must be concealed as branding them "fit to be put into a novel." To such persons novel-reading is a vice, because it is an indolent excitement, a mental opium-eating; the useless butting—against an unscalable wall—of brains intended to be fully occupied in developing those parts of the nervous and muscular systems that find their highest application in vigorous devotion to the washboard or the laying of gas pipes down.

What a different result is achieved by the reader who knows the secret that imagination is the soul of thought, that taste is the power of truth and that the abstractions produced by imagination and taste dealing with fact to convert it to fiction, or carefully assembling fiction to convert it to fact, have been the stars that have lighted up the night of human history. By the light of these in their varying forms man discovered Religion, Philosophy, Science, Government and the possibility of orderly Liberty. To such a reader the novel comprehends all human society, its customs and secrets. The untraveled man may sit in his library and become as familiar with the world as with his native town; the diffident student may mingle familiarly in the society of courts; the bashful girl may learn the most engaging manners; the slow may learn the trick of wit; the rich may learn sympathy for the poor; the weak may be warned against the pitfalls of temptation and every one may there survey himself in every aspect, subjected to discussion and exhibition under various disguises and under various circumstances; and, if he have courage and the desire, he can decide what he thinks of himself and the possibilities of improving the opinion in the light of full knowledge of the subject.

The Novel has come as the solvent of all literary art. In its possibilities all the essentials of other literary forms are combined and conveyed without injury. Professedly not History, it performs all its wonders in the guise of History and adds a light and a human interest to chronicle that gives increased value. We do not get sympathetic and human knowledge of England from History, but from Scott, Thackeray and her splendid historical novelists. We do not turn to Guizot and Thiers for any knowledge of French history except its stated public facts, its documents with royal seals and its verified dates and details—it is to Dumas, Merimee, Balzac that all but the professional students of history go. We do not seek in the rapid sketches of Gibbon for the story of Nero, but in the pages of "Quo Vadis." Where do we find the breathing history of Spain except in the countless novels that its picturesque subjects have suggested? I would scorn to underestimate the profound and substantial value that the great muse of History has conferred upon the world. In all literature she deservedly ranks first in dignity, power and usefulness; but who will say that at her court the Prime Minister is not the Novel, which by its lightness, grace and address has popularized history all over the world?

While the Novel has none of the guise of poetry, yet it has its every essence, neglecting only form and rhyme. In the Novel you may find the measure, the accent and the figures of the whole range of poetry, and a capacity for inspiring enthusiasm and emulation quite as great as poetry unjoined to the divine enchantress, Music.

Plainly not Drama, yet what is more dramatic than the Novel? In the miracle of its pages you find theater, scenery, actors, audience and author. You may sit at your ease in your library chair and command the services of the most innumerable company of comedians, tragedians, lovers, ladies, buffoons, soubrettes and pantomimists that the world ever knew. How many novels have been turned into dramas, how few dramas have been successfully expanded into novels!

Thus the Novel, while it is not History nor Poetry nor the Drama, is a combination of all. And it possesses more than this. Its