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OLD HICKS THE GUIDE.
by pleading, " The angel is known by its wings ; hers were never soiled with her own foreknowledge of the infamy, for see! have they not grown as white and strong as ever ?"
And yet! and yet! the fade licentiousness of Parisian life might well have sought, instinctively, the impunity of license afforded here, with none to question.
These cruel doubts, how they racked me ! There was yet another side to the question. The two extremes of civilization come very near together.
Paris and a Camanche village approach each other much more intimately than Paris and Philadelphia do. In Paris, civilization has reached its culminating point. It is nearly the radiating center of human progress, scattering the keen, fresh light of latest truths upon an " outer darkness" that pervades the world.
This highest civilization has a tendency to bring us round and back again to our starting-place, and soon, in its contempt for conventionalities, rushes to an extreme, beyond the savage even, and comes to regard all social questions from a point of view which he would shrink from.
This worst form of libertinism of thought and sentiment has given birth to the ferocious school of French literature, which is far more shocking, with its hideous ideal, than a bruised Gorgon's head, with the black gore dripping from its writhing locks.
Indian scalp-taking is nothing worse than an innocent amusement when compared with its teachings and suggestions.
Among the followers of this school, I had no doubt Master Albert was to be classed. He had, probably, after running the whole round of licentiousness, sighed for new worlds to conquer, and come here to find them. It might be that something of the same feeling brought this brilliant and charming woman here from the salons of her beloved Paris ! I say it might be; yet my heart gave the he to this, in spite of my reason. It was a holier feeling, a sublime impulse, that must have moved this noble woman to