amuse any one. I should be said to insist absurdly on the power of my
own confraternity if I were to declare that the bulk of the young
people in the upper and middle classes receive their moral teaching
chiefly from the novels they read. Mothers would no doubt think of
their own sweet teaching: fathers of the examples which they set: and
schoolmasters of the influence of their instructions. Happy is the
country that has such mothers, fathers, schoolmasters! But the novelist
creeps in closer than the schoolmaster, closer than the father, closer
almost than the mother. He is the chosen guide, the tutor whom the
young pupil chooses for herself. She retires with him, suspecting no
lesson, safe against rebuke, throwing herself head and heart into the
narration as she can hardly do into her task-work; and there she is
taught how she shall learn to love; how she shall receive the lover
when he comes; how far she should advance to meet the joy; why she
should be reticent, and not throw herself at once into this new
delight. It is the same with the young man, though he would be more
prone even than she to reject the suspicion of such tutorship. But he,
too, will there learn either to speak the truth, or to lie; and will
receive from his novel lessons either of real manliness, or of that
affected apishness and tailor-begotten demeanor which too many
professors of the craft give out as their dearest precepts."

Such are the views of a close observer of human nature, whose works
have had an exceedingly wide and an always excellent influence. While
Mr. Trollope has probably exaggerated the educational power of the
novel, it cannot be denied that this form of literature takes a
considerable part in moulding the opinions and standards of the young.
The impressions of life derived from novels are almost as strong as
those we receive from what is passing in the world about us. If a work
of fiction form a truthful reflection of nature, it must hold up to