There has, during the last few years, been a decided increase in the writing of romances and tales of adventure, pure and simple, removed from everyday experience, and one need only suggest the names of Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Hope, Max Pemberton, to illustrate the class of story which much delights the author, and probably also her young friends. For the general run of fiction, here are a few names: Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Charles Kingsley and his brother, George Eliot, Mrs. Gaskell, R. D. Blackmore (be sure you read _Lorna Doone_), George Macdonald, Sir Walter Besant, Mrs. Oliphant, Charlotte Brontë—that wonderful, fiery, lonely genius—you will read her _Shirley_ and _Villette_, whether we advise you to do so or not. And, indeed, the list of writers of good fiction is so enormous that it is absurd to attempt to give it. As soon as a few names are written down, others press for mention. Therefore, we will renounce the task; first, perhaps, reminding you not to omit Mrs. Oliphant’s _Little Pilgrim in the Unseen_. All the stories of this writer which have a tinge of the atmosphere of the spiritual borderland, are deeply suggestive. Do not read a novel only because it has a startling title and “everybody” is talking about it. In these days that is no proof of excellence. A story shoots up like a rocket, and its swift trail of brilliance dies down as suddenly. Do not read books which leave the impression that life is after all rather a hopeless struggle, not worth the trouble. There are a great many such stories in the present day, whose motto is Despair. Let them alone. They may be works of art, beautiful and pathetic in their tragedy; but you have to live, and make the best of your life; therefore it is unwise to let yourself be paralysed by discouragement near the outset. Some books have a way of arranging a perfectly impossible combination of circumstances, and then calling upon the universe at large to bewail the result. This is hardly fair. Choose rather what makes you better able to live and to act, and inspires you with a feeling that to do and to be your best, even in a world of sorrow, is very much worth while indeed. There are, broadly speaking, two ways of viewing art and literature: one from the point of the “Realist,” and one from the point of the “Idealist.” In our day the Realists have come much into prominence, especially in France; but they are known in England too. The Realist school in fiction cries out for “Life,” by which we understand the visible, the material, that which can be seen, heard, touched, handled. A realistic novel, for instance, may be made a mass of information upon obscure and out-of-the-way subjects. Nothing comes amiss—“Life, life above everything” its exponents cry. “You Idealists have long enough been teaching men to dream with their heads in the clouds. We lead them along a plain path and show them the world as it really is. In our way lies safety.”