Page:Sesame and Lillies - Ruskin (1895).djvu/35

 difficult to write of—I find a letter in 'The Times,' from a French lady, which says all I want so beautifully, that I will print it just as it stands:—

,—It is often said that one example is worth many sermons. Shall I be judged presumptuous if I point out one, which seems to me so striking just now, that, however painful, I cannot help dwelling upon it?

It is the share, the sad and large share, that French society and its recent habits of luxury, of expenses, of dress, of indulgence in every kind of extravagant dissipation, has to lay to its own door in its actual crisis of ruin, misery, and humiliation. If our ménagères can be cited as an example to English housewives, so, alas! can other classes, of our society be set up as an example—not to be followed.

Bitter must be the feelings of many a French woman whose days of luxury and expensive habits are at an end, and whose bills of bygone splendour lie with a heavy weight on her conscience, if not on her purse!

With us the evil has spread high and low. Everywhere have the examples given by the highest ladies in the land been followed but too successfully.

Every year did dress become more extravagant,