There was a time when preachers and teachers, at least those of the English-speaking nations, had a somber view of life and looked with distrust on pleasant arts; and no doubt they were right in holding that if stories take our thoughts off the great realities, we cannot afford to abandon our minds to such toys and trivial inventions. But the severe moralists never made out a good case against the arts; they could not prove that joy and laughter and light entertainment interfered with high thinking and right living; and in time they rediscovered, what other wise men had never forgotten, that art is good for the soul. In the past century the novel has taken all knowledge for its province and has allied itself to the labors of prophets, preachers, and educators. The philosopher finds that some of the great speculative minds have uttered their thoughts in the form of artistic fiction. The true scholar no longer confines himself to annotating the fictions of the Greeks and Romans and the established classics of his race. He sees in the best art of his contemporaries the same effort of the human soul to express itself which informed the ancient masterpieces. Jane Austen, whose delicate novels inspired stronger writers than she, who by her gentleness and truth influenced creative powers greater than her own, whimsically recognized and perhaps helped to remove the pedantic prejudice against fiction. The following passage from “Northanger Abbey” will give a taste of that delicious book. It is a quiet satire on the absurdly romantic such as is still manufactured and sold by the million copies to readers who, one may suppose, have not had the good fortune to read Jane Austen.