SOCIETY OF CONTRASTS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 14324, 14 October 1910, Page 7

SOCIETY OF CONTRASTS.

One of the books that will be talked about this season is the collection of eighteenth century society let-tors issued in two volumes by the Duke of Argyll. They are from his family archives, and relate to a period which lias a sort of lamination for many readers. In noticing the book "The Times' 1 makes a racy survey of the era. l; lt is a strange jumble of strong contrasts, tins eighteenth century, so familiar, so remote; a time when the unexpected was normal; wlieu at any moment a dweller on the Highland seashore might- find a keg of port or claret on the bench; when frivolity was very serious, and virtues were spelt witli capital letters, and men constantly gambled, and were constantly bled, and despatched pages oil the Domestick Affections: when clever Indies who went to Paris, instead of writing home about Art, wrote about t-lie animals in the Jai'din des Plantes, and the lirst- telegraph wires, and the last discourse of the Abbe Morel let; when a high personage might at any time break out into bad English and uncalled-for French; when sons wrote to mothers of rank as 'My dear Dutchess,' and at seventeen made the Grand Tour with a tutor, and bought 'a plush frock' a.t Calais; when a man of tone loved the Antique ind admired ' Mosaic of Pietro Dura,' and collected virtu at any cost—like the Duke of Hamilton, who wanted to give -C'2oO for a none too good cameo of Caligula: when, nevertheless, they remained Philistine enough to say of Florence, like the Duke's tutor. Dr. Moore, that 'Ten days was sufficient- to see over and over again all that is curious here ;' when aristocracy was a force which lent charm to society and servility to intelligence: when men adored Prudence as a. goddess and tried to keep their hearts like ledgers—when Reason herself made men unreasonabl;