and nature of the work. I have seen it asserted that the three English authors whose works are most to be found in the far-off homes of our colonists-in Australia, Canada, and South Africa-are Shakespeare, Macaulay, and Dickens. Shakespeare no doubt is there, as he is in the houses of so many of us not so far off, for the sake of national glory. Macaulay and Dickens, perhaps, share between them the thumbs of the family, but the marks of affection bestowed on the novelist will be found to be the darker.

With such evidence before us of the wide-spread and enduring popularity of popular novels, it would become us to make up our minds whether this coveted amusement is of its nature prone to do good or evil. There cannot be a doubt that the characters of those around us are formed very much on the lessons which are thus taught. Our girls become wives, and our wives mothers, and then old women, very much under these inspirations. Our boys grow into manhood, either nobly or ignobly partly as they may teach, and in accordance with such teaching will continue to bear their burdens gallantly or to repudiate them with cowardly sloth.

Sermons have been invented, coming down to us from the Greek Chorus, and probably from times much antecedent to the Greek dramatists, in order that the violence of the active may be controlled by the prudence of the inactive, and the thoughtlessness of the young by the thoughtfulness of the old. And sermons have been very efficacious for these purposes. There are now among us preachers influencing the conduct of many, and probably delighting the intellectual faculties of more. But it is, we think, felt that the sermon which is listened to with more or less of patience once or twice a week does not catch a hold of the imagination as it used to do, so as to enable us to say that those who are growing up among us are formed as to their character by the discourses which they hear from the pulpit. Teaching to be efficacious must be popular. The birch has, no doubt, saved many from the uttermost depth of darkness, but it never yet made a scholar. I am inclined to think that the lessons inculcated by the novelists at present go deeper than most others. To ascertain whether they be good or bad, we should look not only to the teaching but to that which has been taught,—not to the masters only but the scholars. To effect this thoroughly, an essay on the morals of the people would be necessary,—of such at least of the people as read sufficiently for the enjoyment of a novel. We should have to compare the conduct of the present day with that of past years, and our own conduct with that of other people. So much would be beyond our mark. But something may be done to show whether fathers and mothers may consider themselves safe in allowing to their children the latitude in reading which is now the order of the day, and also in giving similar freedom to themselves. It is not the daughter only who now reads her Lord Aimworth without thrust

ing him under the sofa when a strange visitor comes, or feels it necessary to have Fordyce's sermons open on the table. There it is, unconcealed, whether for good or bad, patent to all and established, the recognised amusement of our lighter hours, too often our mainstay in literature, the former of our morals, the code by which we rule ourselves, the mirror in which we dress ourselves, the index expurgatorius of things held to be allowable in the ordinary affairs of life. No man actually turns to a novel for a definition of honour, nor a woman for that of modesty; but it is from the pages of many novels that men and women obtain guidance both as to honour and modesty. As the writer of the leading article picks up his ideas of politics among those which he finds floating about the world, thinking out but little for himself and creating but little, so does the novelist find his ideas of conduct, and then create a picture of that excellence which he has appreciated. Nor does he do the reverse with reference to the ignoble or the immodest. He collects the floating ideas of the world around him as to what is right and wrong in conduct, and reproduces them with his own colouring. At different periods in our history, the preacher, the dramatist, the essayist, and the poet have been efficacious over others;-at one time the preacher, and at one the poet. Now it is the novelist. There are reasons why we would wish it were otherwise. The reading of novels can hardly strengthen the intelligence. But we have to deal with the fact as it exists, deprecating the evil as far as it is an evil, but acknowledging the good if there be good.

Fond as most of us are of novels, it has to be confessed that they have had a bad name among us. Sheridan, in the scene from which we have quoted, has put into Lydia's mouth a true picture of the time as it then existed. Young ladies, if they read novels, read them on the sly, and married ladies were not more free in acknowledging their acquaintance with those in English than they are now as to those in French. That freedom was growing then as is the other now. There were those who could read unblushingly; those who read and blushed; and those who sternly would not read at all. At a much later date than Sheridan's it was the ordinary practice in well-conducted families to limit the reading of novels. In many houses such books were not permitted at all. In others Scott was allowed, with those probably of Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen. And the amusement, though permitted, was not encouraged. It was considered to be idleness and a wasting of time. At the period of which we are speaking,-say forty years ago,—it was hardly recognised by any that much beyond amusement not only might be, but must be, the consequence of such reading. Novels were ephemeral, trivial, of no great importance except in so far as they might perhaps be injurious. As a girl who is, as a rule, duly industrious, may be allowed now and then to sit idle over the fire, thinking as

nearly as possible of nothing,-thus refreshing herself for her daily toils; as a man may, without reproach, devote a small portion of his day to loafing and lounging about his club; so in those perhaps healthier days did a small modicum of novel-reading begin to be permitted. Where now is the reading individual for whom a small modicum suffices?

And very evil things have been said of the writers of novels by their brethren in literature; as though these workers, whose work has gradually become so efficacious for good or evil, had done nothing but harm in the world. It would be useless, or even ungenerous now, to quote essayists, divines, and historians who have written of novelists as though the mere providing of a little fleeting amusement, -generally of pernicious amusement,-had been the only object in their view. But our readers will be aware that if such criticism does not now exist, it has not ceased so long but that they remember its tone. The ordinary old homily against the novel, inveighing against the frivolities, the falsehood, and perhaps the licentiousness, of a fictitious narrative, is still familiar to our ears. Though we may reckon among our dearest literary possessions the pathos of this story, the humour of another, the unerring truth to nature of a third; though we may be aware of the absolute national importance to us of a Robinson Crusoe or Tom Jones, of an Ivanhoe or an Esmond; though each of us in his own heart may know all that a good novel has done for him,-still there remains something of the bad character which for years has been attached to the art.

Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem
Testa diu.

Even though it be true that the novels of the present day have in great measure taken the place of sermons, and that they feed the imagination too often in lieu of poetry, still they are admitted to their high functions not without forebodings, not without remonstrances, not without a certain sense that we are giving up our young people into the hands of an Apollyon. Is this teacher an Apollyon; or is he better because stronger, and as moral-as an archbishop?

It is certainly the case that novels deal mainly with one subject, -that, namely, of love; and equally certain that love is a matter in handling which for the instruction or delectation of the young there is much danger. This is what the novelist does daily, and, whatever may be the danger, he is accepted. We quite agree with the young lady in the Hunchback who declared that Ovid was a fool. To call that thing an art which art is none.'

No art but taketh time and pains to learn.

Love comes with neither.

So much the novelist knows as well as Sheridan Knowles's young lady,

and therefore sets about his work with descriptive rather than didactic lessons. His pupils would not accept them were he to tell them that he came into the house as a tutor in such an art. But still as a tutor he is accepted. What can be of more importance to us than to know whether we who all of us encourage such tutors in our houses, are subjecting those we love to good teaching or to ill? We do not dare to say openly to those dear ones, but we confess it to ourselves, that the one thing of most importance to them is whether they shall love rightly or wrongly. The sweet, innocent, bashful girl, who never to her dearest bosom friend dares to talk upon the matter, knows that it must be so for herself. Will it be her happy future to be joined to some man who, together with the energy necessary for maintaining her and her children, shall also have a loving heart and a sweet temper ?—or shall she, through dire mistake, in this great affair of her life fall into some unutterable abyss of negligence, poverty, and heartless indifference? All this is vague, though still certain, to the girl herself. But to the mother it is in no way vague. Night and morning it must be her dearest prayer that the man who shall take her girl from her shall be worthy of her girl. And the importance to the man, though not so strongly felt, is equal. As it is not his lot to rise and fall in the world as his partner may succeed or the reverse, the image of a wife does not force itself upon his thoughts so vividly as does that of a husband on the female mind; but, as she is dependent on him for all honour, so he is on her for all happiness. It suits us to speak of love as a soft, sweet, flowery pastime, with many roses and some thorns, in which youth is apt to disport itself; but there is no father, no mother, no daughter, and should be no son, blind to the fact that, of all matters concerning life, it is the most important. That Ovid's Art of Love was nothing, much worse than nothing, we admit. But nevertheless the art is taught. Before the moment comes in which heart is given to heart, the imagination has been instructed as to what should accompany the gift, and what should be expected in accompaniment; in what way the gift should be made, and after what assurance; for how long a period silence should be held, and then how far speech should be unguarded.

By those who do not habitually read at all, the work is done somewhat roughly,—we will not say thoughtlessly, but with little of those precautions which education demands. With those who do read, all that literature gives them helps them somewhat in the operation of which we are speaking. History tells us much of love's efficacy, and much of the evil that comes from the want of it. Biography is of course full of it. Philosophy deals with it. Poetry is hardly poetry without it. The drama is built on it almost as exclusively as are the novels. But it is from novels that the crowd of expectant and ready pupils obtain that constant flow of easy

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teaching which fills the mind of all readers with continual thoughts of love. The importance of the teaching is mainly to the young, but the existence of the teaching is almost equally present to the old. Why is it that the judge when he escapes from the bench, the bishop even, as we are told,-when he comes from his confirmation, the politician as he sits in the library of the House, the Cabinet Minister when he has a half-hour to himself, the old dowager in almost all the hours which she has to herself,-seek for distraction and reaction in the pages of a novel? It is because there is an ever-recurring delight in going back to the very rudiments of those lessons in love. My dear,' says the loving but only half-careful mother to her daughter, 'I wish you wouldn't devote so many of your hours to novel-reading. How far have you got with your Gibbon ? ' Whereupon the young lady reads a page or two of Gibbon, and then goes back to her novels. The mother knows that her girl is good, and does not make herself unhappy. Is she justified in her security by the goodness of the teaching? There is good and bad, no doubt. In speaking of good and bad we are not alluding to virtue and vice themselves, but to the representations made of them. If virtue be made ridiculous, no description of it will be serviceable. If vice be made alluring, the picture will certainly be injurious. Sydney Smith, as far as it went, did an injury to morality at large when he declared in one of his letters that the Prime Minister of the day was 'faithful to Mrs. Percival.' Desiring to make the Prime Minister ridiculous, he endeavoured to throw a stone at that domesticity which the Prime Minister was supposed to cherish, and doing so he taught evil. Gay did injury to morality when he persuaded all the town to sympathise with a thief. The good teaching of a novel may be evinced as much in displaying the base as the noble, if the base be made to look base as the noble is made to look noble.

If we look back to the earlier efforts of English novel writing, the lessons taught were too often bad. Though there was a wide world. of British fiction before the time of Charles the Second, it generally took the shape of the drama, and of that, whether good or bad, in its results we have at present nothing to say. The prose romances were few in number, and entertained so limited an audience that they were not efficacious for good or evil. The people would flock to see plays, where plays could be produced for them, as in London,-but did not as yet care to feed their imaginations by reading. Then came the novelists of Charles the Second, who, though they are less profligate and also more stupid than is generally supposed of them, could certainly do no good to the mind of any reader. Of our novelists the first really known is Defoe, who, though he was born almost within the Commonwealth, did not produce his Robinson Crusoe till the time of George the First. Robinson Crusoe did not deal with love. Defoe's other stories, which are happily forgotten,