tempt for Robert Louis Stevenson? Why, when we have been "thrilled to our very depths" by "Peace and War" or "Anna Karenina," should we not devote a few spare moments to the consideration of "Markheim," a story whose solemn intensity of purpose in no way mars its absolute and artistic beauty? And why, above all, should we be petulantly reprimanded, like so many stupid and obstinate children? I cannot even think that Mr. Howells is justified in calling the English nation "those poor islanders," as if they were dancing naked somewhere in the South Seas, merely because they love George Eliot and Thackeray as well as Jane Austen. They love Jane Austen too. We all love her right heartily, but we have no need to emulate good Queen Anne, who, as Swift observed, had not a sufficient stock of amity for more than one person at a time. We may not, indeed, be prepared to say with Mr. Howells that Miss Austen is "the first and the last of the English novelists to treat material with entire truthfulness," having some reasonable doubts as to the precise definition of truth. We may not care to emphasize our
