_Justifications of Novels._--The two following justifications of novels occur to me. Firstly, that if some dreadful crisis awaited a ship of passengers at the line--where equally the danger was mysterious and multiform, the safety mysterious and multiform--how monstrous if a man should say to a lady, 'What are you reading?' 'Oh, I'm reading about our dreadful crisis, now so near'; and he should answer, 'Oh, nonsense! read something to improve your mind; read about Alexander the Great, about Spurius Ahala, about Caius Gracchus, or, if you please, Tiberius.' But just such nonsense it is, when people ridicule reading romances in which the great event of the fiction is the real great event of a female life. There are others, you say--she loses a child. Yes, that's a great event. But that arises out of this vast equinoctial event. Secondly, as all things are predisposed to the natures which must be surrounded by them, so we may see that the element of social evolution of character, manners, caprices, etc., has been adapted to the vast mass of human minds. It is a mean element, you say. The revelations of Albert Smith, Dickens, etc., are essentially mean, vulgar, plebeian, not only in an aristocratic sense, but also in a philosophical sense. True, but the minds that are to live and move in it are also mean, essentially mean. Nothing grand in them? Yes, doubtless in the veriest grub as to capacity, but the capacity is undeveloped. _Ergo_, as to the intrigue or fable, and as to the conduct or evolution of this fable--novels must be the chief natural resource of woman. _Moral Certainty._--As that a child of two years (or under) is not party to a plot. Now, this would allow a shade of doubt--a child so old might cry out or give notice.