own. There may be no point of contact between him and the great masters. In that case the latter can have no salutary influence over him. The books that he does relish may in time educate him to the level of appreciating higher things. The Reviewer, for his part, remembers with gratitude a great many works which assisted him in his callow youth and would be caviare to his maturer judgment.
Even if the reader finds no great intellectual delight in the novels of " The Duchess," his sociological interest in his fellow-creatures may shed a reflected light upon the printed page in the effort to determine their value to other minds. But at any rate let him beware of looking upon the work of an unusually bright and clever woman as useless rubbish. The author of "Molly Bawn" deserves all the suffrages that she receives, and that is saying much, for they give her an exalted position in popular favor. Her last book, "A Modern Circe" (J. B. Lippincott Company), has less of the wit and dash and artless abandon of her earlier works; it has more passion and tragedy, and incidents of an intenser character. Whether it is as good as or better than the others must be determined by individual taste. The Reviewer himself would prefer "Molly Bawn" and "Mrs. Geoffrey."
Two novels that have recently been issued—"As in a Looking-Glass," by F. C. Philips (M. J. Ivers & Co.), and "The Confessions of a Society Man, edited by Blanche Conscience" (Belford, Clarke & Co.)—are a reductio ad nauseam of the principles of that school of fiction which demands a realistic fidelity to life. They are both sincere attempts to picture human nature as it is, blinking none of the unclean and unpleasant features: indeed, the realist might plausibly urge that the artists have directed their attention only to the unclean and the unpleasant, and therefore that their picture is incomplete. Nevertheless these two books form a sort of pendant to the fiction that seeks to describe the real and yet leaves out all the uncleanliness; and if human nature in its wonted moods is the proper study of the novelist, they fill a needed gap. But many of us believe that the higher aims and aspirations of the present, and not its wonted moods, represent the real life of the future, and that the efforts of the artist should be directed towards bringing the future closer to us. The Ideal, it cannot too often be insisted on, is the higher Real. "We descend in order to meet," says Emerson, and the meeting-ground is what we denominate real life, but with every completed cycle the meeting-ground is higher up and the Ideal comes nearer of attainment. At all events, the spectacle presented by these two books is not a pleasant one. "As in a Looking-Glass" is far the cleverer and more unwholesome of the two. As a picture of the morals and manners of blackguards it is accurate enough in its general effect, but many of the details are highly improbable. Since Balzac's "Femme de Trente Ans," the heroine of mature charms has been a stock-character with novelists, but we are hardly prepared to accept a female charmer of nearly thirty-five, who paints and "makes up," yet who fascinates every man that comes within her range. "The Confessions of a Society Man" aims to present the darker undercurrent of that sort of social life which seems only frivolous and foolish on the surface. It lacks imaginative insight. The feigned author is painted as a bold, bad man, the real author somehow conveys to his reader's mind an impression of innocence and inexperience.
Among the other publications which have found their way to the Reviewer's table he might mention two new satirical sketches by the author of "The Auto-
