thoughts of years are exploded, may be one of the most admirable of
intellectual phenomena, but an unpremeditated volume can only be a
demonstration of human weakness.

The argument thus far has been in favor of the Muses. Hellenic taste and
the principles of high art ratify the condemnation passed on the novel
by the aesthetic goddesses. A wider view, however, will annul the
sentence, giving in its stead a warning and a lesson. If the prose
romance be not Hellenic, it is nevertheless humane, and has been in
honor almost universally throughout the Orient and the Occident. Its
absence from the classical literature was a marvel and exception, a
phenomenon of the clearest-minded and most active of races, who thought,
but did not contemplate,--whose ideal world consisted only of simple,
but stately legends of bright-limbed gods and heroes. A felicitous
production of high art, also, is among the rarest of exceptions, and
will be till the Millennium. Myriads of comparative failures follow in
the suite of a masterpiece. We have, therefore, judged the novel by an
impracticable standard, by a comparison with the highest aims rather
than the usual attainments of other branches of literary art. Human
weakness makes poetry, philosophy, and history imperfect in execution,
though they aspire to absolute beauty and truth; human weakness
suggested the novel, which is imperfect in design, written as an
amusement and relief, in despair of sounding the universe. A novel is in
its nature and as a matter of necessity an artistic failure; it
pretends to nothing higher; but under the slack laws which govern its
composition, multitudes of fine and suggestive characters, incidents,
and sayings may be smuggled into it, contrary to all the usages and
rules of civilized literature. Hence the secret of its popularity,
that it is the organ of average as distinguished from highest thought.
Science and art are the goals of destiny, but rarely is there a