No. 4.] THE ETHICS OF BOOKS. 125 



cies in too many cases. In this business, as in every other, 

 skilled workmen are few. 



That Americans are a novel-loving people, is a fact. 

 Stories are to amuse and for mental recreation, yet they 

 have a potent formative force, especially upon the young. 

 If the yellow-covered dime novel will cause boys to run 

 away to sea and elsewhere, and girls to elope, then the 

 highly moral, elevating story must help in the making of 

 noble men and women, by the same law. Many of the 

 vices of to-day are the result of evil thoughts suggested by 

 bad books and papers. It has been stated that in 1840 we 

 had in these United States one criminal in about three 

 thousand people ; after fifty years of progress, in 1890, we 

 had one in about seven hundred people. The cause attrib- 

 uted for this degeneration in morals was a political one. 

 Low grades from foreign nations, as American citizens, have 

 made demands even in the line of reading matter, and have 

 generally got what they asked for. Editors of daily papers 

 tell us that crime must be set out in the most intense, de- 

 tailed and emphatic manner, to suit the abnormal tastes of 

 the many whose appetites have become vitiated by long 

 gorging on indecencies. Too much literature is made for 

 money, to while away time, without even an ethical trend. 



As we are in the mass a novel-reading people, and likely 

 to remain so, it may be well to consider the different classes 

 of prose fiction. "Evelina," by Frances Burney, after- 

 ward Madam D'Arblay, was the first English novel that sur- 

 vived. Previous to that the very name of novel was a 

 "horror" to all decent people. They called the circulating 

 library an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. Miss 

 Burney's appearance and work were an important epoch in 

 English literary history. Her books were forceful, vet 

 moral and clean. It opened the way for women in letters, 

 and made that way honorable. 



We have the romancer, the idealist and the realist. The 

 romance sprang up in the middle ages in the form of " Ar- 

 thur and the Round Table," the Holy Grail and Parzival. 

 As a school it was opposed to the classical style. To be 

 exact, there was a difference between a romancer and a ro- 



