Page:Sarah Sheppard - L. E. L.pdf/84

 she was, they might unawares have entertained an angel of truth.* We cannot leave this part of the argument for the usefulness of fiction without offering, in the name of all young people who have come under their influences, a most grateful acknowledgment for Miss Edgeworth's and Mrs. Sherwood's admirable tales; so full of principle exemplified in character,—so fraught with precept enforced by example. Look on now to maturer years; does fiction then lose its influence? Have we not often found the moral truth, or the moral quality, which, in its abstract nature, has scarcely been apprehended by us, startling us into attention, fixing itself with powerful grasp on all our faculties, when clothed in its developed attributes,—when embodied in a real character? As the agreeableness of fiction to our taste originates in the natural propensity previously considered, so likewise does the usefulness of fiction depend much on its agreeableness. If "a verse may sometimes win him who a sermon flies," so may a well-conceived and well-executed fiction win over at least