I would not be misunderstood, even by the most hasty reader, to recommend an imitation of M. Zola. What suits his peculiarly-constituted genius might ill accord with the characteristics of another. Nor do I mean to say that we are entirely without something analogous in the writings of the more intelligent of our later novelists. The study of the Dorsetshire dairy-farms in Mr. Hardy's superb _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ is of the highest value, and more thorough and intelligible than what we enjoyed in _The Woodlanders_, the details of the apple-culture in the same county. To turn to a totally different school: Mr. Hall Caine's _Scapegoat_ is a very interesting experiment in fresh fields of thought and experience, more happily conceived, if I may be permitted to say so, than fortunately executed, though even in execution far above the ruck of popular novels. A new Cornish story, called _Inconsequent Lives_, by that very promising young story-teller, Mr. Pearce, seemed, when it opened, to be about to give us just the vivid information we want about the Newlyn pilchard-fishery; but the novelist grew timid, and forebore to fill in his sketch. The experiments of Mr. George Gissing and of Mr. George Moore deserve sympathetic acknowledgment. These are instances in which, occasionally, or fantastically, or imperfectly, the real facts of life have been dwelt upon in recent fiction. But when we have mentioned or thought of a few exceptions, to what inanities do we not presently descend!