know, tells us that fiction has become a finer art in our day than it was in the days of our fathers, and that the methods and interests we have outgrown can never hope to be revived. So if the masterpieces of the present, the triumphs of learned verse and realistic prose, fail to lift their readers out of themselves, like the masterpieces of the past, the fault must be our own. We devote some conscientious hours to Parleyings with Certain People of Importance, and we are well pleased, on the whole, to find ourselves in such good company; but it is a pleasure rich in the temperance that Hamlet loved, and altogether unlikely to ruffle our composure. We read The Bostonians and The Rise of Silas Lapham with a due appreciation of their minute perfections; but we go to bed quite cheerfully at our usual hour, and are content to wait an interval of leisure to resume them. Could Daisy Miller charm a gouty leg, or Lemuel Barker keep us sleepless until morning? When St. Pierre finished the manuscript of Paul and Virginia, he consented to read it to the painter, Joseph Vernet. At first the solitary listener was loud in his approbation, then more subdued,
