al novels. The
anti-slavery, temperance, prison reform, and poor law agitations owe
immeasurably to novels. Daniel Webster said of Dickens that he had done
more to ameliorate the condition of the British poor than all the
statesmen that ever sat in Parliament. And this present wonderful
movement of the Jews to recover Palestine--what does it not owe to a
novel?

A noble influence, too, comes from some novels that do not aim to be
_doctrinaire_ or proselyting. A story of Thackeray is a tonic to the
scorn of base action; a story of Charles Kingsley is a trumpet call to
Christian duty; a story of George Eliot is an inspiration to high
thought and honorable living. Some of her sisterhood are probably
capable of uneasily disliking George Eliot because she has a depth of
intelligence quite beyond their plummet, which the world admires; but I
should think that most women would be proud of the strength and vast
influence of one who, in succeeding to the royal line of feminine
novelists, has carried its triumphs far beyond anything achieved by
Miss Burney, Jane Austin, Miss Porter, Miss Martineau, Charlotte
Bronte, and Georges Sand.

We lay aside some authors with a sense of fulness that will not let the
attention be immediately distracted to other persons and things. The
greatest books put the mind at once into a fruitful state, as if it had
received seed of instantly bearing power. Less great books may still
give us the desire to imitate their heroes or follow their maxims. Only
dead books neither beget new thoughts nor incite by examples. As the
characters of children are partly moulded from their surroundings, so
the imaginary friends of fiction are mental associates for good or ill.
We take heart and hope from the novelist's scenes, or are so wrought
upon by his personages that these phantoms move us more than most real
men and women. If all we know of Adam Bede is what we read of him, pray
what more do we know of Czar Peter? Instead of lamenting the
fascination of the story-wright, let us rather plead for its noble use,
saying of him, as a great and generous brother writer said of Dickens:
"What a place it is to hold in the affections of men! What an awful
responsibility hanging over a writer! What man holding such a place,
and knowing that his words go forth to vast congregations of
mankind--to grown folks, to their children, and perhaps to their
children's children--but must think of his calling with a solemn and
humb