with a struggle. They have seen better things, and perhaps vainly
long to return to them. These are "St. Satan's Penitents," and
their remorse is vain:


Virtutem videant, intabescantque relicta.


If you don't wish to be of this dismal company, there is only one
course open to you. Never write for publication one line of
personal tattle. Let all men's persons and private lives be as
sacred to you as your father's,--though there are tattlers who would
sell paragraphs about their own mothers if there were a market for
the ware. There is no half-way house on this road. Once begin to
print private conversation, and you are lost--lost, that is, to
delicacy and gradually, to many other things excellent and of good
report. The whole question for you is, Do you mind incurring this
damnation? If there is nothing in it which appals and revolts you,
if your conscience is satisfied with a few ready sophisms, or if you
don't care a pin for your conscience, fall to!

Vous irez loin! You will prattle in print about men's private lives
their hidden motives, their waistcoats, their wives, their boots,
their businesses, their incomes. Most of your prattle will
inevitably be lies. But go on! nobody will kick you, I deeply
regret to say. You will earn money. You will be welcomed in
society. You will live and die content, and without remorse. I do
not suppose that any particular inferno will await you in the future
life. Whoever watches this world "with larger other eyes than ours"
will doubtless make allowance for you, as for us all. I am not