excellence of mother: naughtiness of one son, virtue of another, these
are habitually served up again and again. On the sprained ankles, the
mad bulls, the fires, and other simple devices for doing without an
introduction between hero and heroine I need not dwell. The very
youngest of us is acquainted with these expedients, which, by this time
of day, will spell failure.

The common novels of Governess life, the daughters and granddaughters of
_Jane Eyre_, still run riot among the rejected manuscripts. The lively
large family, all very untidy and humorous, all wearing each other's
boots and gloves, and making their dresses out of bedroom curtains and
marrying rich men, still rushes down the easy descent to failure. The
sceptical curate is at large, and is disbelieving in everything except
the virtues of the young woman who "has a history." Mr. Swinburne hopes
that one day the last unbelieving clergyman will disappear in the embrace
of the last immaculate Magdalen, as the Princess and the Geni burn each
other to nothingness, in the _Arabian Nights_. On that happy day there
will be one less of the roads leading to failure. If the pair can carry
with them the self-sacrificing characters who take the blame of all the
felonies that they did not do, and the nice girl who is jilted by the
poet, and finds that the squire was the person whom she _really_ loved,
so much the better. If not only Monte Carlo, but the inevitable scene in
the Rooms there can be abolished; if the Riviera, and Italy can be
removed from the map of Europe as used by novelists, so much the better.
But failure will always be secured, while the huge majority of authors do
not aim high, but aim at being a little lower than the last domestic
drivel which came out in three volumes, or the last analysis of the
inmost self of some introspective young girl which crossed the water from
the States.