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118 writing. "I have lived to grow into an indecent character," he sighed, struggling with whimsical dejection to comprehend the new forces at work; sometimes protesting angrily against the "Puritanical obtuseness, the stupid, infantile goodness which is creeping among us, instead of the vigorous passions and virtues clad in flesh and blood;" sometimes contemplating, with humorously lowered eyelids, "the least little men who spend their time and lose their wits in chasing nimble and retiring Truth, to the extreme perturbation and drying up of the moistures."

But if modern novelists are disposed to sacrifice their art to a conscious ethical purpose, to write fiction, as Mr. Oscar Wilde wittily says, "as though it were a painful duty," it can hardly be denied that they are giving the public what the public craves; that they are on the safe side of criticism, and have chosen their position wisely, if not well. Should any one feel inclined to doubt this, it might be a convincing and salutary exercise to re-read as swiftly as possible a few of the numerous