Page:Sarah Sheppard - L. E. L.pdf/87

 priestess to folly and vice, but should be sedulously won over, appropriated and consecrated by wisdom and virtue to their high and noble services, in the vast temple sacred to the improvement of human society? In many instances, which cannot now be specified, this has been admirably accomplished, and we trust in many more will yet be fulfilled; since it is no unworthy task for the wise and the virtuous to follow the precept of Horace, and "join both profit and delight in one." "It is half curious, half ludicrous," says L. E. L., "to hear persons, ay, and critics too, talk of a novel as a pleasant hour's amusement, and gravely exhort an author to turn his talents to higher account; unconscious of the fact, that the novel is now one of the highest efforts, the popular vehicle of thought, feeling and observation." Such was Miss Landon's high estimate of the novel; an estimate which she fully realized herself when she admitted Prose to share with Poetry the throne of her intellectual dominion.