his selfishness and cruelty, or the element of motherly affection in the heart of Lady Dedlock. It is worth notice how, even when Dickens is caricaturing the upper classes in the person of Sir Leicester Dedlock, his sense of fairness shows itself. Sir Leicester is a true gentleman through it all; courteous in his stiff way towards "the iron-master," and beautifully chivalrous to his erring wife. As Dickens' career continues, we see his tone distinctly rising, his earnestness deepening, his views of life expanding, and his workmanship becoming more refined; while in common with his brilliant contemporaries, Thackeray and Trollope, and indeed with most of our Early Victorian novelists, his writings might be enjoyed by readers of both sexes, and practically of all ages. In Vanity Fair, for instance, Thackeray has to follow the career of Becky Sharp; but where a writer of a younger generation would probably have handled the episode of Lord Steyne in an offensive, if not unreadable way, Thackeray contrives to tell the story without appealing to our coarser impulses. There is a dignity and selfrestraint, a culture, a wit and refinement about his methods, which, alas, seems not always to have descended to our present school of writers. How differently, for instance, would a story like that of Ruth, so delicately and sympathetically handled by Mrs. Gaskell, have been treated by some of the lady (?) novelists of the present day! It is indeed a painful sign of the times that many of the writers of our most regrettable works of fiction should be women. Owing to causes which cannot be discussed at present, it seems as if delicacy in treatment of moral problems always went hand in hand with reverence for sacred things. Anyone who looks back to the great novelists in the latter half of the nineteenth century will feel how high their

standard was in these respects. A religious sense is never obtruded by any of the three great writers whom we have mentioned, but it would be easy to point to passages in all of them in support of this statement, such asclerical satirist as he undoubtedly was -some really beautiful passages in Trollope's Orley Farm and the Small House at Allington, while parts of his novel of Dr. Thorne might with little alteration be republished as a most powerful tract in aid of the temperance cause. No thoroughly earnest and unbiased writer who views human life, its cares, its frustrated or fulfilled ambitions, its loves and its hatreds, its false displays and its true glories as they really are, can fail to become somewhat of a preacher, nor can fail to feel a deeper reverence, as life goes. on, for the Being who made us and guides our destinies, and to whom we are morally accountable for our actions.

We

Since the days when Dickens and Thackeray flourished, what enormous new fields have been opened to the novelist! We have a whole library of books, mainly tales, about India, both of Anglo-Indian and of native life. Other writers deal with South Africa and Australia, and "the magnetic North" is not unrepresented. have pictures of life in the "slums," in Whitechapel and Poplar, in our great manufacturing towns, and in lonely country places. The charm of Italy is not absent; Russia contributes her share; we have sketches of Jewish life, of university life, of artist life; in fact, there is hardly any field, including that of religious controversy, into which the novelist has not penetrated.

Taking the literature of fiction during the last twenty years as a whole, what shall we find its characteristics: to be? One cannot deny its cleverness, in some instances its originality and freshness, its vivid power of word

painting, its frankness, carried sometimes to the point of impropriety, and its ease, accompanied very often by bad vulgar English and slipshod grammar. It is curious how our old favorite Punch seems to reflect the character of the moment. Since the days of Du Maurier the women of that delightful periodical, though not without attraction, seem to have all suddenly become middle-class. We miss those elegant "society" women, for whom even Mr. Ruskin had a word of admiration. The high-bred element seems gone, and with it we often miss the careful drawing and the eye for real beauty which not unfrequently made Du Maurier's backgrounds and other accessories things of delight in themselves. The vulgarity of children's illustrated books is another regrettable feature of our day.

Of Punch we may boast, and rightly boast, that he is very, very rarely either coarse, disgusting, or profane, Unfortunately this cannot be said of much of our modern literature. It is difficult, from the very nature of the subject, to give illustrations of these matters, but anyone who is familiar with modern English fiction must feel the regrettable influence of Zola and other French writers upon their neighbors on this side of the Channel. There seems to be an idea in the minds of many literary men and women that if you only describe commonplace things with sufficient realism you have produced an original work. We admire Mr. Arnold Bennett's brilliant abilities, and some of his productions, so much that we cannot but regret that he should ever have brought himself to publish such a book as The Old Wives' Tale. Much in the opening chapters is purely ugly and disgusting, such as the incident of 3 Some of us may remember a professorial lecture of Mr. Ruskin's at Oxford when he descanted on the elegance of the bead of "Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns" (an enlarged copy of which was shown) when she promised Lady Midas to "throw over the Botherby Jones, and come herself."

But

the girl pulling out the tooth of the draper's assistant. It is really not funny, and it dwells on things which no one has any pleasure in reading or thinking about; while the later portion of the book, the heroine's life in Paris, is full of suggestions of indelicacy and coarseness. Mr. Bennett is by no means alone in this respect. The names of some of his most distinguished contemporaries will easily suggest themselves. We are far from saying that novelists can always avoid dealing with matters of this kind, but the only way to make such subjects tolerable is to interest us very deeply in the characters in whom a moral struggle is portrayed (such a character, for instance, as that of Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss). character painting is the rarest of rarearts, and is not possessed by one novelist in ten; and it certainly is conspicuous by its absence in a great deal of modern work. Given a novelist who has not a single fine character in his repertory (and apparently there are such), whose sense of humor is not over-delicate, and who has no lofty ideals to the attainment of which his personages may strive-what is left him? No doubt the passion of love, physical gratification of all kinds, the acquisition of wealth, or escape from danger. Consequently we find "love" described in the most realistic and often most offensive way; heroines who are supposed to be beautiful but who have practically "no characters at all," or at least no characteristics except that one is a blonde and looks well in blue, another a brunette and looks well in red, and who attract their lovers purely and simply by physical charm. Writers of this type, who reflect what presumably is ordinary middle-class life, depress us very much by the tameness and pettiness of their ideas. Is it because life is so dull that they are dull, or because they do not read

the inner secret of many homely lives? We are inclined to think it is the latthat even in Camberwell or Kennington we may still, if we know how

look for them, find genuine heroes and heroines. Most of us have heard of, perhaps have seen, the "dowser," 'who with a willow or hazel twig is ́able to divine where water is likely to be found. But it is not every man or woman who can be a "dowser." It is not everyone, not even among clever people, who possesses the divining rod of sympathy. We all see what we are, and find what we are on the lookout for. If we cast our eyes back on the last dozen novels (if modern ones) we have read, shall we not be obliged regretfully to say that in the majority of them-for of course there are exceptions to all rules, and among the exceptions we should like gratefully to specify some of the novels of Mr. Anthony Hope-we do not care in the very least what becomes of any of the characters? We are not sufficiently convinced of their existence.

They never

speak to us heart to heart. They may constitute, as in novels of the "sword and cloak" order, the human thread which runs through a tissue of strange adventures, or, in novels of another class, the links between a series of absurd and humorous scenes; they may become vehicles for sensation in one writer's hands, or mouthpieces for sermons or political and economic views in another; they may, under a thin veil of fiction, reproduce one man's travelling experiences, or another's historical researches; but what, we may ask, do any of these things profit, if the characters are little better than dressed-up dummies, or, if human beings at all, human only in a low, coarse, and commonplace way, or, worse than all, only the actors in a hideous murder trial?

4 Mr. Pett Ridge's charming little book, Mrs. Galer's Business," and Mr. Whiteing's "No. 5 John Street," may be mentioned in this connection.

There lies before us, as we write, a clever readable novel-Thompson's Progress, by Mr. Cutcliffe Hyne, the history of a self-made man who begins as a poacher and ends as a prospective peer. It is a book not only entertaining but instructive; the hero is a shrewd longheaded Yorkshireman, and the story of his progress is most entertainingly and at times humorously told. He has a series of delightful dogs. He meets with one adventure after another and always "comes out top," he is not without kindliness, public spirit and good nature, and his attachment to the wife whom he eventually wins is a strange compound of love and ambition. One would not describe him exactly as a "worldly" character, but he is certainly a man whose own 'cuteness and power of getting on almost stand in the way of his higher development. He would probably not have agreed with Mrs. Browning—

What's the best thing in the World?
Something out of it, I think.

We follow his career with breathless interest, but we put the book down with a sense of disappointment. Is this all, we feel inclined to say, all that this cleverness and energy leads to? And as we put down the book, we feel as if we could take up and read for the twentieth time Thackeray's death of Colonel Newcome, the man whose death was the close of a series of failures and disappointments, but whom no one can read of without loving, and whom a great writer's genius has made as real to us as a member of our own family circle.

There is a certain snobbishness about a good many modern novels, which is curiously characteristic of democracy. Dukes and duchesses, earls and countesses, Lady Bettys and Lady Gwendolens, are to be met there in profusion far greater than in real life. There are also young male scions of

the aristocracy whose name and rank 'it is difficult to ascertain, as they are generally spoken of as "Bob," or "Jim," or possibly as "Lord Billy" or "Lord Dickie." The duchesses are usually absurd and grotesque old women. Diamond tiaras and "ropes of pearls" are as common as daisy chains, and everyone has a motor car (probably several) and an opera box. In no class of books are flunkeys and menials spoken of more contemptuously, though probably many of the readers of the work will belong to that class. It is a comfort to meet with a French maid, Pauline or Justine, as then we know pretty well where to look for the villain of the piece. she has a slight tendency to a mous tache on her upper lip, we may be quite sure of it. We feel a little regret that even so distinguished and cultivated a writer as Mrs. Humphry Ward has not been able to resist the fascination of the Peerage. But it is a comfort to think that when the party actually in power has done its worst, there will still be an Elysium left for members of that much envied and much persecuted order in the pages of contemporary fiction.

If

We have, however, another and more serious complaint to make against those novelists who, whether accurately or inaccurately-it is not for us to say-profess to depict the "smart set," but who do so with an eye to readers of the lower middle class; and this is the extreme irreverence and profanity which deform their pages. In this respect, we think, they surpass their French contemporaries, though they can hardly do so as regards indelicacy and immorality. But the very

fact that the Bible is the most familiar book in the English language, and that its "felicities" of expression fix it easily in the memory, makes it possible for writers who have very little knowledge of other kinds of literature-in which it may be remarked by the way

that they are much inferior to the great writers of the last generation-to quote it on every occasion, and often most irreverently as well as tastelessly. This is one of the cheapest and most offensive forms of wit, and we cannot but regret to see it employed by men and women whose very familiarity with Scripture is due to the education they have received. It would be easy to give quotations from the novels of the last twenty-five years, where some of the most sacred and awful thingsthe Divine Name, the Passion, the Day of Judgment, and many other subjects which reverent natures would speak of only at suitable times and in lowered tone, are introduced in the midst of the most frivolous surroundings. It is possible that in some cases these sacred associations have ceased to have any meaning for the writers to whom we refer; but, even should this be the case, may we not ask them to remember that there is even now a large portion of the reading public which still feels reverence for sacred words and sacred things, and which is deeply pained when it sees them treated with flippant profanity? It seems almost unnecessary to say that, were we to judge from a large portion of modern literature, family prayers were always dull and unreal, the "local curate" an easy and obvious butt for raillery, and the bishop, archdeacon, or other dignified clergyman a pompous self-satisfied nonentity, that Sunday in high life was almost invariably devoted to playing bridge, and that sermons were always synonymous with boredom. There may be a residuum of truth in all this; but as in real life we sometimes do find bishops and clergy who have their Master's cause at heart, and are not seeking themselves, or are even full of the dignity and importance of their own order, while even among the laity there are still a few good men and women left whose religious earnestness makes

itself felt in every day and hour of their lives, might it not be possible to let us catch, if it were, but occasional glimpses of them?

"Young men, tell me your dreams," was the question once put by a cele brated artist to a youthful aspirant for fame. "Tell me your dreams?" is the question which might be put to the readers of modern fiction. What is the Telos at which all these struggling, striving multitudes are aiming? When we look at the frieze of the Parthenon, and ask ourselves whither the stream of youthful horsemen and graceful maidens is moving, we are told that it is to do a great act of homage to the tutelary goddess of their city.

The purpose, as they understood it, is a noble one, and noble are the figures which carry it out. But what strikes one in the majority of our modern works of fiction is a total lack of nobility. After all, what constitutes nobility? Surely it is having a noble aim. It might be said, and very likely may have been said already, that we can judge of a man or a nation by the heaven to which they aspire. What is the heaven to which our modern fiction in the person of its heroes and heroines seems to aspire? Ten thousand a year, luxuries and display, a title and the entrée into "fashionable" society!

It may very truly be said that poetical justice cannot depict for us the unearthly joys which are the crown of a good man's life, and therefore the artist has to fall back on temporal rewards, and that even Job had such material blessings bestowed on him. But (as in the case of Job) the true painter of human life has to show us that these temporal blessings are not, and can never be, the real reward of fidelity to high aims, but only, at best, the tokens of it. The real reward must always be (as Sophocles showed us long ago) the purification and eleva

tion of the man's or woman's own character, and the bringing them closer to those ultimate realities which lie behind the phenomenal world. This can be done, and has been done, by great writers of fiction. But perhaps it may be said that writers cannot all be great, and yet that they may help to beguile a dull or sorrowful hour. We admit it most readily: we have had far too much reason to be grateful to writers of fiction to think of doing otherwise. But taking his objection on its own ground, may we not truly say that there is no humor so delightful, no fun so light-hearted, as that which belongs to the pure in heart? Even the humor of Aristophanes, and still more that of Shakespeare, is not delightful because of its coarseness, but in spite of its coarseness. Take the Midsummer Night's Dream: it seems to have been written in a complete "abandon" of light-heartedness; and yet it is doubtless the one of Shakespeare's plays in which there is hardly a licentious word. Coarseness (at all events in modern writers) is usually a confession of weakness and of an empty exchequer, an indication of intellectual barrenness; and the same may be said of profanity. The finer the talent, the less need it has to eke out its resources by means like these. May we not say with truth that it is one of the dangers of the democracy to which we seem to be tending, that these finer perceptions will be blunted, and that our art and our literature are already beginning to show indications of the fact? No word has been more unfairly employed than the word "aesthetic." There is a false aisthesis of which our decadent artists may be called the apostles, and there is a true aisthesis of which we have happily in the past had some notable instances in our English literature; it is that delicacy of feeling, as sensitive as the antennæ of an insect, which we sometimes call good