That the English “bag-men” of literature do not fail to take advantage of American credulity and servile deference to English opinion, which is as easily counterfeited as “public opinion” is here, is shown once more for the thousandth time, by a recent statement in _The London Times_. The English do not take any trouble to dissemble their contempt of everything American, and a good stirring spirit of retaliation in every department, including literature and criticism in this country, would increase John Bull’s friendliness and tolerance as much as Cleveland’s message on the Monroe doctrine did in one astonishing fortnight. We _now_ learn the English _love_ us! After all those scurrilous articles in their magazines! The _Times_ says: “Nothing but a boom in London will induce American publishers to boom an author in the States. There are very few literary journals in the United States, so that ours have a remarkable influence, and their verdict on a new work is eagerly scanned and, as a rule, accepted.” Well, it is time the literary journals we have awoke to their duty and opportunity, and gave up singing to English piping, and took to thinking for themselves. They might also look around here, and learn something of their own writers. It is really worth while to encourage authorship in America. There is an abundance of talent here, and, when circumstances are favorable, real genius. The howling of the critics and the frantic female moralists convinced me that I must read “Jude the Obscure,” which I might have postponed until I was less busy, and so finally have missed, as I have many good things--swept on with the tide of events and affairs. But when the frantic female moralist is stirred up in holy indignation, I know that there is something moving forward worthy of masculine consideration. I’ve read “Jude the Obscure.” It is the comedy and tragedy of real human life. I have no criticism. It seems Thackeray ought to have lived to have remarked the literary successor of Henry Fielding. I’m like Oliver Twist. Alarmed at my own temerity, I want some more. [Illustration] Let our English literature be written for men and women. Let it dare, even if it can never achieve the range of Balzac, the Aristophanes, the Shakspeare of modern fiction. One very significant change has almost imperceptibly crept into English fiction of recent years. It will be remembered that all Dickens’ and Thackeray’s heroines were in their teens; only adventuresses and wicked women being allowed a fictitious existence after passing their twentieth birthday. And so with all the conventional novels from that time to date--all the heroines are sylphish, roguish, innocent, or pale-faced, meditative maids. To-day the heroines in some rather advanced books are allowed to be as aged as twenty-five. This is moral and intellectual progress. A woman is now also allowed to be in love with a man before he pops any question.