, or to their readers
in particular. Without introducing any comparison between the fiction of
the two languages, it may be said that the tendency of the method is
identical in both cases and is the consequence of an extreme preference
for analysis, to the detriment of the romantic and very often of the
dramatic element in the modern novel. The result may or may not be a
volume of modern social history for the instruction of the present and
the future generation. If it is not, it loses one of the chief merits
which it claims; if it is, then we must admit the rather strange
deduction, that the political history of our times has absorbed into
itself all the romance and the tragedy at the disposal of destiny,
leaving next to none at all in the private lives of the actors and
their numerous relations.

Whatever the truth may be, it is certain that this love of minute
dissection is exercising an enormous influence in our time; and as no
one will pretend that a majority of the young persons in society who
analyse the motives of their contemporaries and elders are successful
moral anatomists, we are forced to the conclusion that they are
frequently indebted to their imaginations for the results they obtain
and not seldom for the material upon which they work. A real Chemistry
may some day grow out of the failures of this fanciful Alchemy, but the
present generation will hardly live to discover the philosopher's stone,
though the search for it yield gold, indirectly, by the writing of many
novels. If fiction is to be counted among the arts at all, it is not yet
time to forget the saying of a very great man: "It is the mission of all
art to create and foster agreeable illusions."

Orsino Saracinesca was no further removed from the action of the
analytical bacillus than other men of his age. He believed and desired
his own character to be more complicated than it was, and he had no
sooner made the acquaintance of Maria Consuelo than he began to
attribute to her minutest actions such a tortuous web of motives as
would have annihilated all action if it had really existed in her brain.
The possible simplicity of a strong and much tried character, good or
bad, altogether escaped him, and even an occasional unrestrained word or
gesture failed to convince him that he was on the wrong track. To tell
the truth, he was as yet very inexperienced. His visits to Maria
Consuelo passed in making light conversation. He tried to amuse her, and