Now, apart from the delightful vagueness of perspective,--for “Robert Elsmere” and “She” grouping themselves amicably together is a spectacle too pleasant to be lost,--I cannot but think that there is something oppressive about the form in which these comments are offered to the world. It reminds one of that highly dramatic scene in Bulwer’s “Richelieu,” where the aged cardinal hurls “the curse of Rome” at a whole stageful of people, who shrink and cower without knowing very distinctly at what. Why should critics, I wonder, always adopt this stringent and defiant tone when they would beguile us to the enjoyment of Russian fiction? Why should the reading of Tolstoï necessarily imply a contempt for Robert Louis Stevenson? Why, when we have been “thrilled to our very depths” by “Peace and War” or “Anna Karenina,” should we not devote a few spare moments to the consideration of “Markheim,” a story whose solemn intensity of purpose in no way mars its absolute and artistic beauty? And why, above all, should we be petulantly reprimanded, like so many stupid and obstinate children? I cannot even think that Mr. Howells is justified in calling the English nation “those poor islanders,” as if they were dancing naked somewhere in the South Seas, merely because they love George Eliot and Thackeray as well as Jane Austen. They love Jane Austen too. We all love her right heartily, but we have no need to emulate good Queen Anne, who, as Swift observed, had not a sufficient stock of amity for more than one person at a time. We may not, indeed, be prepared to say with Mr. Howells that Miss Austen is “the first and the last of the English novelists to treat material with entire truthfulness,” having some reasonable doubts as to the precise definition of truth. We may not care to emphasize our affection for her by repudiating with one breath all her great successors. We may not even consider “The Newcomes” and “Henry Esmond” as illustrating the degeneracy of modern fiction; yet nevertheless we may enjoy some fair half-hours in the company of Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Elton, of Catherine Morland and Elizabeth Bennet. Only, when we are searching for a shibboleth by which to test our neighbor’s intellectual worth, let not Jane Austen’s be the name, lest we be rewarded for our trouble by hearing the faint, clear ripple of her amused laughter--that gentle, feminine, merciless laughter--echoing softly from the dwelling-place of the immortals.