stories published, especially in the periodicals which are read by girls and boys and uneducated women, fall in the same category. We may trust that the idea will not occur to anyone of making a collection of our picture-cards, films, music-hall posters, novelties, etc., for preservation as typical amusements of the twentieth century.
It is stupid to watch this lamentable exposure of our low average of culture week by week with complete indifference until more underclothing is displayed than we think proper. The bioscope and music-hall—I speak of the majority—are not merely entertaining; they are undoing the work of the educator. They are fostering the raw and primitive emotions which it is the task of education to refine and bring under control, debasing public taste, and appealing to a standard which is essentially unintellectual. The idea that fun may be utterly stupid and crude, provided it is “clean,” is the idea of a narrow-minded fanatic, an enemy of society.
When we pass to the next cultural level of entertainment—the better music-hall, the metropolitan type of theatue, the concert, the novel, etc.—we have a vast provision of entertainment which amuses or interests without cultural prejudice; rising at times to a positive measure of artistic education or intellectual stimulation. Two things only need be noticed here. The first is the stupidity of the kind of censorship which we tolerate; of which little need be said, since it is generally recognised. The amateur moral censorship of art reaches
