religion come under this category. But unless it be seriously maintained that there is really no purpose in life worth delineating (a conclusion some of our would-be philosophers seem to be reaching), it is absurd to object to the novelist introducing the great purpose of life into his works. No doubt considerable skill and delicacy are needed in order to do this well. The religious novelist must be religious himself, not the master of a few pious phrases, but profoundly convinced of the truth he would teach. Some of our popular writers of fiction have signally failed when they ventured on religious ground just because it was unfamiliar to them, and they had never bestowed much attention on sacred things. On the other hand, something more than an earnest religious spirit is required to make a good novelist. A wide and sympathetic know. ledge of life is needed to counteract the goody-goody tendency which has been the ruin of so many attempts in this department. The narrow-minded individual may distinguish himself as an orator or a controversialist, but never as a novelist. Breadth of view, combined with intensity of conviction, the whole coloured with vividness of imagination, are, to our thinking, the essential characteristics of the truly successful writer of fiction.

But this is not a paper on novel-writing, on which subject it is perhaps easier to give advice than to put it into practice. Our topic is novel-reading, its use and abuse, and our aim is practical. If we have begun with a kind of apology for the religious novel, it is because we believe most strongly that the irreligious novel is one of the greatest pests of humanity The bulk of modern novels profess to belong to neither of these classes, but all of them have affinities in the one direction or in the other. Take the works of George Eliot, for instance. We find no dogmatic Christianity in them, and the authoress we know to have been in creed a Positivist. Yet who does not feel when reading "Adam Bede," or the "Scenes of Clerical Life," that they owe all their moral strength to the Christianity which the gifted novelist could sympathise with if she did not profess it? It is true that in George Eliot's later novels the Christian element is not so apparent, but there is surely something of religious significance in the fact that "Daniel Deronda," the very last of them, has been enthusiastically received by the Jewish community. We do not err, then, in setting down George Eliot as a novelist who drew much of her inspiration from religion, and therein lies her power over thoughtful minds. She presents to us religion chiefly on the contemplative side; if we wish to see its practical side more fully developed, the novels of Dr. George Macdonald and Mrs. Craik will be of assistance to us. Dr. Macdonald is undoubtedly the most profoundly

religious of the great novelists of our day. He began life as a preacher, and he still preaches powerfully with his pen. His theological views every one knows through the medium of his novels, and some may think he obtrudes their peculiarities rather much; but he has the great merit of giving religion its due place in the world of the novelist. I have classed Mrs. Craik along with him not because she gives equal prominence to the facts and doctrines of religion, but because she excels in applying them, gently and almost imperceptibly, to the affairs of ordinary life. It would have been better, we think, if in some of her works she had penetrated a little further within the veil which separates the outward experience from the inner life of the soul, but we are thankful for the lofty ideal presented to us in such a work as "John Halifax, Gentleman."

The truth seems to be, however, that novels which really stimulate and ennoble are not so popular as they ought to be. Of course, the works of the authors I have mentioned find many readers, but the more sensational productions of writers that shall be nameless find many more. In a library with which I am connected it is almost always possible to obtain one or more of George Eliot's or Thackeray's works, but next to impossible to get hold of even a specimen of the sickly stuff that passes current now-adays as popular fiction." I have mentioned the works of Thackeray as too much neglected. No wonder that minds fed on Ouida and Miss Braddon have an aversion to the thoroughly healthy productions of the author of "Vanity Fair." The snobbishness against which Thackeray testified so nobly is far from extinct, and the great castigator of snobs is consequently not read by the very people who ought to read him. Some are deterred from reading Thackeray on account of his supposed cynicism. Let all such read the essay on this good and true man by his likeminded friend Dr. John Brown, in the recently published volume of essays by the latter. Therein it appears not only that Thackeray was a man of large heart, but also of fervent religious spirit. While satirising the follies of humanity, he had a profound sense of the eternal realities. There is no question that Dickens is more popular than Thackeray, and the fact is not creditable to our generation. The novels of Dickens we cannot but admire for their overflowing geniality, rich humour and deep pathos, but they are, little more than surface pictures. There is no philosophy in them, and they do not touch our deeper nature. The Dickens revealed to us in his recently published letters is a far inferior man to the Thackeray of Dr. John Brown's essay. By all means read Dickens for amusement, but don't look for a true picture of life in his

works. Caricatures may excite laughter and even edify for the moment, but they are not likenesses.

Thackeray, however, had his faults, too. His admiration of Fielding was too great, and he made him too much his model. Now, Fielding was an irreligious novelist, a representative of many of the bad qualities of the eighteenth century, and Thackeray made a narrow escape from falling into the ditch in which such men as Fielding and Smollett revelled. His native nobility of character saved him, but he failed to perceive the dangerous ten dency of Fielding and his school. In his lectures on "English Novelists" he passed an encomium on Fielding which Charlotte Brontë, for one, bitterly regretted, as it was productive of real harm to her brother. No one doubts the consummate skill of the author of "Tom Jones" in devising a plot and bringing it to an harmonious conclusion, or the 'genius he shows in depicting the manners of his time; but the atmosphere in which his characters move is charged with a moral malaria, whose influence only wellestablished minds can resist. Thackeray endeavoured to pourtray a nineteenth-century Tom Jones, but happily for us he had to do so on different lines. As for the novels of Smollett, they have not the genius of those of Fielding, and they excel them in coarseness. The best advice I can give with regard to all the novels published last century (with a few exceptions, but not including among those the well-meaning but unedifying productions of Richardson) is, "Have as little to do with them as possible. They can do you no good and may possibly do you harm." Curiosity will doubtless tempt some to partake of the forbidden fruit, but it is sure to leave a bad taste in the mouth afterwards. It would be interesting to know to what extent the novels of Sir Walter Scott are read nowadays. I am afraid they do not get their fair share of attention; but certainly they can hold their own still against any rivals. They form pre-eminently healthy reading, and he who has perused them all, not merely for the sake of the story, but for the many wise lessons they teach and the wide historical knowledge they afford, will have no meanly-furnished mind. There is a solidity and strength about Scott's masterpieces that give them a higher character than the ordinary novel. Then Sir Walter, though not a man possessed by much religious enthusiasm, had a very sincere respect for religion, and the contrast between the morality of his novels and that of the Fielding school is most striking. He is not very profound, but he is often suggestive. In his own line Sir Walter Scott has not yet found his equal, but in some respects the late Lord Lytton came very near him. Now I venture to say a word on behalf of this author, who

has often, I think, been most unjustly maligned. I am not going to defend some of his earlier works, which had the faults incidental to first attempts and the exercise of an imagination not sufficiently under control; but I do think that to fasten the charge of "immoral tendency" on such a novel, for instance, as "Eugene Aram," is unfair. That work can now be had for sixpence, so all can judge of it for themselves. Without any bias in favour of the author, I came to the conclusion, after reading it, that, so far from being likely to induce any to follow in the footsteps of the unhappy hero, it would have the opposite effect on every sane person. At the same time I would not rank " Eugene Aram" among the best of this author's works. His historical novels, and that delightful family picture, "The Caxtons," seem to me the true pillars of his fame. There is a high tone pervading these works that adds greatly to their value.

My purpose is not, however, to give a catalogue of the best novelists, but, rather, to indicate what kind of novels ought to be read. For in this age of superabundant trash in three-volume form, proper selection is no less a duty than a necessity. I would strongly advise everybody to read no novel by an anknown author, unless in very exceptional cases, till it is at least a year old. In nine cases out of ten that period suffices to prove whether a book be worth reading or not; whether it ought to be kept on the shelves of the library for further circulation, or consigned to the limbo of forgetfulness. Then let not the mere fact that a novelist is popular, or widely read, induce you to become a reader of that novelist's productions. If that popularity is only among the frivolous and thoughtless, it should be a sufficient reason against you wasting your time with such trifles. Do not be carried away in the rush after "the latest novel." Make yourselves acquainted with the great masterpieces whose reputation is secured, and not dependent on the favour of the hour.

My most important advice I reserve for the close, and I would make it as emphatic as possible. Take care that novel-reading be with you no more than a pleasant recreation, and on no account a substitute for more serious study. There is such a thing as an insatiable thirst for novels, which has about as harmful an effect on some persons as excessive indulgence in opium could have. By feeding their imagination exclusively, they derange the other parts of their mental constitution, and sink into a condition of intellectual and moral imbecility. The only remedy for this disease is to give up the diet of novels altogether, and to go in for some kind of practical work. Our forefathers were not far wrong in their notions as to the real business of life. They made too

little allowance for the imagination, and sometimes placed undue restraint upon it; but they taught us-and let us be thankful for their teaching-that it is the will that makes the man. So let all our reading be subservient to the great end of keeping strong and earnest within us the moral purpose which constitutes our real power.

J. R. F.

THREE LITTLE WOODEN CHAIRS.

BY LUCY WARDEN BEARNE.

SITTING alone by my own fireside
While the evening shadows fall,
I gaze upon three little chairs that stand
In a row by the white-washed wall.
Three wooden chairs, well worn and old,
And quite out of date, I am often told.

Yet e'en as I look at them, standing there
Along by the kitchen-wall,

My vision grows dim with sudden tears
At the memories they recall;

For those three chairs that stand in a row

Had each an occupant long ago.

Three heads, rough and restless, with curly hair

Of golden and brown and black,

Were wont to rest, in the eventide,

On each chair's stiff, wooden back;

When three little figures sat, hand in hand,

In the places where those old chairs yet stand.

But the children all left me long ago,

As birds leave the parent-nest

When their wings grow strong, and they long to fly
To the north, south, east, and west;

Just so did my little ones flee away

From the fields and woods where they used to play.

One only before me has reached God's home;
But I'll see her the first, I think,

For my pretty Janet, with eyes of blue

And cheeks like the wild-rose pink,

With the man that she loved went over the sea
Long ages ago, as it seems to me.