The work now laid before the public by the Fine Art Society is to be considered, therefore--whatever its merits or defects may be--as an expression of the influence of the Infinite and Michael Angelo on a mind innocently prepared for their reception. And in another place I may take occasion to point out the peculiar adaptability of modern etching to the expression of the Infinite, by the multitude of scratches it can put on a surface without representing anything in particular; and to illustration of the majesty of Michael Angelo by preference of the backs and legs of people to their faces. 107. But I refer to the book in this paper, partly indeed because my mind is full of its sorrow, and I may not be able to find another opportunity of saying so; but chiefly, because the author of the preface has summed the principal authors of depraved Fiction in a single sentence; and I want the reader to ask himself why, among all the forms of the picturesque which were suggested by this body of literary leaders, none were acceptable by, none helpful to, the mind of a youth trained in purity and faith. He will find, if he reflect, that it is not in romantic, or any other healthy aim, that the school detaches itself from those called sometimes by recent writers "classical"; but first by Infidelity, and an absence of the religious element so total that at last it passes into the hatred of priesthood which has become characteristic of Republicanism; and secondly, by the taint and leprosy of animal passion idealized as a governing power of humanity, or at least used as the chief element of interest in the conduct of its histories. It is with the _Sin_ of Master Anthony that Georges Sand (who is the best of them) overshadows the entire course of a novel meant to recommend simplicity of life--and by the weakness of Consuelo that the same authoress thinks it natural to set off the splendor of the most exalted musical genius. I am not able to judge of the degree of moral purpose, or conviction, with which any of the novelists wrote. But I am able to say with certainty that, whatever their purpose, their method is mistaken, and that no good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.