the public mind with the description of men without hearts, women without chastity; polish without dignity, and existence without use.-Unconsciously exposing the falsehood, the hypocrisy, and vulgar insolence of patrician life, these works could not but engender a mingled indignation and disgust at the parade of frivolity-the ridiculous disdain of truth, nature, and mankind-the selfconsequence and absurdity, which these novels exhibit as a picture of aristocratic society.-BULWER's England.

CHAPTER IV.

NOVEL-READING.

Ye writers of what none with safety reads
Footing it in the dance that Fancy leads;
Ye novelists! who mar what ye would mend,
Sniv'lling and driv'lling folly without end :—

COWPER.

§1.-A distinguishing feature of the age, and one not the most flattering to its intellectual character, is the adoption of works of fiction into the body of our standard literature. This subject becomes somewhat serious, when we reflect that novels exist mainly for the entertainment of a weaker sex. "That the present state of woman's mind is unhealthy," says a cotemporary, 'may be observed from the works, which are intended for her use (1) principally, wherewith the circulating libraries abound."

One might imagine, that in these times, there was novelty to be gleaned from real life, and in of Truth, without seeking it in Fiction. But not so: the public palate, once vitiated in

the

page

its intellectual good, has enlarged its appetite

The public mind, once settled towards an examination of the aristocracy, has pierced from the surface to the depth; it has probed the wound, and it now desires to cure !-The novels which of late have been so eagerly read, and which profess to give a description of the life of the higher circles, have, in our own day, nauseated

the public mind with the description of men without hearts, women without chastity; polish without dignity, and existence without use.-Unconsciously exposing the falsehood, the hypocrisy, and vulgar insolence of patrician life, these works could not but engender a mingled indignation and disgust at the parade of frivolity-the ridiculous disdain of truth, nature, and mankind-the selfconsequence and absurdity, which these novels exhibit as a picture of aristocratic society.-BULWER'S England.