frequently be the case that he will be tempted to sacrifice something for effect; to say a word or two here, or to draw a picture there, for which he feels that he has the power, and which, when spoken or drawn, would be alluring. The regions of absolute vice are foul and odious. The savour of them, till custom has hardened the palate and the nose, is disgusting. In these he will hardly tread. But there are outskirts on these regions in which sweet-smelling flowers seem to grow and grass to be green. It is in these border-lands that the danger lies. The novelist may not be dull. If he commit that fault, he can do neither harm nor good. He must please; and the flowers and the soft grass in those neutral territories sometimes seem to give too easy an opportunity of pleasing!

The writer of stories must please, or he will be nothing. And he must teach, whether he wish to teach or not. How shall he teach lessons of virtue, and at the same time make himself a delight to his readers? Sermons in themselves are not thought to be agreeable; nor are disquisitions on moral philosophy supposed to be pleasant reading for our idle hours. But the novelist, if he have a conscience, must preach his sermons with the same purpose as the clergyman, and must have his own system of ethics. If he can do this efficiently, if he can make virtue alluring and vice ugly, while he charms his reader instead of wearying him, then we think that he should not be spoken of generally as being among those workers of iniquity who do evil in their generation. So many have done so, that the English novelist as a class may, we think, boast that such has been the result of their work. Can any one, by search through the works of the fine writers whose names we have specially mentioned,-Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austen, Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray,-find a scene, a passage, or a word that could teach a girl to be immodest or a man to be dishonest? When men in their pages have been described as dishonest, or women as immodest, has not the reader in every instance been deterred by the example and its results? It is not for the novelist to say simply and baldly: Because you lied here, or were heartless there; because you, Lydia Bennet, forgot the lessons of your honest home, or you, Earl Leicester, were false through your ambition, or you, Beatrix, loved too well the glitter of the world, therefore you shall be scourged with scourges either here or hereafter;' but it is for him to show, as he carries on his tale, that his Lydia, or his Leicester, or his Beatrix, will be dishonoured in the estimation of all by his or her vices. Let a woman be drawn clever, beautiful, attractive, so as to make men love her and women almost envy her; and let her be made also heartless, unfeminine, ambitious of evil grandeur, as was Beatrix,-what danger is there not in such a character! To the novelist who shall handle it, what peril of doing harm! But if at last it has been so handled that every girl who reads of Beatrix shall say: 'Oh, not like that! let me not be like that!' and that every

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youth shall say: 'Let me not have such a one as that to press to my bosom,―anything rather than that!' Then will not the novelist have preached his sermon as perhaps no other preacher can preach it? Very much of a novelist's work, as we have said above, must appertain to the intercourse between young men and young women. It is admitted that a novel can hardly be made interesting or successful without love. Some few might be named in which the attempt has been made, but even in them it fails. Pickwick has been given as an exception to this rule, but even in Pickwick there are three or four sets of lovers whose amatory flutterings give a softness to the work. In this frequent allusion to the passion which most strongly stirs the imagination of the young, there must be danger, as the novelist is necessarily aware. Then the question has to be asked, whether the danger may not be so handled that good shall be the result, and to be answered. The subject is necessary to the novelist, because it is interesting to all; but as it is interesting to all, so will the lessons taught respecting it be widely received. Every one feels it, has felt it, or expects to feel it,--or else regrets it with an eagerness which still perpetuates the interest. If the novelist, therefore, can so treat his subject as to do good by his treatment of it, the good done will be very wide. If a writer can teach politicians and statesmen that they can do their work better by truth than by falsehood, he does a great service; but it is done in the first instance to a limited number of persons. But if he can make young men and women believe that truth in love will make them happy, then, if his writings be popular, he will have a very large class of pupils. No doubt that fear which did exist as to novels came from the idea that this matter of love would be treated in an inflammatory and unwholesome manner. 'Madam,' says Sir Anthony in the play, 'a circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. It blossoms through the year; and, depend upon it, Mrs. Malaprop, they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last.' Sir Anthony, no doubt, was right. But he takes it for granted that longing for the fruit is an evil. The novelist thinks differently, and believes that the honest love of an honest man is a treasure which a good girl may fairly hope to win, and that, if she can be taught to wish only for that, she will have been taught to entertain only wholesome wishes.

There used to be many who thought, and probably there are some who still think, that a girl should hear nothing of love till the time comes in which she is to be married. That was the opinion of Sir Anthony Absolute and of Mrs. Malaprop. But we doubt whether the old system was more favourable to purity of manners than that which we have adopted of late. Lydia Languish, though she was constrained by fear of her aunt to hide the book, yet had Peregrine Pickle in her collection. While human nature talks

of love so forcibly, it can hardly serve our turn to be silent on the subject. Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret.' There are countries in which it has been in accordance with the manners of the upper classes that the girl should be brought to marry the man almost out of the nursery, or rather, perhaps, out of the convent,— without having enjoyed any of that freedom of thought which the reading of novels and poetry will certainly produce; but we do not know that the marriages so made have been thought to be happier than our own.

Among English novels of the present day, and among English novelists, a great division is made. There are sensational novels, and anti-sensational; sensational novelists, and anti-sensational; sensational readers, and anti-sensational. The novelists who are considered to be anti-sensational are generally called realistic. The readers who prefer the one are supposed to take delight in the elucidation of character. They who hold by the other are charmed by the construction and gradual development of a plot. All this we think to be a mistake, which mistake arises from the inability of the inferior artist to be at the same time realistic and sensational. A good novel should be both,—and both in the highest degree. If a novel fail in either, there is a failure in art. Let those readers who fancy that they do not like sensational scenes, think of some of those passages from our great novelists which have charmed them most, -of Rebecca in the castle with Ivanhoe; of Burley in the cave with Morton; of the mad lady tearing the veil of the expectant bride in Jane Eyre; of Lady Castlewood as, in her indignation, she explains to the Duke of Hamilton Harry Esmond's right to be present at the marriage of his Grace with Beatrix. Will any one say that the authors of these passages have sinned in being over-sensational? No doubt a string of horrible incidents, bound together without truth in details, and told as affecting personages without character,-wooden blocks who cannot make themselves known to readers as men and women,―does not instruct, or amuse, or even fill the mind with awe. Horrors heaped upon horrors, which are horrors only in themselves, and not as touching any recognised and known person, are not tragic, and soon cease even to horrify. Such would-be tragic elements of a story may be increased without end and without difficulty. The narrator may tell of a woman murdered, murdered in the same street with you, in the next house; may say that she was a wife murdered by her husband, a bride not yet a week a wife. He may add to it for ever. He may say that the murderer burnt her alive. There is no end to it. He may declare that a former wife was treated with equal barbarity, and that the murderer when led away to execution declared his sole regret to be that he could not live to treat a third after the same fashion. There is nothing so easy as the creation and cumulation of fearful incidents after this fashion. If such creation and

cumulation be the beginning and the end of the novelist's work,— and novels have been written which seem to be without other attraction,-nothing can be more dull and nothing more useless. But not on that account are we averse to tragedy in prose fiction. As in poetry, so in prose, he who can deal adequately with tragic elements is a greater artist, and reaches a higher aim, than the writer whose efforts never carry him above the mild walks of everyday life. The Bride of Lammermoor is a tragedy throughout in spite of its comic elements. The life of Lady Castlewood is a tragedy. Rochester's wretched thraldom to his mad wife in Jane Eyre is a tragedy. But these stories charm us, not simply because they are tragic, but because we feel that men and women with flesh and blood, creatures with whom we can sympathise, are struggling amidst their woes. It all lies in that. No novel is anything, for purposes either of comedy or tragedy, unless the reader can sympathise with the characters whose names he finds upon the page. Let the author so tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and draw his reader's tears, and he has so far done his work well. Truth let there be,-truth of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and women. If there be such truth, I

do not know that a novel can be too sensational.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE.

SHORTER PARLIAMENTS.

THE true strength, freedom, and stability of England during the past two hundred years have undoubtedly arisen from the fact that the English people have insisted upon governing themselves. Conscious of this strength individually and collectively, the nation has not only developed the somewhat limited natural resources of these islands to an astonishing extent, but has, as if in the very exuberance of its freedom, added colony after colony to the Empire-the greater portion of which happily has been gained not by the sword and the bayonet, but by the ploughshare and the pruning-hook,-not by the tortuous and hidden ways of diplomacy, but by the open and peace-giving pursuits of commerce. Such a nation, conscious of its constitutional freedom, and planting similar constitutions throughout the world, is not likely to allow such freedom to be easily tampered with, or, seeing great obligations entered into without consultation, to allow such to pass without awakened concern. Hitherto, Ministers have recognised a combined service of loyalty to the Throne and consultation with the nation; but changes in this respect have recently been observable, indicating a drifting away from our Monarchical Republic to a system which, whether it be called a system of imperial or personal rule, is clearly unfavourable to the life of freedom. Such a policy warns us that some fresh safeguards are needed to secure the power of the people.

One such safeguard would, in my opinion, be secured were the people to have the power of electing their lawmakers and the administrators of their affairs somewhat more frequently than they can now do. As the law now stands, at every general election the people commit to the hands of Parliament, for the long period of seven years, enormous powers, which may be used for their weal or their woe without their having any power to make a change till the end of that time. The question is, whether it would not be better for all classes of the State if those enormous powers were regularly to revert to the people within a period of five years. It has been truly said that

There is nothing that requires to be watched more than power; for there is a universal law which is constantly in operation, and that law is, the tendency of