He points out a curious reaction in the spirit of this class: formerly
they loved to lard their speech with Latin and Greek to keep the
ignorant in their places; but now, that cheap education has endowed
the tradesman with Latin and Greek, there is a tendency to feel toward
intellectual culture much as the barons did away back in the Dark
Ages, and to outdazzle by mere show of costly pleasure the class they
can no longer excel in learned polish. After all, the great question
in recommending culture is the question of its effect on morals: if
the effect of poetry and art is weakening to the moral sense, as many
have claimed from Socrates to Augustine, then letters have no ethical
reason for existence. Our author, who has a habit of continually
turning his tapestry to see the aspect of the other side, is very
sensible of a characteristic in people of extreme culture to allow
Nature her most contradictory reactions. This tendency, opposed as
it is to all our ideal conceptions of the intellectual life, is
the merest commonplace of biography. "The most exquisitely delicate
artists in literature and painting have frequently had reactions
of incredible coarseness. Within the Chateaubriand of _Atala_ there
existed an obscene Chateaubriand that would burst forth in talk
that no biographer would repeat. I have heard the same thing of the
sentimental Lamartine. We know that Turner, dreamer of enchanted
landscapes, took the pleasures of a sailor on the spree. A friend said
to me of one of the most exquisite living geniuses, 'You can have no
conception of the coarseness of his tastes: he associates with
the very lowest women, and enjoys their rough brutality.'" To this
specious and damaging objection our author makes the excellent reply,
that in observing whole classes we generally see an advance in morals
go along with an advance in culture. The gentleman of the present day
is superior to his forefather whom Fielding described: he is better
read and better educated, and at the same time more sober and more