THE DECAY OF SENTIMENT.
That useful little phrase, "the complexity of modern thought," has been so hard worked of late years that it seems like a refinement of cruelty to add to its obligations. Begotten by the philosophers, born of the essayists, and put out to nurse among the novel-writers, it has since been apprenticed to the whole body of scribblers, and drudges away at every trade in literature. How, asks Vernon Lee, can we expect our fiction to be amusing, when a psychological and sympathetic interest has driven away the old hard-hearted spirit of comedy? How, asks Mr. Pater, can Sebastian Van Stork make up his mind to love and marry and work like ordinary mortals, when the many-sidedness of life has wrought in him a perplexed envy of those quiet occupants of the churchyard, "whose deceasing was so long since over"? How, asks George Eliot, can Mrs. Pullet weep with uncontrolled emotion over Mrs. Sutton's dropsy, when it behooves her
