14 FALLING IN LOVE 



number of the ablest minds in England, France, and America, 

 from more serious subjects to the production of such very 

 frivolous and, on the whole, ephemeral works of art. But 

 the novel has this one great counterpoise of undoubted good 

 to set against all the manifold disadvantages and short- 

 comings of romantic literature that it always appeals to 

 the true internal promptings of inherited instinct, and 

 opposes the foolish and selfish suggestions of interested 

 outsiders. It is the perpetual protest of poor banished 

 human nature against the expelling pitchfork of calculating 

 expediency in the matrimonial market. While parents and 

 moralists are for ever saying, ' Don't marry for beauty ; 

 don't marry for inclination ; don't marry for love : marry 

 for money, marry for social position, marry for advance- 

 ment, marry for our convenience, not for your own,' the 

 romance-writer is for ever urging, on the other hand, 

 ' Marry for love, and for love only.' His great theme in all 

 ages has been the opposition between parental or other 

 external wishes and the true promptings of the young and 

 unsophisticated human heart. He has been the chief ally 

 of sentiment and of nature. He has filled the heads of all 

 our girls with what Sir George Campbell describes off-hand 

 as ' foolish ideas about love.' He has preserved us from 

 the hateful conventions of civilisation. He has exalted the 

 claims of personal attraction, of the mysterious native 

 yearning of heart for heart, of the indefinite and inde- 

 scribable element of mutual selection ; and, in so doing, 

 he has unconsciously proved himself the best friend of 

 human improvement and the deadliest enemy of all those 

 hideous ' social lies which warp us from the living truth.' 

 His mission is to deliver the world from Dr. Johnson and 

 Sir George Campbell. 



For, strange to say, it is the moralists and the doc- 

 trinaires who are always in the wrong : it is the senti- 



