young, that they would suffer in their moral fibre from reading it. And, alas! This Freedom is a book which any child could read—without suspecting for a moment that it has any ideas behind it.
We do not believe that Mr Sumner will prosecute because it is patent from his movements that he has taken the morality of fifty years ago as the basis of the eternal verities. Yet the indictment is grave: the book gives a false idea of the relations of the sexes, instils immoral precepts, degrades, and corrupts. And for once Mr Sumner and his attorneys would have no difficulties with the so-called expert opinion which drags in the irrelevant matter of art. Should that matter come up at all we fancy that the shade of Charles Dickens would arise and have something to say. The eloquent M Taine himself was so carried away by Dickens' eloquence as to quote two full pages of description of a stage-coach in action; to which he adds, "All this to tell us that Tom Pinch is come to London." There is in This Freedom a paragraph describing the exertions of a family of women to get a boy off to school. It is the Dickens touch vulgarized beyond belief. And one says at the end, All this to create a lie! There are moments, indeed, when the flat waste areas of American fiction are a cool refuge and a relief.
