ally of the unpurified passions, is parodied by him in a simpler
and more useful device. By alleging a moral purpose he is enabled
to gratify the prurience of his public and to raise them in their
own muddy conceit at one and the same time. The plea serves well
with those artless readers who have been accustomed to consider the
moral of a story as something separable from imagination,
expression, and style--a quality, it may be, inherent in the plot,
or a kind of appendix, exercising a retrospective power of
jurisdiction and absolution over the extravagances of the piece to
which it is affixed. Let virtue be rewarded, and they are content
though it should never be vitally imagined or portrayed. If their
eyes were opened they might cry with Brutus--"O miserable Virtue!
Thou art but a phrase, and I have followed thee as though thou wert
a reality."

It is in quite another kind, however, that the modern purveyor of
sentiment exercises his most characteristic talent. There are
certain real and deeply-rooted feelings, common to humanity,
concerning which, in their normal operation, a grave reticence is
natural. They are universal in their appeal, men would be ashamed
not to feel them, and it is no small part of the business of life
to keep them under strict control. Here is the sentimental
hucksters most valued opportunity. He tears these primary
instincts from the wholesome privacy that shelters them in life,
and cries them up from his booth in the market-place. The
elemental forces of human life, which beget shyness in children,
and touch the spirits of the wise to solemn acquiescence, awaken
him to noisier declamation. He patronises the stern laws of love
and pity, hawking them like indulgences, cheapening and commanding
them like the medicines of a mountebank. The censure of his