But the preacher need not rest his case on "Mike Martin," or "Rinaldo Rinaldini," or "The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main," or any of the predatory heroes embalmed in story for the improvement of youth, since he has also the field of poisonous French romance to complain of, with its imitations in our tongue. In short, he can indict in a lump the bad books of fiction, and against the good he may charge that they exhaust our tears and passion on imaginary distresses. Still, nothing would then have been said of novels which could not be said in a degree of the newspapers, the drama, the law, the pulpit itself. We must not judge them by their worst fruits. "Pamela" was praised from the pulpits of its day, although, to be sure, it would hardly now be given to young women. I well remember, when prowling about the homestead bookcase, coming upon Rowland Hill's "Village Dialogues." Their characters were fictitious, the distresses imaginary; still I presume the St. Louis preacher would not object to "Socinianism Unmasked," the "Evils of Seduction," and the "Awful Death of Alderman Greedy." Everybody sees how fiction is a weapon of philanthropy. Christ himself taught by parables. Clergymen resort to romance to achieve what the sermon cannot do, and men of science to achieve what the essay cannot do. Religious newspapers publish serial novels. The anti-slavery, temperance, prison reform, and poor law agitations owe immeasurably to novels. Daniel Webster said of Dickens that he had done more to ameliorate the condition of the British poor than all the statesmen that ever sat in Parliament. And this present wonderful movement of the Jews to recover Palestine--what does it not owe to a novel? A noble influence, too, comes from some novels that do not aim to be _doctrinaire_ or proselyting. A story of Thackeray is a tonic to the scorn of base action; a story of Charles Kingsley is a trumpet call to Christian duty; a story of George Eliot is an inspiration to high thought and honorable living. Some of her sisterhood are probably capable of uneasily disliking George Eliot because she has a depth of intelligence quite beyond their plummet, which the world admires; but I should think that most women would be proud of the strength and vast influence of one who, in succeeding to the royal line of feminine novelists, has carried its triumphs far beyond anything achieved by Miss Burney, Jane Austin, Miss Porter, Miss Martineau, Charlotte Bronté, and Georges Sand.