Fiction has a mission. She freights herself with all isms. Scott, Manzoni, even the great wizard of Spanish fiction, could they live again, were failures. Introspection is the cult, and, happily for their fame, they knew nothing of it. These great masters told us how scenes of life were enacted. Why, they left to the inquisitive and later-day brood of commentators. Since then the all absorbing scientific spirit prevails, and we moderns brush away the delightful humor of Dickens for the analytical puzzles of Henry James; the keen satire of Thackeray for the coxcomberies of George Meredith. Fairy cult interests none, modern children are ancient men. Scepticism is rampant, and the cause of it is, in a great manner, due to the modern novelist. This product of the 19th century world-spirit coolly tells us that romance lies dead. Realism has taken her place. If we are to believe the theories of its votaries, it is without an ideal—a mere anatomical transcript of man. What this theory leads to is well illustrated by the gutter filth of Zola and Catulle Mendes. It makes novel writing a trade. One ceases to be astonished at the output, if he thoroughly grasps the difference between a tradesman and an artist. Trade is a word much used by realists. Grant Allen, writing of that realistic necromancer, Guy de Maupassant, has nothing apter to define his position than the phrase “he knows his trade.” In point of fact, Grant Allen enunciates a truth in this phrase, one that might be carried still further, by saying that his whole school are journeymen laborers, tradesmen, if you prefer, turning out work, tasteless and crude, at the bidding of the erubescent young person of the period. It is readily assumed that work of this kind is not, despite the word-jugglery of their school, realism. It does not deal with the true man, but with a phrase, and that abnormal. A better phrase in use in speaking of the works of this school is, “literature of disease.” The artist who lives must have a model, and that we call the ideal. The nearer he approaches this the more lasting his work. All the great artists had ideals. Workmen may be guided by the rule of thumb. The first lesson a great artist learns is, “The art that merely imitates can only produce a corpse; it lacks the vital spark, the soul, which is the ideal, and which is necessary in order to create a living organic reality that will quicken genius and arouse enthusiasm throughout the ages.” The gulf between the trade-novelist and the artist-novelist is of vital importance. The former believes that art is simply imitation, the latter, that art is interpretation. One is a stone-cutter, the other a sculptor.