The objections usually formulated against novels as a university study are about as follows: (_a_) the study of fiction is unacademic--that is, lacking in dignity; (_b_) students will read too many novels anyway, and the emphasis should therefore be thrown on other forms of literary art; (_c_) most recent and contemporary fiction is worthless, and if novels are to be taught at all, the titles selected should be confined entirely to recognised classics; (_d_) many of the novels of to-day are immoral, and the reading of them will corrupt rather than develop adolescent minds; (_e_) they are too "easy," too interesting, and a course confined to them is totally lacking in mental discipline. These objections, each and all, contain some truth, and demand a serious answer. That the study of fiction is unacademic is a weighty argument, but its weight is the mass of custom and prejudice rather than solid thought. In old times, the curriculum had little to do with real life, so that the most scholarly professors and the most promising pupils were often plentifully lacking in common sense. Students gifted with real independence of mind, marked with an alert interest in the life and thought about them, chafed irritably under the old-fashioned course of study, and often treated it with neglect or open rebellion. What Thomas Gray said of the Cambridge curriculum constitutes a true indictment against eighteenth-century universities; and it was not until very recent times that such studies as history, European literature, modern languages, political economy, natural sciences, and the fine arts were thought to have equal academic dignity with the trinity of Latin, Greek, and mathematics. There are, indeed, many able and conscientious men who still believe that this trinity cannot be successfully rivalled by any other possible group of studies. Now the novel is the most prominent form of modern literary art; and if modern literature is to be studied at all, fiction cannot be overlooked. The profound change brought about in university curricula, caused largely by the elective system, is simply the bringing of college courses of study into closer contact with human life, and the recognition that what young men need is a general preparation to live a life of active usefulness in modern social relations. That students read too many novels anyway--that is, in proportion to their reading in history and biography--is probably true. But the primary object of a course in novel-reading is not to make the student read more novels, instead of less, nor to substitute the reading of fiction for the reading of other books. The real object is (after a cheerful recognition of the fact that he will read novels anyway) to persuade him to read them intelligently, to observe the difference between good novels and bad, and so to become impatient and disgusted with cheap, sensational, and counterfeit specimens of the novelist's art.