rring of
the gastric juices. And such a revival by any of us would be impolitic,
were it a possible attempt, before our systems shall have been fortified
by philosophy. Then may it be allowed to the Diarist simply to relate,
and we can copy from him.

Then, ah! then, moreover, will the novelist's Art, now neither blushless
infant nor executive man, have attained its majority. We can then be
veraciously historical, honestly transcriptive. Rose-pink and dirty drab
will alike have passed away. Philosophy is the foe of both, and their
silly cancelling contest, perpetually renewed in a shuffle of extremes,
as it always is where a phantasm falseness reigns, will no longer baffle
the contemplation of natural flesh, smother no longer the soul issuing
out of our incessant strife. Philosophy bids us to see that we are not so
pretty as rose-pink, not so repulsive as dirty drab; and that instead of
everlastingly shifting those barren aspects, the sight of ourselves is
wholesome, bearable, fructifying, finally a delight. Do but perceive that
we are coming to philosophy, the stride toward it will be a giant's--a
century a day. And imagine the celestial refreshment of having a pure
decency in the place of sham; real flesh; a soul born active,
wind-beaten, but ascending. Honourable will fiction then appear;
honourable, a fount of life, an aid to life, quick with our blood. Why,
when you behold it you love it--and you will not encourage it?--or only
when presented by dead hands? Worse than that alternative dirty drab,
your recurring rose-pink is rebuked by hideous revelations of the filthy
foul; for nature will force her way, and if you try to stifle her by
drowning, she comes up, not the fairest part of her uppermost! Peruse
your Realists--really your castigators for not having yet embraced
Philosophy. As she grows in the flesh when discreetly tended, nature is
unimpeachable, flower-eke, yet not too decoratively a flower; you must
have her with the stem, the thorns, the roots, and the fat bedding of
roses. In this fashion she grew, says historical fiction; thus does she
flourish now, would say the modern transcript, reading the inner as well
as exhibiting the outer.

And how may you know that you have reached to Philosophy? You touch her
skirts when you share her hatred of the sham decent, her derision of
sentimentalism. You are one with her when--but I would not have you a
thousand years older! Get to her, if in no other way, by the