"Not at all in your way, Mr. Malcolm; but yet at the present time there
is nothing that pays so well as an exciting religious novel on
evangelical principles. Make all your unbelievers and worldly people
villians, and crown your heroine, after unheard-of perils and
persecutions, with the conversion of her lover, or the lover with the
conversion of the heroine--the one does nearly as well as the
other; but do not let them marry before conversion, on any account.
Settle the hero down in the ministry, to which he dedicates talents
that you may call as splendid as you please; make your fashionable
conversation of your worldly people slightly blackguardly, and that of
your pets very inane, with spots of religion coming out very strong now
and then, and you will have more readers than Dickens, Bulwer, or
Thackeray. Well-meaning mothers will put the book without fear into the
hands of their daughters. It is considered harmless Sunday reading for
those who find Sunday wearisome, and it is thought an appropriate
birth-day present for young people of both sexes. I dare say these
books are harmless enough, but their success is wonderfully
disproportioned to their merits. They must be such easy writing, too,
for you need never puzzle yourself as to whether it would be natural or
consistent for such a character to steal, or for another to murder.
'The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,' and
the novelist at least takes no pains to know it."

"You fire me with a noble zeal and emulation," said Mr. Malcolm. "Is it
true that the trumpery thing my sister Anne tormented me to order from
you last week has gone through five editions?"

"Just about to bring out a sixth," said the publisher; "and the curious
thing is that it is not at all exciting: but these American domestic
quasi-religious novels (though novel is not a proper term for them) are