ds declares to herself that she also
would have been a Jeannie Deans had Fate and Fortune given her an
Effie as a sister. The bald-headed old lawyer,--for bald-headed old
lawyers do read novels,--who interests himself in the high-minded,
self-devoting chivalry of a Colonel Newcombe, believes he would have
acted as did the Colonel had he been so tried. What youth in his
imagination cannot be as brave, and as loving, though as hopeless
in his love, as Harry Esmond? Alas, no one will wish to be as
was Ralph Newton! But for one Harry Esmond, there are fifty Ralph
Newtons,--five hundred and fifty of them; and the very youth whose
bosom glows with admiration as he reads of Harry,--who exults in the
idea that as Harry did, so would he have done,--lives as Ralph lived,
is less noble, less persistent, less of a man even than was Ralph
Newton.

It is the test of a novel writer's art that he conceals his
snake-in-the-grass; but the reader may be sure that it is always
there. No man or woman with a conscience,--no man or woman with
intellect sufficient to produce amusement, can go on from year
to year spinning stories without the desire of teaching; with no
ambition of influencing readers for their good. Gentle readers, the
physic is always beneath the sugar, hidden or unhidden. In writing
novels we novelists preach to you from our pulpits, and are keenly
anxious that our sermons shall not be inefficacious. Inefficacious
they are not, unless they be too badly preached to obtain attention.
Injurious they will be unless the lessons taught be good lessons.

What a world this would be if every man were a Harry Esmond, or every
woman a Jeannie Deans! But then again, what a world if every woman
were a Beckie Sharp and every man a Varney or a Barry Lyndon! Of
Varneys and Harry Esmonds there are very few. Human nature, such as
it is, does not often produce them. The portraits of such virtues
and such vices serve no doubt to emulate and to deter. But are no
other portraits necessary? Should we not be taught to see the men
and women among whom we really live,--men and women such as we are
ourselves,--in order that we should know what are the exact failings
which oppress ourselves, and thus learn to hate, and if possible
to avoid in life the faults of character which in life are hardly
visible, but which in portraiture of life can be made to be so
transparent.

Ralph Newton did nothing, gentle reader, which would have caused
thee greatly