imaginative kitchen-maid whose idea of up-stairs existence is founded
on the gossip of servants. When written by persons conversant with
their subject, the fashionable novel forms a legitimate subdivision of
the novel of life and manners. But it is most often a noxious weed. Its
cultivators constantly make up for lack of talent by the excitement of
immoral scenes, and give to their audience of sempstresses and grooms a
most degraded view of aristocratic life. Even when harmless in matter,
its rank luxuriance fills up space much better occupied by the flowers
of literature.

The eminent criminal novel is taken as a tonic by minds satiated with
the vapidity of fashionable fiction. From Lytton's "Paul Clifford," and
Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard," down to "Merciless Ben, the Hair-Lifter,"
criminal narrative has been occupied with endowing burglars and
murderers with the graces of gentlemen and the moral worth of Christian
missionaries. In its celebration of successful crime, and its
representation under a heroic aspect of villains and blacklegs, no
species of fiction is more false to nature or more injurious to
youthful readers.

To such writers as George A. Lawrence and "Ouida" the world is indebted
for the "Muscular Novel," which combines all the worst elements of both
fashionable and criminal narrative. In "Guy Livingstone," "Strathmore,"
and a hundred similar fictions, the reader is introduced to men of
extraordinary physical development, whose strength is proof against
the wildest dissipation; to women of extraordinary beauty, whose charms
are enhanced in proportion to their coarseness and lack of modesty.
Jack Sheppard, reposing on a velvet couch, smoking a perfumed
cigarette, and worshipped by two or three ornaments of the demi-monde,
is the type most admired by the muscular novelist. Lawrence and "Ouida"