test, "whether they made one wiser and better." Antiquated as this criterion may appear to some, we cannot forbear applying it to Warren's novels. A great novelist has it even better in his power than a great preacher to justify to men the ways of the Almighty; and Warren never for a moment loses sight of the responsibility which the exercise of his genius imposes upon him. He thinks it no shame to confess that his fictions are written with a purpose. And the lessons which he teaches, when once learned, will not easily be forgotten. Is there any reader whose moral nature is so unimpressionable that he or she can lay down "Ten Thousand a- Year" without the feeling that they have been listening to a great preacher who has expounded the weighty text of human life as it had rarely ever been expounded before? What lessons of patient, hopeful endurance under unmerited reverses do we not learn from the story of Aubrey? Could deceit and hypocrisy be shown in all their native loathsomeness and with their terrible consequences more forcibly than in the career and ending of Gammon? How close is the acquaintance we make with suffering, both mental and physical, each in its many-sided and painful aspects, in the "Diary of a Late Physician"! And who can read that noble story of the peer and the peasant in "Now and Then," without a deep feeling of the overruling power of God's providence over the mutable condition of human society — a power that puts down the mighty from his seat and exalteth the humble and meek?
Impressed as he was with the responsibility of exercising his powers for a higher object than the mere amusement of his readers, it is not strange that he would not trim his sails to catch the popular breeze. The free vent which he gave to his political convictions excited hostility and prejudice against his works which nothing but their rare literary merits could have overtopped. "Ten Thousand a-Year" especially has been stigmatized as a "Tory novel." We would be doing an injustice to his memory if we either disavowed or apologized for the fact. He was not one of those who would allow the text, "Fear God: honor the king" to be divided. His conservative principles were a part of his religion; and some of the most prominent of his creations owe their pre-eminence to this combination. A very natural objection has been taken to "Ten Thousand a-Year," that its art is all of a partisan character — that the Tories are all demi-gods and angels, and the Whigs for the most part incarnations of vice and vulgarity. There may be some justice in this allegation, but the complaint has not lowered the place of the novel among the classics of English fiction. To form a just estimate of this charge, we must consider the society which "Ten Thousand a-Year" seeks to portray. The estate of Yatton is lost and won amid the furious agitations which preceded the first Reform Bill. The stirring politics of the day penetrated everywhere, and leavened the tone and feelings of society to an extent which the present generation has some difficulty in conceiving possible. Even amid the excitement of the trial of the great case of "Doe dam. Titmouse vs. Jolter," Mr. Quicksilver, one of the counsel for the "lessor of the plaintiff," employs the intervals in court to pen an article for a Radical review. A novel of English life during the reign of the fourth William without any allusion to the political aspects of society would have been like the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out. Mr. Titmouse, launched into politics under the auspices of Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap, naturally came into contact with the dregs of the Radical party, just as naturally as the best and most cultivated representatives of the Tory side are found in alliance with a man of Mr. Aubrey's refinement and position. And the partisan cast thus incidentally given to the book is of little account when we remember that a deeper motive than a purpose purely political underlies the whole. Atrociously grotesque as some of the Parliamentary caricatures unquestionably are, we doubt if they will appear as extravagant to the present generation as they did to that which read "Ten Thousand a-Year" for the first time in these pages. The Irish patriot who "showed infinite pluck in persevering against shouts of order from all parts of the house for an hour together," and his allies Mr. Phelim O'Doodle and the Och Hubbaboo, are not the only legislators whom Warren had a prophetic prescience that the "Great Bill for Giving Everybody Everything" would introduce into Parliament. But he would be a bigoted Whig indeed whose party prepossessions would not allow him to enjoy the pungent sarcasm and the wild humor which enter so largely into the descriptions of Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse's legislative career.
Of the "Diary of a Late Physician," it has been said that it betrayed a far more intimate acquaintance with the affections of the heart than the diseases of the body. But so fully does Warren's intense sym-
