of 154 4 . ‘Aue. 
FASHIONABLE NOVELS. 
Tue most popular literature at all times will be that of, novels. 
They contain matters which suit all tastes; love for the young, adven- 
ture for the romantic, character for the observer of life, conversation 
for the dull, and employment for the idle. There is no species of 
writing which so easily adopts the common courses of life, or is so natu- 
rally susceptible of the uncommon. Its province is to beguile the 
popular mind by story ; and nothing lends itself to the illusion of story 
-more readily than the popular mind. The whole range of human life 
is open to it; and principles which philosophy would reject, and persons 
to which experience has found no likeness—circumstances that have 
never existed, and hazards which neither human wisdom would meet, 
nor human courage could overcome—are alike within the grasp of this 
most potent and comprehensive literature. 
Its capability is not discoverable from the mere and trivial use of the 
novel; it has higher faculties—perhaps of good, certainly of evil—than 
are to be measured by its display on the shelves of the circulating 
library or on the table of the boudoir. When Rousseau, in the spirit of 
combined malevolence and madness, determined to shake the morality 
of France, his weapon. was a novel. When Voltaire struck at the 
throne, his weapon was a novel. When Diderot, D’Alembert, and 
their kindred tribe of blood and guilt, determined on the French revo- 
lution, their force was thrown into a succession of novels. The mine 
was charged, and the first spark found it ready for tremendous ex- 
plosion. 
In England, the same attempt to overthrow the ancient principles of 
the country was made, and the same form was found the only one that 
could be trusted with the hope of public confusion, The crowd of 
novels of the Holcroft and Woolstonecroftschool were all impregnated with 
the same materials of public disturbance ; the same scorn of the general 
and natural decencies of society, of allegiance to the state, of moral 
dignity, of fidelity to marriage, of religion, and the whole train of’ hal- 
lowed and essential duties born of that noblest and most vital of all 
foundations of freedom and virtue. But their effect was only partial : 
England was not yet diseased enough in her intellect to receive the 
dictates of vice and phrenzy for reason and honour; and after a short 
career of corruption the plague was stayed. 
Mrs. Radcliffe’s works now made a new era in novels. She had the 
most undoubted evidence of genius, originality. No authorship of any 
time was more distinct from that which had gone before, and none of 
any time made a more powerful and extensive impression for its season. 
« The Castle of Otranto” had probably suggested her model; but it 
was the work of half a century before, and had passed almost out of 
memory, and altogether. out of imitation. But if the idea of 
mingling supernatural terrors with the adventures of actual life were 
borrowed from Horace Walpole’s little romance, nothing could be more 
remote from its bareness, feebleness and improbability, than the luxuriant 
eloquence, the deep and varied interest, and the matchless and splendid 
picturesque of Mrs. Radcliffe’s writings. Curiosity, fear, admiration, 
and that still loftier and more indescribable feeling that belongs to one 
standing in the presence of powers’ beyond the grave, the spirits of 
the dead, or the great ministers of immortality, filled her magnificent 
_—— 
