THE INFLUENCE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES ON MODERN SOCIETY.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 227, 13 January 1877, Page 2

THE INFLUENCE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES ON MODERN SOCIETY.

In an article showing tlio deterioration that is going on in modern society, and which is attributed to the influence of the Prince of Wales, the World, says : "Nothing could be less to be desired than that Marlborough House should be the resort of spectacled savants, narrow pedants, and bookish philosophers. But it might, at least, be expected that in the interests of the public, some attention should be paid to those who are the special objects of popularity and honor, in a quarter in which noticing can be hid from the public eye. It might, at least, have been thought the Prince, who will probably be some day or other King of England, would have by this time arrived at the conclusion that the pleasantry of wine-flushed subalterns, and the practical jests of undergraduates at the end of terra did not become the dignity of the middleaged heir of the oldest and most illustrious, and the most powerful monarchy in the world. It might, at least, have been anticipated that if gilded youths, who, without fear, are y-t scarcely without reproach, were excluded from the balls of Marlborough House and the garden parties of Chiswick, the guests of the other sex should be proof against the shafts of slander, and would not include grass widows, unattached wives, and frisky matrons, whom, for the sake of his own reputation and that of his, ik> person of the upper or class would venture to invite to his house. It might have been thought that the Prince of Wales would be so far alive a sense

.of own «%mty, and what b due to ethers, a» to refrain from employing tn public offsnaivw language to a nnMertum <lesem<U:y poplar and nttrrm-.t, «r WOttldy at KCtusinnailvv s. !<>■'.* thai hj« cottM practically fKwUrstarwt tUa import of th» "tu-Mw "Mr*" Unhappily, each, «f these tapwi.»v6i»i» ha® besit si> far falsified* It' tIW evil witled where it began, it would not perhaps,, greatly raattur. Itat that ta what it does not, and cannot «£<■». The Prince «f Wales s«ta, and wilt continue to sut tlio fashion to Englishsociety. Ho b as we have already said, the iftrst and chief rcpr«»"'nb»tive »f t!ie aristocratic principle, and hence it b that persona | character b grow in-'* a matter ti» which f«sa and fess consideration is attached in high places, and the border lino which separates innocence from criminality is Becoming more perilously tiarvuv» ; that escapades are committed one season and ignored the nest; that the horse-play of clowns at a country fair is not looked upon as inconsistent with the highest breeding; that the etKitavmtioa of society is as slangy, and pitched in as low a key, as its ethics are dubious. It is only due to the sound sense and the innate good fouling of the English charac. for that the royal encouragement to taxity „| lv U softs has not resulted in th> de.jej» fc fo a level yet more deplorably tow."