generation very powerfully: his influence being so great in France that Balzac attempted a variation and continuation, and that there are constant references to the book in the early French Romantics. In fact for this kind of "sensation" Maturin is, putting _Vathek_ aside, quite the chief of the whole school. But it is doubtful whether he had many other gifts as a novelist, and this particular one is one that cannot be exercised very frequently, and is very difficult to exercise at all without errors and extravagances. The child-literature of this school and period was very large, and, had we space, would be worth dealing with at length--as in the instances of the famous _Sandford and Merton_ (1783-1789) by Thomas Day, Richard Edgeworth's friend, of Mrs. Trimmer's _Story of the Robins_, and others. It led up to the definitely religious school of children's books, first evangelical, then tractarian, with which we shall deal later: but was itself as a rule utilitarian--or sentimental--moral rather than directly religious. It is, however, like other things--indeed almost all things--in this chapter--a document of the fashion in which the novel was "filling all numbers" and being used for all purposes. It was, of course, in this case, nearest to the world-old "fable"--especially to the moral apologues of which the mediæval sermon-writers and others had been so fond. But its popularity, especially when taken in connection with the still surviving distrust of fiction, is valuable. It involves not merely the principle that "the devil shall not have all the best tunes," but the admission that this tune is good.