leave to suggest that Wilde was too severely, because far too publicly, chastised for what he may have done, for what at the worst was no more than a private misdemeanour. We consider that far more harm than needful was wrought by the publicity given to these unwholesome pranks with grown-up wastrels in private rooms, these "naughty fellows of a baser sort" as St. Paul would have called them. Would it not have been better first mercifully to warn, aye, and if needs were, to have hurried them off, willy-nilly,—struggling and kicking it might be,—to some private asylum to be treated hydropathically, as was done by the French authorities in the case of a certain well-known Parisian littérateur caught flagrante delicto in a Boulevard vespasienne? The interests of Justice would have been amply served, had prevention alone, and not vengeance, been the object to be attained.
Moreover, we are of those who believe that whilst there should be "one law for the rich and for the poor alike," there should still be a further law for the neurotic, the brain-sick, the mind-shattered, the functionally deranged. To apply the same heavy whip to a sensitive, highly-strung Derby runner, as to a coarser grained, slow-going dray horse were amazing lack of