of _The London Examiner_, of _The Nation_, are full of
reviews which denounce in unmeasured terms the vulgarity and pruriency
of much of the fiction of the present day. But their censure can have
little practical effect. So long as a class of corrupt readers exists,
so long will evil-minded men and women find a sale for the low
conceptions of their depraved minds. Parents alone, by supervising the
reading of their children, can prevent the evil effects of immoral
novels. Some may think that I have exaggerated the bad characteristics
of modern fiction. A few examples of objectionable works will be found
at the foot of this page,[214] an acquaintance with which will sustain
my remarks.

The reader may possibly object that these are obscure names in
literature, and that they represent writers whose works are ephemeral.
The names chosen are the most prominent in the class to which they
belong. Their obscurity is a redeeming feature of the society which can
tolerate their existence. Although writers are able to find a sale for
the most disgusting productions; although the critic is continually
obliged, in reviewing current literature, to wade through the nastiest
mire, it yet remains certain that public taste is not pleased with the
vile. A limited circulation will be found for immoral novels among a
depraved class, but it is to be said, for the credit of the nineteenth
century, that talents prostituted can never bring fame. The conceptions
of a Goldsmith, a Scott, a Dickens, a Thackeray, a George Eliot, remain
among the dearest possessions of all English-speaking people. But the
unhealthy, unnatural, and hideous pictures given to the world by
vicious men and women receive the same wages as the sin they portray.

[Footnote 212: In Mr. John Morley's edition of "English Men of
Letters," chapter ix.]

[Footnote 213: See Macaulay on "The Comic Dramatists."]

[Footnote 214: See "Strathmore," and others, by "Ouida"; "Not Wisely,
But Too Well," "Red as a Rose Is She," "Joan," by Rhoda Broughton;
"Cherry Ripe," by Helen Mathers; "The Lovels of Arden," by Miss
Braddon; "Under which Lord?" by Mrs E.L. Linton; "A Romance of the
Nineteenth Century," by W.H. Mallock; "Children of Nature," by the Earl
of Desart. A long list of very nasty books might easily be added, but
these will be sufficient to illustrate the bad tendencies of fiction,
and to show how thoroughly female authors have kept pace in immodesty
and indecency with their