isher, "but there are
other things that take better."

"What are they?"

"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
the rage at present. If one could trust to their details of every-day
life being correct, they might be useful as giving us the Americans
painted by themselves; but there is so much that is false and
improbable in plot and character, that one is tempted to doubt even the
cookery, of which we have QUANTUM SUFF."

"The conversation is the greatest twaddle I ever saw," said Mr.
Malcolm. "If the American people talk like that, how fatiguing it would
be to live among them! I could not write so badly, o