journalist, is really a sight for the angels to weep over." It is just possible that whatever personal interest the angelic hosts take in our earthly lot may be directed to philanthropy rather than to literature; but, for the idle and inglorious mortal, the protest holds a world of truth and meaning. Reade, as a reformer, is melancholy company; and Dickens is inexpressibly dismal when he drags the Chancery business into "Bleak House," and the pauper dinner-table into "Oliver Twist," and that dreary caricature, the Circumlocution Office, into "Little Dorrit." If these things really accomplished the good that is claimed for them, it was dearly bought by the weariness of so many millions of readers. "A fiction contrived to support an opinion is a vicious composition," said Jeffrey, who was as apt in his general criticisms as he was awkward in their particular applications, and who lived before the era of serious and educational novels. To-day we have the unhesitating assertion of Mr. Howells that one of Tolstoï's highest claims to our consideration is his steadfast teaching "that all war, private and public, is a sin." Mr. Ruskin, it may be remembered, holds some-
