e thrills through the temples. In
fiction, on the other hand, the world of fashion is "played out." Nobody
cares to read or write about the dear duchess. If a peer comes into a
novel he comes in, not as a coroneted curiosity, but as a man, just as if
he were a dentist, or a stockbroker. His rank is an accident; it used to
be the essence of his luminous apparition. I scarce remember a lord in
all the many works of Mr. Besant, nor do they people the romances of Mr.
Black. Mr. Kipling does not deal in them, nor Mr. George Meredith much;
Mr. Haggard hardly gets beyond a baronet, and _he_ wears chain mail in
Central Africa, and tools with an axe. Mrs. Oliphant has a Scotch peer,
but he is less interesting and prominent than his family ghost. No, we
have only Ouida left, and Mr. Norris--who writes about people of fashion,
indeed, but who has nothing in him of the old fashionable novelist.

Is it to a Republic, to France, that we must look for our fashionable
novels--to France and to America. Every third person in M. Guy de
Maupassant's tales has a "de," and is a Marquis or a Vicomte. As for M.
Paul Bourget, one really can be happy with him in the fearless old
fashion. With him we meet Lord Henry Bohun, and M. De Casal (a Vicomte),
and all the Marquises and _Marquises_; and all the pale blue boudoirs,
and sentimental Duchesses, whose hearts are only too good, and who get
into the most complicated amorous scrapes. That young Republican, M.
Bourget, sincerely loves a _blason_, a pedigree, diamonds, lace, silver
dressing cases, silver baths, essences, pomatums, _le grand luxe_. So
does Gyp: apart from her wit, Gyp is delightful to read, introducing us
to the very best of bad company. Even M. Fortune du Boisgobey likes a
Vicomte, and is partial to the _noblesse_, while M. Georges Ohnet is
accused of entering the golden world of rank, like a man without a
wedding garment, and of being lost and at sea among his aristocrats. They
order these things better in France: they still appeal to the fine old
natural taste for rank and luxury, splendour and refinement. What is Gyp
but a Lady Fanny Flummery _reussie_,--Lady Fanny with the trifling
additional qualities of wit and daring? Observe her noble scorn of M.
George Ohnet: it is a fashionable arrogance.

To my mind, I confess, the decay of the British fashionable novel seems
one of the most threatening signs of the times. Even in France
institutions are much more perman