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Rh the dreamy and statuesque heroine are skilfully blended with her love for the brilliant marquis-tenor Corrèze and the distressing captivity of her jewelled chains. There is a strong suggestion of the "penny dreadfuls" in the whole entourage of the tale, with Vera's anguished heart beating under robes of velvet and her tortured brain throbbing under coronets of gems. But it is immeasurably above the vulgarity of those gaudy and often mawkish serials. Its pathos is intense, and its continuous intervals of pure poetry undeniable. It is dramatic, too, in the very strictest sense, and its adaptation for the English stage was naturally to be expected. As for what the moralists would call its "lesson," I should affirm that to be exempt from the least chance of misconstruction. Like all these later stories of Ouida's, "Moths" has been denounced as grossly unwholesome for young minds. I do not know about young minds gaining benefit from its perusal; I should imagine that, like many things which minors do not understand, its effect upon them might be harmful, and even noxious. So is the effect of rich dishes and indigestible fruit upon young stomachs, while stronger gastric juices sustain no hurt from their consumption. It is time that this outcry against what is evil in literature for young minds should be silenced by a sensible consideration of how potent or impotent are the defences reared by educators and guardians. It would surely be unwise to cut down all the apple-orchards because in those days which precede autumn's due ripeness multitudes of foraging children have brought on themselves avoidable colics. If the colics sleep in the undeveloped apples, and mischievous little Adams and Eves will taste thereof, a stout wall and an ill-tempered dog behind it are the only trustworthy preventives against their temerity. To claim that Ouida's works are not healthful reading for those whose youth makes the mere mention of evil and vice deleterious because in all their bad meanings unexplainable, is to claim, I think, that any author may be misunderstood provided the mentality of his public is sufficiently meagre for his miscomprehension. The decried "immorality" of Ouida I have never at all been able to perceive. I ignore the question of her immoral purport in the prose-poems heretofore treated. There such a discussion wears colors of absurdity; it is almost as if some one should assure me that Milton's Satan was a matter shame to his portrayer. But with regard to all Ouida's novels of what I have called her third period, the accusation (and it is a very wide accusation) becomes at least worthy of attention. Ouida has no hesitation in in referring to relations between the sexes which common conventionality has reprobated and condemned. A great deal of her more modern work deals frankly with this theme. Sometimes it is dealt with in