tility. It would be easy to
write a story which would prove--if a story can be imagined to prove
anything--the precise opposite of the truth so eloquently preached in
'Robert Elsmere,' and the tale might be perfectly true to the experience
of life. There are men who, parting with dogmatic religion, part with
religion altogether, and whose only chance of salvation from themselves
lies in the acceptance of a hard and fast creed. It would be easy
enough, and true enough, to show such a man assailed by doubt,
struggling and succumbing, and then going headlong to the devil. The
thing has happened many a time. Mrs. Humphry Ward shows another kind
of man, and depicts him most ably. Robert Elsmere is even a better
Christian when he has surrendered his creed than he was whilst he held
it, for he has reached to a loftier ideal of life, and he dies as a
martyr to its duties. But the story has the air of being controversial,
and fiction and controversy do not work well together. It is possible to
establish any theory, so far as a single instance will do it, when you
have the manufacture both of facts and of characters in your own hands.
Accept an extreme case. A practised novelist might take in hand the
character of a morose and surly fellow who was generous and expansive in
his cups. So long as the wretch was sober he might be made hateful; half
fill him with whisky, and you gift him with all manner of emotional good
qualities. The study might be real enough, but it would prove nothing.
The novelist who assails a controversial question begs everything, and
the answer to a problem so posed is worthless except as the expression
of an individual opinion. It may be urged--and there is force in the
contention--that there are many people who are only induced to think of
serious themes when they are dressed in the guise of fiction, as there
are people who cannot take pills unless they are sugar-coated. Again--as
admitted already--a mind in process of formation might be strengthened
and broadened by the influence of such a book as 'Robert Elsmere.' There
are some to whom its apparent trend of thought will appear to be simply
damnable. That one may have scant respect for their judgment, and no
share at all in their opinion, does not alter the fact that the weapon
employed against them is not and cannot be fairly used.

Many years ago, Mr. Clark Russell, whose name is now a household word,
was the editor of an ill-fated society journal. I wa