affection for her by repudiating with one breath all her great successors. We may not even consider "The Newcomes" and "Henry Esmond" as illustrating the degeneracy of modern fiction; yet nevertheless we may enjoy some fair half-hours in the company of Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Elton, of Catherine Morland and Elizabeth Bennet. Only, when we are searching for a shibboleth by which to test our neighbor's intellectual worth, let not Jane Austen's be the name, lest we be rewarded for our trouble by hearing the faint, clear ripple of her amused laughter—that gentle, feminine, merciless laughter—echoing softly from the dwelling-place of the immortals.
It is inevitable, moreover, that too much rigidity on the part of teachers should be followed by a brisk spirit of insubordination on the part of the taught. Accordingly, now and then, some belligerent freeman rushes into print, and shakes our souls by declaring breathlessly that he hates "Wagner, and Mr. Irving, and the Elgin Marbles, and Goethe, and Leonardo da Vinci;" and this rank socialism in literature and art receives a very solid and shameless support from the more
