dinary talent has. I refer to the great body of
novels, which you would know by internal evidence were written by women.
They are of two sorts: the domestic story, entirely unidealized, and as
flavorless as water-gruel; and the spiced novel, generally immoral in
tendency, in which the social problems are handled, unhappy marriages,
affinity and passional attraction, bigamy, and the violation of the
seventh commandment. These subjects are treated in the rawest manner,
without any settled ethics, with little discrimination of eternal right
and wrong, and with very little sense of responsibility for what is set
forth. Many of these novels are merely the blind outbursts of a nature
impatient of restraint and the conventionalities of society, and are as
chaotic as the untrained minds that produce them.

MANDEVILLE. Don't you think these novels fairly represent a social
condition of unrest and upheaval?

HERBERT. Very likely; and they help to create and spread abroad the
discontent they describe. Stories of bigamy (sometimes disguised by
divorce), of unhappy marriages, where the injured wife, through an
entire volume, is on the brink of falling into the arms of a sneaking
lover, until death kindly removes the obstacle, and the two souls, who
were born for each other, but got separated in the cradle, melt and
mingle into one in the last chapter, are not healthful reading for maids
or mothers.

THE MISTRESS. Or men.

THE FIRE-TENDER. The most disagreeable object to me in modern literature
is the man the women novelists have introduced as the leading character;
the women who come in contact with him seem to be fascinated by his
disdainful mien, his giant strength, and his brutal manner. He is broad
across the shoulders, heavily moulded, yet as lithe as a cat; has an
ugly scar across his right cheek; has been in the four quarters of the
globe; knows seventeen languages; had a harem in Turkey and a Fayaway in
the Marquesas; can be as polished as Bayard in the drawing-room, but is
as gloomy as Conrad in the library; has a terrible eye and a withering
glance, but can be instantly subdued by a woman's hand, if it is not
his wife's; and through all his morose and vicious career has carried a
heart as pure as a violet.

THE MISTRESS. Don't you think the Count of Monte Cristo is the elder
brother of Rochester?

THE FIRE-TENDER. One is a mere hero of romance; the other is meant for a
real man.

MANDEVILLE. I don't see that the m