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appearance of "Jane Eyre" was welcomed as a salutary protest, and a revolution was the consequence. For a considerable time afterwards ugly heroes and heroines were the rage; and the bookshop poured forth immoral books-immoral because they lived against a natural truth, that mere beauty is finer than mere ugliness, did not prove that nobility of nature is finer than mere beauty, did not tell that nobility of nature without such beauty. At present the plan of many novelists is very funny. They adopt a medium. Ugly heroes and heroines, as well as handsome ones, have gone out of fashion. A hero now is "not what would strictly be termed beautiful ; his features were faulty; but there was any novel-reader will complete the sentence. In the

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same manner, a heroine, "although at ordinary times she attracted little attention, because, under the influence of emotion, so lovely that all the faults of feature were forgotten." I fear I hardly do the novel-writers justice in these matters of description, but their own lively paintings are so well known that my inability can cause them no injury.

Against immoral books of all kinds there is but one remedy-severe and competent criticism. If, as I have endeavoured to point out, morality in literature is dependent on sincerity of sight, and if all immoral writing betrays itself by its insincerity, feebleness, and want of verisimilitude, the work of criticism is pretty simple. To prove a work immoral in any way but one, it would be necessary to have endless discussion as to what is, and what is not morality. The one way is to apply the purely literary test, and convince the public that the question of immorality need not be discussed at all, since it is settled by the decision that the work under review is not literature.

ΝΟΤΕ.

The bulk of the preceding paper appeared some time since in the Fortnightly Review, and attracted considerable criticism. There are only a few words to be said in further defence of a "theory" which never pretended to be exhaustive. Of the kindly critic (Spectator) who, citing Goethe and others, alleged that sincere work is often more insidious in its immorality than inferior and insincere work, it may be asked-is he not setting up the

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final and arbitrary system of ethics which I disclaim at the outset, by which Goethe's "self-love" and the like is to be adjudged "immoral ?" How is a man's work to be proven immoral because it honestly clothes his natural instincts in artistic language? To another ingenious writer (Contemporary Review) who, in rebuking what he called my "love for the gaudriole," defined morality as faithfulness to the tendencies of one's time, I have nothing to reply save that a further examination of the preceding may show him that we do not disagree so thoroughly as his habit of dissecting cobwebs leads him to imagine. Other and hastier critics have merely gone over objections which had previously occurred to myself, and which are far too numerous to be mentioned here.

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VII.

ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE.

"I am a pilgrim, on the quest

For the City of the Blest;
Free from sin and free from pain,
When shall I that city gain?"

"When suns no longer set and rise,

When bishops' mitres star the skies,

When alms are dropt in all earth's streets,
And angels nod upon their seats,

"O pilgrim, thou shalt take thy stand Within the City yet unplann'd,

And see beneath, with sleepy shrug,

The draff within the Pit undug."

NEW SONG TO AN OLD TUNE.

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