The House of Souls
And here, by the way, I may, perhaps, be permitted to say a word in defence of the method and milieu of these tales. In a frivolous community, such as the French, this would be pure impertinence; since in Paris it is agreed that imagination and fantasy are to work as they will and as they can, and are to be judged by their own laws. He who carves gurgoyles admirably is praised for his curious excellence in the invention and execution of these grinning monsters; and if he is blamed it is for bad carving, not because he has failed to produce pet lambs. In England, of course, we judge very differently; we lay stress on usefulness and serious aims, and Imagination itself is expected to improve the occasion, to reform while it entertains, and to instruct under the guise of story-telling. This, doubtless, is one of the many benefits which we owe to our sturdy Puritan ancestors, those architects of England's true greatness, fathers of huge banking accounts, of flourishing industrial communities, of Gower Street, of Manchester and its environs, of "substitutes" in every trade, of the "open Bible"—in short, of all the blessings of civil and religious liberty. But, indeed, I think we scarcely realize the debt that our English Art owes to English Puritanism. We have all learnt the story of its more
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