I could make neither head nor tail of it; it was neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring: it was all about my Lord, and Sir Harry, and the Captain.... The people talk such wild gibberish as no folks in their sober senses ever did talk; and the things that happen to them are not like the things that ever happen to me or any of my acquaintance. They are at home one minute, and beyond the sea the next; beggars to-day, and lords to-morrow; waiting-maids in the morning, and duchesses at night.... One would think every man in these books had the bank of England in his escritoire.... In these books (except here and there one, whom they make worse than Satan himself), every man and woman's child of them, are all wise, and witty, and generous, and rich, and handsome, and genteel, and all to the last degree. Nobody is middling, or good in one thing and bad in another, like my live acquaintance; but it is all up to the skies, or down to the dirt. I had rather read _Tom Hickathrift_, or _Jack the Giant Killer_, a thousand times.--HANNAH MORE. _The Two Wealthy Farmers._ 'ONLY A NOVEL' 'What are you reading, Miss----?' 'Oh! it's only a novel!' replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. 'It is only _Cecilia_, or _Camilla_, or _Belinda_'; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed; in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit or humour, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.--JANE AUSTEN. _Northanger Abbey._ NOVELS AS ENGINES OF CIVILIZATION The listlessness and want of sympathy with which most of the works written expressly for circulation among the labouring classes are read by them, if read at all, arises mainly from this--that the story told, or the lively or friendly style assumed, is _manifestly_ and _palpably_ only a cloak for the instruction intended to be conveyed--a sort of gilding of what they cannot well help fancying must be a pill, when they see so much and such obvious pains taken to wrap it up.... You will find that in the higher and better class of works of fiction and imagination duly circulated, you possess all that you require to strike your grappling-iron into their souls, and chain them, willing followers, to the car of civilization.... The novel, in its best form, I regard as one of the most powerful engines of civilization ever invented.--SIR J. HERSCHEL. _Address to the Subscribers to the Windsor Public Library._ A NOVEL OF HIGH LIFE Lord Harry has written a novel, A story of elegant life; No stuff about love in a hovel, No sketch of a commoner's wife: No trash, such as pathos and passion, Fine feelings, expression, and wit; But all about people of fashion, Come look at his caps--how they fit!