The Novel.

In speaking of the novel, it is not my purpose to eulogize nor to decry it, but simply, in an impartial manner, to inquire as to the position in literature that the novel should occupy. I shall speak only of the ideal novel, and shall say little of it in the concrete. Every branch of fine art springs out of something within human nature. All the arts are the external expression of something in the spirit, and literature, being one of the arts, must also be the external expression of something within. In seeking for the cause of some branches of the fine arts, it is often essential that we fall back upon our rights as human beings, and, placing our hands upon our hearts, say, "I love this or I love that because I do." None of you can rise in your place and tell why you love music. Very often we have to be like the young

man who was walking in the garden among the Romans-I am sure it was in the Roman days-with an old philosopher, and, having come to a bed of poppies, the young man said, "Father, why is it the poppy makes people sleepy?" Now, the custom of these old Latin and Greek professors was never to admit ignorance of anything, but always to know the whole reason—and there are men yet living of that class, theologians generally. The old philosopher, looking upon the ground, said: "My son, the poppy makes people sleepy because it possesses a soporific principle;" and the young man was happy. Walking through the garden of literature, this flower called the novel-not this poppy, for the sermon is the true poppy of literature-this rose

rises up before you and asks if you can tell

the source of its gorgeous coloring. doing this it is necessary to go back.

In

First, having found out what literature. is, we may infer whether the novel is a part of true literature. Literature is that thought which is universal. True literature must be universal truth appealing to man

as man, not to man as a Methodist, Calvinist, an Englishman, or an American. Hence the writings of Shakespeare, of Homer, of Milton pass into all languages, because the great thoughts of those writers belong to the human heart. But the element of universality is not sufficient, because the truths of the multiplication table are universal. The whole human family believe that twice two makes four. Besides the universality, you will find that all the thoughts of literature spring from the soul, that is, from the emotions, from the sentiments, rather than from the intellect alone. So that in literature you must have a universality of thought, and thought ornamented, thought decorated-the thoughts of the heart. This is sufficiently inclusive, if it includes poetry, the drama, the great histories, the great essays, and religion, and is sufficiently exclusive if it throws out encyclopedias, The Congressional Globe, and, what is better yet, arithmetic, and also dogmatic theology-which is no part of literature.

Secondly, all the fine arts spring from a

basis of sentiment. They are the outward expression of sentiment, and for the most part all the fine arts spring from a single sentiment, that of the beautiful. Music, statuary, painting, architecture are the outward expression of our sense of beauty. Literature is nothing else than thought ornamented. Where, then, is this element of beauty that makes the novel a part of literature and secures for it an admittance into the great world of art? Go back with me, if you choose, two thousand years, and you will see upon the walls of every old temple, of every palace, of every dwellinghouse a certain form or figure, and the likeness is-woman. The forehead is not high, as our girls used to think twenty years ago I believe the notion has perished that thought made the forehead high; nor is the hair black, as our girls still think, but brown. The cheek, the chin, the nose, the shoulders all express beauty in the undulating lines that are supposed to convey it. The Greeks called this image Andromeda, or Helen. Along came the Latins and called it Minerva, or