 
who frequently have to stitch against time in order that 
those intricate habiliments may be provided which are to 
cast a glamour upon weak-minded aspirants to connubial 
bliss. 
The taxes we have enumerated are bad enough, and de- 
monstrate that we have to pay for our vaunted civilization, 
both mentally and physically ; but it is to be feared that we 
pay spiritually also and that a weakened reverence for holy 
things is a marked characteristic of the age. Men now 
rush in with unfaltering footsteps where their fathers 
feared to tread, puffed up with overweening vanity 
and fancied superiority of intellect they carp at and 
question points of faith, and listen readily to the 
bold teachings of those who misinterpret the Bible and 
strive to implant doubts in the minds of the unstable, and to 
shake belief, without however offering any substitute for 
the faith they seek to undermine. There is, unquestionably, 
too much freethinking in this direction, and it is well to 
remember that although liberality in religion is commend- 
able, we ought to guard against its merging into license, 
just as in politics we should ensure that it does not glide 
into anarchy. 
Civilization has given us much to approve and at the 
same time much to deprecate in some of the greatest 
triumphs of invention. One of the chief products of civiliza- 
tion, and now one of the chief feeders to it, is steam, and 
no one can gainsay that we owe much to its gigantic force ; 
but if it has given us improved means of locomotion in 
steamboats and above-ground railway travelling, it has 
also given us the underground, a hideous thing, which may 
well hide itself and mole-like burrow through the earth, a 
monstrous nuisance which has razed the structures of the 
living and disturbed the dead, and which has worked much 
physical harm, chiefly developing itself in bronchial affec- 
tions, since it is manifest that such an atmosphere cannot 
fail to prove extremely pernicious to the lungs of those who 
are in the habit of availing themselves of this mode of con- 
veyance. Apart from any consideration of the shock 
that esthetic minds must have received from seeing 
iron roads replace picturesque scenery, steam has much to 
