nd read it, and to whom it meant something, perhaps; with
whom it was a fashion, a caprice, a passing taste. A superstitious piety
preserves it, and pretends that it has aesthetic qualities which can
delight or edify; but nobody really enjoys it, except as a reflection of
the past moods and humors of the race, or a revelation of the author's
character; otherwise it is trash, and often very filthy trash, which the
present trash generally is not.

XXIII.

One of the great newspapers the other day invited the prominent American
authors to speak their minds upon a point in the theory and practice of
fiction which had already vexed some of them. It was the question of how
much or how little the American novel ought to deal with certain facts of
life which are not usually talked of before young people, and especially
young ladies. Of course the question was not decided, and I forget just
how far the balance inclined in favor of a larger freedom in the matter.
But it certainly inclined that way; one or two writers of the sex which
is somehow supposed to have purity in its keeping (as if purity were a
thing that did not practically concern the other sex, preoccupied with
serious affairs) gave it a rather vigorous tilt to that side. In view of
this fact it would not be the part of prudence to make an effort to dress
the balance; and indeed I do not know that I was going to make any such
effort. But there are some things to say, around and about the subject,
which I should like to have some one else say, and which I may myself
possibly be safe in suggesting.

One of the first of these is the fact, generally lost sight of by those
who censure the Anglo-Saxon novel for its prudishness, that it is really
not such a prude after all; and that if it is sometimes apparently
anxious to avoid those experiences of life not spoken of before young
people, this may be an appearance only. Sometimes a novel which has this
shuffling air, this effect of truckling to propriety, might defend
itself, if it could speak for itself, by saying that such experiences
happened not to come within its scheme, and that, so far from maiming or
mutilating itself in ignoring them, it was all the more faithfully
representative of the tone of modern life in dealing with love that was
chaste, and with passion so honest that it could be openly spoken of
before the tenderest society bud at dinner. It might say that the guilty
intrigue, the betrayal, the extre