under such depressing manipulation. Mr. Pater, who at one time gave us to understand that he would teach us how to enjoy life, has, so far, revealed nothing but its everlasting sadness. If the old Cyrenaics were no gayer than their modern representatives, Aristippus of Cyrene might just as well have been Diogenes sulking in his tub, or Heraclitus adding useless tears to the trickling moisture of his cave.
Even our fiction has grown disconcertingly sad within the last few years, and with a new order of sadness, invented apparently to keep pace with the melancholy march of mind. The novelist of the past had but two courses open to him: either to leave Edwin and Angelina clasped in each other's arms, or to provide for one of them a picturesque and daisy-strewn grave. Ordinarily he chose the former alternative, as being less harassing to himself, and more gratifying to his readers. Books that end badly have seldom been really popular, though sometimes a tragic conclusion is essential to the artistic development of the story. When Tom and Maggie Tulliver go down, hand in hand, amid the rushing waters of the Floss, we feel, even through our tears,—and
