time. Or she may have a praiseworthy theirs. In fact, the youth who betakes wish to take her share of the family labor, himself to poetry or novel-writing, is likely and turn to some profitable account such to have a strong dash of the feminine in talents as Providence has bestowed on him. He wears his hair long, taking exher. While young ladies who have no quisite care of it in its studied disorder; he particular responsibilities, who have no is in the habit of eschewing the shootingneed to toil, and who think of the sewing-coat for the frock-coat: and in that it must machine as little as of the spinning-wheel be confessed that he shows his appreciathat was the resource of their respectable great-grandmothers, have few of those outlets for their energies which fall to their more fortunate brothers. They can't well carry a gun; and they have neither nerve nor inclination for the hunting-field, even supposing there are horses in the stables, and that their lines have fallen in a hunting county. They cannot be off to Norway at a moment's notice, or go climbing unprotected in the high Alps, or make pilgrimages to the temples of the Nile, or the holy places in Palestine. They have not even the resources of the club, with its gossip, and scandal, and glasses of sherry. The rubber, which gives occupation to the memory and intellectual powers, and may realize a modest competency to a quick and thoughtful practitioner, has never, somehow, been much of a feminine pursuit, save with dowagers given to revoking or sharp practice. Croquet in the long run gets to be a weariness of the soul; dances, picnics, and lawn-tennis are the ephemeral enjoyments of their seasons. Ennui asserts its sway, and existence threatens to become insupportable. There is the grand alternative of matrimony, of course; but marriages are matters in which two must be concerned; and the lady may be fastidious, or possibly unattractive. In these cases one of two things happens. Either she is naturally unintellectual or indolent, and abandons herself to the lot of looking out, like Sister Anne, for the husband who may come to the rescue; or, what seems to happen at least as frequently nowadays, she decides upon novel-writing by way of distraction.

That notion does not so readily occur to a man. He is a grosser and more practically-minded being, setting altogether aside the openings for his superЯuous activity. If there be romance in his composition, it is apt to lie latent; and he is rather ashamed of it than otherwise. Should his thoughts be lightly turning to love, he proceeds forthwith to translate them into action, opening a safety-valve for his sentiment in the shape of a violent flirtation. He is too egotistical to be highly imaginative, or to be able to throw himself into the places of other people and confound his distinctive individuality in

tion of the suitable and of the essential elements of the art of dress. For he shrinks with womanly sensitiveness from the rougher masculine nature; he is scared by the stories which enliven the smokingroom, and which bring a blush to the sallow pallor of his cheek, though there may really be no great harm in them. He is afraid of damp feet, and of being scratched by the brambles in the covers; while, as for flying an ox-fence or swishing through a bullfinch, the bare notion of such a break-neck piece of audacity sends his heart shrinking into his boots. Yet he makes himself a nuisance in drawingrooms, at unseasonable hours, where he gives himself effeminate airs of intellectual superiority; so it is a godsend to all parties concerned when the dreams of a literary vocation dawn upon him, and he secludes himself to scribble in his private apartment. It is true that his retreat may be but the beginning of his troubles. For, knowing' nothing more of him than those obvious characteristics we have described, we are ready to lay any odds in reason that his maiden efforts will be returned on his hands. The public is not likely to suffer in any case; for even if he pay for the honors of publication, people are not bound to read him. But it may be hoped, for his own sake, that he will reconsider his ways, and settle into as useful a member of society as the constitution of his mind and body will permit.

With his sister or cousin it is very different. Unless she be a phenomenally prosaic young female, from her babyhood she has been living in ideal worlds and peopling them with all kinds of happy fancies. She was acting fiction in embryo when she first played with her doll, and lavished her maternal tenderness over the damage she had done to its features. And since she played the severe but affectionate mother she has been imagining herself the loving and self-sacrificing wife. Many a youth has been made the imaginary hero of a domestic existence of which he never dreamed; even middle-aged warriors and politicians of commanding reputation and distinguished manners have been idealized and worshipped with an admiring devotion; for young girls feel a strange attrac

tion to their seniors of the other sex. | some occasional sonnet, when the thought, Possibly, if she has been brought up under though it be mawkish in the extreme, is the maternal wing, or has passed from the decidedly sweeter than the metre. In the nursery into the care of unsympathetic mean time, in a variety of agreeable disgovernesses, those instinctive tendencies tractions, she is progressing unconsciously may have been kept in check. But in the with her preparatory studies. In such congenial atmosphere of the young ladies' society as is brought within her reach, at school, they blossom and bloom into trop dances and dinners and other vanities, she ical luxuriance. What loving and longing acquires all the practical knowledge of life hearts have been indissolubly linked to- that is to leaven a mass of crude unrealgether, on the common ground of mutualities. When she is not playing some quiet panchement and confidences! What last- little game herself-trifling over a passing friendships have been formed for con- ing flirtation, giving shy encouragement to solation in the chilling atmosphere of an aspirants, or holding unwelcome admirers unkindly world! These friendships may at arm's length, she is looking on and have already begun to be loosened as the marking the game of others. Should her fair pensionnaires budded towards woman- mind be brighter and more attractive than hood, and began to draw admiring glances; her person should it be her fate to be and envy, jealousy, and many an unchris- shelved as a wall-flower in the ball-room, tian passion may have forced their way and be left out of the nicest sets at lawninto that once hallowed Eden. But, on tennis we may be sure that her eyes the other hand, the education of the pas- will be all the sharper. Where there is sions advanced with experience, as they no genuine talent for literary work, it is lavished their treasures on more natural the confirmed spinster of a certain age objects. And there may have been pluck- who is likely to be most fairly successful. ing of forbidden fruit from the tree of the And perhaps household anxieties may be knowledge of good and evil. The studies blessings to her in disguise, enabling her of the young sentimentalists were by no to extend the range and depth of her obmeans confined to such books as would be servations. In the place of those social recommended by a modern Mrs. Chapone. frivolities and flirtations, which she might There was many a novel read on the sly, have studied almost as usefully as her that was all the more delightful for the sin favorite books, she learns something of and the secrecy; at all events, the family poverty and its practical effects. She can tables at home were heaped with the latest describe from the very life how a careful volumes from Mudie. We can easily pic-"house-mother may manage to grapple ture the particular books that helped to with narrow means; how a careworn face form the "mind" of the future author. may wear a smile in the most trying cirOne and all might have taken for their cumstances, showing a heroism that is all motto, "Love shall still be lord of all." the greater because it is entirely unpreThose that taught the sordid maxims of tending and unconscious. She may reworldly wisdom, and preached the solid mark the influences of troubles upon advantages of suitable connections and set- different natures; and if she has the sentlements, were still at a discount in these timent either of humor or of pathos, she unsophisticated days. The diamonds and will find materials enough for the display the carriages were to come in due time, of one and the other. Though she has but rather as the gifts of the good fairies, seen scarcely anything of the greater or as the rewards of a relenting destiny, world that lies beyond the tiny gardentowards the end of the third volume. plot of a semi-detached villa, yet she may There was pretty sure to be a period of have assisted at scenes of distress and sufsore probation first, when the course offering, brought comfort to the pillow of affection ran turbid and troubled; when the sick, and sat by the death-beds of the unnatural parents threw unexampled ob- dying. stacles in the way of the union of clinging hearts; when the heroine would struggle out of the depths of despair to soar to sublime heights of self-sacrifice. And a very pretty training it was, if not for the chronicles of actual lives, at all events for perpetuating the literature of a school.

Of course the newly emancipated schoolgirl has not the faintest idea of turning to authorship, further, at least, than in

With all that, however, and at the very best, the range of her actual knowledge must necessarily be extremely limited; and it is there that she must be at an inevitable disadvantage with the man whose talents are in no respect superior to her own. We are not talking, of course, of those women of extraordinary genius, who should be even more highly placed than they are, were we to remember that with them intui

And we concede her a very great deal when
we concede a respectable style. For, as a
rule, it would appear that English compo-
sition can be no part of the higher feminine
education. We might be grateful for the
delightful confusion of metaphors that
often force a smile with their wild incon-
gruities; for the neat misapplication of
epithets having their origin in the unknown
classical tongues; for the introduction of
hackneyed scraps from the French,
wrought in, if we may borrow one of them,
à tort et à travers. But it is less easy to
tolerate the invertebrate sentences which
are wanting so often either in the head or
the tail, or the blunders in spelling, the
confusion in grammar, and the gross sole-
cisms in the commonest English. These
last, indeed, are painfully significant of the
rapid progress of the mania for novel-writ-
ing, which must long ago have made its
way even below the middle strata of the
middle classes. At least it would be diffi
cult otherwise to account for the repulsive
coarseness of style, and
the grosser
vulgarity of thought, which would shock
any woman with the slightest pretensions
to refinement, though they are quite what
we should expect of a respectable lady's-
maid.

tive perceptions seem to have superseded | tions, and a respectable style, she can the necessity for ordinary knowledge. hardly escape being insipid or ridiculous. She has not gone wandering in male costume like a George Sand, through the back streets of a great capital, risking herself in hazardous adventures - partly from the love of them, partly from a perilous enthusiasm for her art. She has not even enjoyed the aesthetical advantage of coming in contact with those odd and disreputable members of society whom every man must mix with more or less. She has not fagged or fought at some public school; she has not outrun the constable at college, making the acquaintance of dons and duns and usurers; nor has she had the picturesque training of the mess and the ante-room, knocking around the world in British garrisons, anywhere between St. Helena and the Himalayas. Yet she cannot altogether confine herself to a gynocia in her books; nor can she keep her readers entirely in the company of parsons, prudes, and the unimpeachably respecta ble. But if she goes far beyond, she must create her pictures for the most part in the dimness of her inner consciousness; or if she should be better informed than we are willing to believe, her delicacy binds her to a double measure of reserve, unless, indeed, she have the shameless assurance to unsex herself. Still, the most pureminded and innocently ignorant of women What is an excusable fault in an inexpemust provide her readers with excitement rienced woman - her real offence being in some shape. Suicides, mysterious dis- her writing at all- becomes in a man a appearances, and murders, are permissible positive crime, only to be extenuated by business enough-and, of course, we have his youth and his verdancy. He is not a fair sprinkling of these; but then they reduced to choose between crossing his have been done and overdone ad nauseam, hands or taking a place as a lady-help, or by the professed mistresses of the knack. as a governess to fractious children, or as So the novice can hardly help falling back companion to some crossgrained old harrion mental agonies, and "worms i' the dan who shares her affections between herbud," and the philosophy of the passions self and her money. He has plenty of in their most tempestuous moods. For honest occupations open to him. He may these, as we may well trust, she has to fall back on the pulpit if he has no talent draw exclusively on her imagination. for the bar, and cut a very respectable fig. Even for the fashionable matron, writing ure as a curate: he can always try his luck in her Belgravian boudoir, it is not easy to in the colonies, or offer for a keeper's strike effects out of the storms in the place, or practise his penmanship as a saucer, which are the most she personally clerk in the city. At the worst he can fall knows anything about; and after she has back upon stone-breaking or oakum-picktried her best to magnify them, they are ing. What reason in the world has he, more akin to the extravagant than the we indignantly demand, to imagine that he sublime. In virtue of her matronly posi- has the makings in him of a Bulwer or a tion she may drag us into the divorce Thackeray? We admit there is a good courts, although these have ceased to deal in the old saying, that if a man tries awaken our jaded interest except when for a silken gown he may hope to snatch a some ingeniously licentious Frenchman sleeve of it. But we altogether dispute undertakes to get up the cases. But the the right of any man to scramble for what girl, or the prudish elderly maiden should is hopelessly above his reach, when he prodispense with even such threadbare mate- poses to make use of the public as his rials as these; and with the best inten- stepping-stones. He ought to learn some

into the novel-market on the strength of a well-sounding title. He may call himself a foreign prince, or be a genuine scion of native nobility. He is happy in a publisher who hopes much from his quality, and cares comparatively little for the quality of his work. The name in itself should be a sufficient guarantee for the intimacy of the illustrious author with the great world he was born in. The oracle is worked industriously. The courtly journals stand by their order, and are lavish of praise more or less fulsome. Now and then a well-arranged dinner-party may win over a critic of a better class. There may be something really to be said for the author by a dexterous advocate. He may be an unblushing plagiarist, with an ingenuity that defies detection, if it does not elude it; and there are scenes and passages in his books that may be quoted with discriminating approval. If we are to believe the inscriptions on his title-pages, he passes quickly into a second or a third edition; and indeed we see little reason to doubt them, for his name acquires a certain market value, and he is encouraged to publish again and again.

thing of himself before he professes to | he becomes our special aversion for a entertain other people; and as we have couple of seasons or so. Not that we do remarked already, the primary purpose of not personally shun him and all his works, the novel is amusement most charily blend- but because, as it wearied the Athenians to ed with instruction. We hold fast to that hear Aristides called "the good," so it dissound doctrine. We are less gratified than gusts us with infinitely more reason to see provoked even by the most brilliant origi-him advertised and puffed. He swaggers nality, when it puts a strain on our faculties in place of relaxing them. And what shall we say, then, of the self-confident novice who insists on trying "his prentice hand" at subtle psychological analysis, or who undertakes to instruct us in the silliest platitudes? Only that, upon the whole, we like him better, at all events we dislike him rather less, than his brother, who falls into the fashion of the ladies, and without the excuse of their sentimental illusions, discourses of the love of which he knows nothing. It is not "sweet Anne Page," but a great lubberly boy," who goes blundering about with his clumsy imagination on the ground which is closed to him like paradise to the peri. What he may come to be we know not. He may school himself into the art of gracefully languishing like a Petrarch, and learn to sigh his soul out in moving serenades beneath the balcony of his mistress. He may become a worthy fellow, with earnest passions, who lays siege in the intervals of his business to some heart that is worth the winning; who will marry, and make satisfactory settlements, and become a highly respectable husband and father. In the mean time, with his shallow inex- We need hardly say that if our remarks perience and self-conceit, he makes him- on beginners in the novel business seem self a most intolerable nuisance. The to be severe, we mean the application of only thing he succeeds in is in painting his them to be confined to those who have own portrait; and that, as we need hardly palpably mistaken their vocation. Many say, he does with engaging unconscious- a man may honestly try and honorably ness. In each of his chapters we recog- fail; and the capable critic will be lenient nize him as he is, overdressed or slovenly to conscientious and intelligent work, even dressed as it may happen, but in either though it appear, as Artemus Ward obcase most embarrassed in feminine society. When he heaves his sighs, they are visibly pumped up; and when he makes a contorted effort to be pathetic, he loses himself in unintelligible bathos. It is not worth while breaking butterflies on the wheel, or we might carry our remarks on him into more detail. If he be of humble connections, and hopes to get a living by his pen, the sharp disillusioning may come to him before much harm is done, and he may turn to some respectable trade, or to travelling the country as a bagman. The worst that can usually happen to anybody who reads him, is to break down at the beginning of one of his stories. But sometimes and we fancy that some glaring examples will suggest themselves

served of Shakespeare, when imagining him a correspondent of the New York dailies, that the writer "lacks the rakesit fancy and immaginashun."

In our opinion, we should say that if the young novel-writer were wise, he would rely, in the first instance, almost entirely on his own knowledge of life. It need not and cannot be extensive; but it is trustworthy so far as it goes. Frank autobiography can hardly fail to be interesting, however uneventful in its incidents. have pointed out already that the male sex has "a pull" in that respect. The aspiring novelist must have fair powers of observation; but a very moderate exercise of them should have provided him with some slender répertoire of characters. He

We

must blend a proportion of sentiment with | that he will lose more in élan than he is his action; but for that, again, he may, in likely to gain by painstaking selection. great measure, have recourse to himself. But then the débutant, on the other hand, If he have the courage to be candid; if he has the amplest elbow-room. Whatever have any habit of self-examination, and the he may choose to say or do, he cannot patience to probe his own nature, and to possibly be borrowing from himself; and plumb the depths of his feelings, he may if he only write naturally when he has easily succeed without any compromising once decided on his lines, he can hardly, indiscretions in making his hero natural at all events, be lacking in freshness. His enough for any ordinary purpose. His first book may prove little more than that women he will find more embarrassing, he will do well to try again, and may perand in them he is almost certain to break haps turn into a novel-writer. Nor need down. That, however, need in no way he be discouraged if his second attempt dishearten him; for a perfect novel is ab- be comparatively unsuccessful. It can solutely phenomenal, and even Sir Walter hardly have the freshness of his first, and Scott, in the flush of his fame, made lay must necessarily be a more crucial test of figures of the Misses Bradwardine and his abilities. He has to call more on his Mannering. If he stick to his sisters he imagination to help out realism, and must may avoid caricature; or if he has been begin to exercise himself in the artifices precocious in his affections like the author that are become a habit with the veteran. of "Don Juan," make excellent use of He wants the easy confidence that goes flirtations of his own. As for his other for so much; and may be over-regardful of men, he can hardly be at any great loss, if the strictures that have been passed upon he cast about among his familiar cronies him. We are very far from asserting that and his college companions. It should be the novice may not get valuable hints from easy to blacken one or two into rascals, or his critics; but he will never achieve anywhiten them into saints, while keeping the thing considerable if, in the last resort, he rest as respectable mediocrities; though, do not refer everything to his private judgon the whole, unless his genius be unmis- ment, and only endeavor to profit by the takably of the lurid order, he will do we advice he sees reason to assent to. We to avoid exaggeration in the beginning. remember a story in one of the books of So far as our observation goes, the secret our childhood, where an old man, driving of a first success lies in limiting the num- a donkey over a bridge, brings the beast ber of the characters, simplifying the plot, by which he gets his living to a miserable and laying the scenes of it as nearly as end, by listening to the conflicting advice possible in the present year, or, at all of the passengers. So it may well be with events, in the present decade. Simplifica- the novice bewildered among the critics. tion assists you in dispensing with the skill More than once we have taken the pains which can only come from practice or in- to select conflicting extracts from various tuitive talent. And nineteen readers in reviews, all ostensibly of nearly equal autwenty are far more interested in the frail- thority, arranging them antagonistically in ties of their next-door neighbors than in parallel columns, and we may safely say, ingenious historical romance, or the most that we have seldom read anything at once brilliantly fanciful pictures from the antip- more confusing and more entertaining. odes. We can recall more than one of the most popular novel-writers of our daywho seem to go to work with the method of machinery, and who may be confidently counted upon for three or four books in the year—who either began with a dash and then comparatively broke down, or who wrought themselves up, by slow and fluctuating degrees, to the fame and the comfortable incomes they are enjoying. Many of their worst novels have still a circulation in yellow covers, partly because a well-established name will sell anything, and partly because the authors, having the root of the matter in them, showed something of their cleverness even in their faults. But under a series of disappoint ments and mortifications, they might easily

We have remarked elsewhere that many clever writers have never surpassed their maiden novels; and on the principles we have ventured to lay down, that seems to stand to reason. Ón first taking pen in hand, nine men in ten are cramped by timidity. They have the terror of the critics before their eyes; unconsciously they criticise themselves, and are apt to reject what is excellent. If their imaginations are really free and fertile, they are troubled over the embarrassment of choice between the clashing ideas that jostle on them. There the veteran has the advantage of quick decision. He knows that what he may reject for the moment will come in usefully later; and at all events,

men