say about novelists, "The old are better." It was we who, long
ago, were young and better, better fitted to enjoy and retain the
pleasure of making new visionary acquaintances. If this be so,
what an argument it is in favour of reading the best books first
and earliest in youth! Do the ladies who now find Scott slow, and
Miss Austen dull, and Dickens vulgar, and Thackeray prosy, and
Fielding and Richardson impossible, come to this belief because
they began early with the volumes of the circulating library? Are
their memories happily stored with the words and deeds of modern
fictitious romps, and passionate governesses, and tremendous
guardsmen with huge cigars? Are the people of--well, why mention
names of living authors?--of whom you will--are those as much to
the young readers of 1890 as Quentin Durward, and Colonel Newcome,
and Sam Weller, and Becky Sharp, and Anne Elliot, and Elizabeth
Bennett, and Jane Eyre were to young readers of 1860? It may very
well be so, and we seniors will not regret our choice, and the
young men and maids will be pleased enough with theirs. Yet it is
not impossible that the old really are better, and do not gain all
their life and permanent charm merely from the unjaded memories and
affections with which we came to them long ago.

We shall never be certain, for even if we tried the experiment of
comparing, we are no longer good judges, our hearts are with our
old friends, whom we think deathless; their birth is far enough off
in time, but they will serve us for ours.

These friends, it has been said, are not such a very numerous
company after all. Most of them are children of our own soil,
their spirits were made in England, or at least in Great Britain,
or, perhaps, came of English stock across the seas, like our dear