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154 how to keep the Philistines and the Philistinesses in their place—the shopkeepers and the women! And what an unspeakable liberation lies there! To leave to all these good imbeciles their Hector Malots and their George Ohnets et hoc genus omne, and never to hear of them except in Gaza and Ascalon and Joppa and the other demesnes of Dagon, where no sensible person ever goes! No eternal babble from the housetops of Jerusalem about the high art of Mr. Caine, or the dialectic power of Mrs. Humphry Ward, or the wonderful plots of some other heaven-sent genius; no hopeless bewilderment of every young writer of ability by the ubiquitous bellowing of a criticism that is beneath contempt! Imagine what this would mean to us here in England!

Let us take two examples of our story-tellers of ability—prose writers of the inferior class—men who, under the better circumstances of a more critical audience, would have in all probability achieved something complete and durable. At the present moment 'everybody' is reading either The Little Minister or Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Mr. Hardy has been before the public for a not inconsiderable period, and has doubtless reached the weary stage of a hopeless fatality in such matters; but Mr. Barrie is still young at the work, and it is not pleasant to think that he has yet given us his best. For it is at