sing with the Scotch bard: 'My heart is in the South-West postal
district. My heart is not here.'"

"You can put it that way if you like," he growled.

"I will, if you have no objection," I agreed. "It makes life easier
for those of us with limited incomes."

The modern novel takes care, however, to avoid all doubt upon the
subject. Its personages, one and all, reside within the half-mile
square lying between Bond Street and the Park--a neighbourhood that
would appear to be somewhat densely populated. True, a year or two
ago there appeared a fairly successful novel the heroine of which
resided in Onslow Gardens. An eminent critic observed of it that:
"It fell short only by a little way of being a serious contribution
to English literature." Consultation with the keeper of the cabman's
shelter at Hyde Park Corner suggested to me that the "little way" the
critic had in mind measures exactly eleven hundred yards. When the
nobility and gentry of the modern novel do leave London they do not
go into the provinces: to do that would be vulgar. They make
straight for "Barchester Towers," or what the Duke calls "his little
place up north"--localities, one presumes, suspended somewhere in
mid-air.

In every social circle exist great souls with yearnings towards
higher things. Even among the labouring classes one meets with
naturally refined natures, gentlemanly persons to whom the loom and
the plough will always appear low, whose natural desire is towards
the dignities and graces of the servants' hall. So in Grub Street we
can always reckon upon the superior writer whose temperament will