But the days of his boyhood soon pass. sever, 99 66 His relatives com ing to visit him after a year's absence, find that he has shot up into a young man. He discovers the use of a mirror, and gazing into it, gets his first idea of manly beauty. He also forms his notions of the cut of a coat, the color of a necktie, and the parting of the hair, and adapts his walk and conversation to what he considers a gentlemanly style. He finds, too, that he has a heart, and that he, can write poetry, and he frames verses abounding in such rhymes as "heart," " part, ever," never. The future is enveloped in rose-tint, and he fondly hopes that in that romantic land there will be in store for him nothing but beauty and bliss. For this emotional young man the sentimental novel is produced. Its clements are beauty, devotion, danger, deliverance. Its favorite characters are a young lady, exquisitely lovely, with golden locks, and the figure of a sylph; a young man of slim form, bright eyes, and raven hair, who adores the sylph, but is in despair, because, alas! he has no blue blood in his veins; a little, rickety aristocrat, who offers a title and a fortune for the hand of the sylph, and a cruel, cruel father who favors the rickety aristocrat. All these characters are at sixes and sevens through the greater part of the book. Then, lo! a sudden catastrophe —a conflagration, or inundation, or both. The youth of the raven hair rushes in at the risk of his life and saves the sylph. Then that philanthropic, middle-aged man, so frequent in novels and so rare in real life, whose sole business it is to make young people happy, comes in at the very nick of time, and by means of some paper found somewhere, proves that the youth of the raven hair is the eldest son of Sir Somebody, and that his blood, after all, is of the proper regulation color. "You have saved her life; she is yours, take her, and be happy," says the father, now no longer cruel. And then there is added just one sentence more to say how happy they were to the end of a long life; for in the sentimental world all miseries end with marriage, and the rest of life is one delightful monotony of unmitigated bliss. But the man gradually emerges from the sentimental world into the sober world of reality. His heart has subsided to a humdrum beat. The rose color has died out. Beauty and bliss may have come, but they have come very much alloyed. Now, if the man is of a shallow nature, he falls into a weaker state than ever. Simple enjoyments pall upon him. He becomes blasé, and nothing in the real world interests him, save such exciting causes as steeple-chases, fighting and games of hazard. It is to administer to this mind diseased that the And novelist prepares his sensational novel. Its elements are mystery, murder, detection. The great essential is a culprit. to make this culprit as interesting as possible, she is a lady as exquisite as an angel, with sunny locks and eyes of heavenly blue, entrancing smile, melodious voice, and small soft delicate hand, the idolized wife of a baronet, yet bearing about with her a guilty secret. And to torment this lovely culprit there is an accomplice, a woman with waxen face, white eyebrows, and colorless lips; and this woman has a husband, a red-haired, bull-necked ruffian, who is constantly making himself tipsy, and almost blurting out the secret. Then to get up the hunt, a relation of the baronet comes in, and he suspects the lady's crime, and sets himself to find it out. A detective is put on the scent, and the chase becomes exciting. to get some papers. She destroys them them. He, after most intricate inquiries, gets other evidence. She sets fire to a house, and tries to burn up both him and the evidence. At last he brings her to bay. She confesses that she has been married before, that she drowned her first husband in a well, that she has a taint of madness in her blood, that she has been mad all the while; and is carried off raving to the asylum. Then, to the surprise of all, her murdered husband turns up. He had been thrown into a well, but had scrambled out again, and had lain hid, disgusted with the whole affair. We do not wonder at his disgust. He schemes hard before he can get But if the man is of a deeper nature, when his romantic ideas vanish, a far wider and truer theory of life succeeds. He now sees that the real world is more wonderful than the ideal, that truth is stranger than fiction; and he becomes interested in all the phenomena of this wonderful world, especially in that wonder of wonders, man. It is to meet the wants of this lover of reality that the great English novelists-Richardson, Fielding, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliothave written what is called the "Novel of Manners. Such are the various kinds of works of fiction. others, but these are what may be called the legitimate kinds. And in the account which we have just given of their origin, we have ascertained that there is a natural demand for fiction; that the demand continues, under different forms, at all periods of a man's life; and that the books which supply this demand may be held to be necessaries of existence. There are This consideration, we can easily see, has a very important bearing upon the practical question: how novel-reading should be treated? We can now see how useless it is to tell young people not to read novels at all. As long as they have imagination, as long as that imagination cannot be fully satisfied by history and biography, so long must they continue to read them. Instead of trying to proscribe novel-reading, the only practicable plan is to regulate it, to show how novels should be used, and to point out the remedies in the cases in which they are abused. This we now proceed to do. 66 Novels should be used, in the first place, to teach human character. This, after all, is their great purpose. And what an important subject it is that they take up! Of all earthly subjects, surely it is the grandest. The inferior animals, the plants, and the material forces of Nature, are wonderful; but as far as our knowledge goes, man is the noblest work of God." "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals !” What a grand subject, therefore, human nature is! But the subject is not only grand, it is also useful in the highest degree. Besides our duty to God, we owe a duty to ourselves and a duty to others. But we cannot do our duty to ourselves and others, unless we know ourselves and others, unless we know, in other words, human character. Now, besides the Holy Scriptures, which are the highest exponents of the secrets of the human heart, there are several kinds of books whose business it is to describe human nature. The most pretentious of these are histories and biographies. But histories and biographies tell us chiefly about great men, and it is not about them we want to know. We want to know about every-day people like ourselves, who are placed very much in the same circumstances, who are tempted in the same way, and who may be models or warnings to us. Now, this is the knowledge that the true novelist undertakes to give us. He presents to us a life-like picture of this bustling work-a-day world, with its interesting scenes and incidents. There he shows us a variety of characters, all playing their appropriate parts. We see not only the outward movements, but also the inner workings of their nature. We watch the motives rising in their hearts, going out into action, and ending in most momentous results. We observe, too, how easily vice springs up, with what difficulty virtue is maintained, how selfishness always ends in degradation, and how benevolence is its own reward. Take Thackeray as an example. We hold that Thackeray-the keen, satirical, warm-hearted, tender, true, pureminded Thackeray-is one of the greatest educators which this country has produced. There is no doubt that he is one of the most truthful delineators of human nature. The only objection brought against him is that, in his early works especially, he is too apt to dwell upon the dark side of things. But this, instead of being an objection, is one of his most valuable qualifications as an educator of youth. The young and inexperienced are prone enough of their own accord to look upon the bright side. Their animal spirits, aspirations, fresh fancies, all lead them in this direction. It is the dark side of the world, with its flatteries, hollow promises, disgusting selfishness, and |