partially between flirting and praying, between indiscriminate kisses and passionate searching for light. A Blackwood critic declares that there is more kissing done in The Old Helmet than in all of Sir Walter Scott's novels put together, and utters an energetic protest against the penetrating glances, and earnest pressing of hands, and brotherly embraces, and the whole vulgar paraphernalia of pious flirtation, so immeasurably hurtful to the undisciplined fancy of the young. "They have good reason to expect," he growls, "from these pictures of life, that if they are very good, and very pious, and very busy in doing grown-up work, when they reach the mature age of sixteen or so, some young gentleman who has been in love with them all along will declare himself at the very nick of time; and they may then look to find themselves, all the struggles of life over, reposing a weary head on his stalwart shoulder. … Mothers, never in great favor with novelists, are sinking deeper and deeper in their black books,—there is a positive jealousy of their influence; while the father in the religious tale, as opposed to the moral or sentimental, is commonly either a
