suit themselves, and who, with the arrogance of supreme power, have reversed the political situation, and deprived mankind of their vote. This is the opinion of Rider Haggard, and also of Vernon Lee, who asserts that "the ethics of fiction are framed entirely for the benefit or the detriment of women," and that its enforced morality—a defect which, to do her justice, she is striving her best to eradicate—is fatal to its mission in life.
But that fiction has a mission, nobody dares to doubt; that its ethics are of paramount importance, nobody dares to deny. It devotes itself in all seriousness to our moral and intellectual welfare; and if, now and then, we are reminded of Sydney Smith, who would rather Mr. Perceval had whipped his boys and saved his country, we stifle the sinful impulse, and turn to biography and history for recreation, for that purely imaginative element which places no tax upon our conscience or credulity. Yet we may at least remember that all natures do not develop on the same lines; that all goodness is not comprised within certain recognized virtues, ,or limited to certain fields of thought. Tolstoï, a figure on a
