drew Lang's word for it that the Englishmen of to-day, "those poor islanders," indeed, are better acquainted with "Anna Karenina" than with "The Fortunes of Nigel," and we cannot well doubt the assertion, in view of the too manifest regret with which it is uttered. But then nobody reads "The Fortunes of Nigel" because he has been told to read it, nor because his neighbors are reading it, nor because he wants to say that he has read it. The hundred and one excellent reasons for becoming acquainted with Tolstoï or Ibsen resolve themselves into a single motive when we turn to Scott. It is "for human delight" or nothing. And if, even to children, this joy has grown somewhat tasteless of late years, I fear the reason lies in their lack of healthy unconsciousness. They are taught so much they did not use to know about the correct standing of authors, they are so elaborately directed in their recreations as well as in their studies, that the old simple charm of self-forgetful absorption in a book seems well-nigh lost to them. It is not very encouraging to see a bright little girl of ten making believe she enjoys Miss Austen's novels, and to hear her mother's complacent
