d
exclaimed, 'Very good indeed! Very good!' Yule affected to applaud with
impartial smile.

'It wouldn't harmonise with the Anglo-Saxon spirit,' remarked Mr Hinks,
with an air of diffident profundity.

Yule held forth on the subject for a few minutes in laboured phrases.
Presently the conversation turned to periodicals, and the three men were
unanimous in an opinion that no existing monthly or quarterly could be
considered as representing the best literary opinion.

'We want,' remarked Mr Quarmby, 'we want a monthly review which
shall deal exclusively with literature. The Fortnightly, the
Contemporary--they are very well in their way, but then they are mere
miscellanies. You will find one solid literary article amid a confused
mass of politics and economics and general clap-trap.'

'Articles on the currency and railway statistics and views of
evolution,' said Mr Hinks, with a look as if something were grating
between his teeth.

'The quarterlies?' put in Yule. 'Well, the original idea of the
quarterlies was that there are not enough important books published to
occupy solid reviewers more than four times a year. That may be true,
but then a literary monthly would include much more than professed
reviews. Hinks's essays on the historical drama would have come out in
it very well; or your "Spanish Poets," Quarmby.'

'I threw out the idea to Jedwood the other day,' said Mr Quarmby, 'and
he seemed to nibble at it.'

'Yes, yes,' came from Yule; 'but Jedwood has so many irons in the fire.
I doubt if he has the necessary capital at command just now. No doubt
he's the man, if some capitalist would join him.'

'No enormous capital needed,' opined Mr Quarmby. 'The thing would
pay its way almost from the first. It would take a place between the
literary weeklies and the quarterlies. The former are too academic,
the latter too massive, for multitudes of people who yet have strong
literary tastes. Foreign publications should be liberally dealt with.
But, as Hinks says, no meddling with the books that are no books--biblia
abiblia; nothing about essays on bimetallism and treatises for or
against vaccination.'

Even here, in the freedom of a friend's study, he laughed his
Reading-room laugh, folding both hands upon his expansive waistcoat.

'Fiction? I presume a serial of the better kind might be admitted?' said
Yule.

'That would be advisable, no doubt. But strictly of the better kind.'

'Oh, strictly of the better kin