In the _Atalanta Magazine_, for this month, (which by its title, should be ahead of all competitors until the _homme à la pomme_ appears) Mr. WALTER BESANT has an article "On the writing of Novels," in which he offers his advice to young girls afflicted with irrepressible scribblemania,--_i.e._ "girls who try to write stories, and burn to write novels,"--as to the best and easiest means of attaining their object. _Advice gratis_ is, as we all know, of the gratis't value, and Mr. BESANT offers his two penn'orth-of-"all-sorts and conditions," to embryonic authoresses, but had _Mr. Punch_ been dealing with these dear little literary aspirants, he would have simply repeated his world-famed epigrammatic advice to "persons about to marry," and said, most unequivocally, to girls about to write novels--"Don't." Not so Mr. BESANT, who proceeds to lay down rules for those "who wish to acquire the art of fiction." He commences with, "_Practise writing, something original everyday_,"--"_Cultivate the habit of observation_," and so on, in good old-fashioned copy-book style. We will assist him with some rules for those to whom Mr. W. BESANT gives this advice: "Be bold: never mind ridicule," ... "State fairly, what ordinary people never understand, that Fiction, like Painting, is an Art, and that you are setting yourself to the acquisition of that Art, if it be in your power, whatever may come of it in the end." Very good. Now here is, as the Cookery books have it, "Another and a shorter way." _To acquire the Art of Fiction._--Clearly understand that Fiction is the opposite of Fact. If you invariably state facts, you become a matter-of-fact sort of person. No Genius is a matter-of-fact sort of person. So to "acquire the Art of Fiction," _you must never tell the truth. Practice telling some original lie every day._ If it be a description of scenery--well, this offers a large field--several large fields. Give an account to your relatives, or to your friends at a distance of the walk you have taken in the morning. First of all, of course, to be quite perfect, _you must not have been out of the house_. You will then proceed to describe the roaring Waterfalls over which you leaped, your hairbreadth escapes, &c., &c., and always remember that, as Mr. BESANT says, "description is not slavish enumeration." RULE I.--_Tell a lie._ RULE II.--_Don't stick to it, but tell another, and a bigger one._ Pile 'em up, and thus at last you may become an unrivalled Fictionist.