What
should we think of our best dramatist if, in one of his
tragedies, a man's eyes were plucked out on the stage, and if
he that did it exclaimed as he trampled on them, 'Out, vile
jelly! where is thy lustre now?' or of a Titus Andronicus
cutting two throats, while his daughter ''tween her stumps
doth hold a basin to receive their blood'?
'Humanity,' says Taine, speaking of these times, 'is as much
lacking as decency. Blood, suffering, does not move them.'
Heaven forbid that we should return to such brutality! I
cite these passages merely to show how times are changed; and
to suggest that with the change there is a decided loss of
manliness. Are men more virtuous, do they love honour more,
are they more chivalrous, than the Miltons, the Lovelaces,
the Sidneys of the past? Are the women chaster or more
gentle? No; there is more puritanism, but not more true
piety. It is only the outside of the cup and the platter
that are made clean, the inward part is just as full of
wickedness, and all the worse for its hysterical
fastidiousness.
To what do we owe this tendency? Are we degenerating morally
as well as physically? Consider the physical side of the
question. Fifty years ago the standard height for admission
to the army was five feet six inches.
