nd
then on the other hand we have got our rulers pretty well under
control. This paragraph, however, is not the peroration of a eulogy
upon 'our unrivaled happiness.' It attempts merely to lay stress on
such facts as these, that it is not now possible to hang a clergyman
of the Church of England for forgery, as was done in 1777; that a man
may not be deprived of the custody of his own children because he
holds heterodox religious opinions, as happened in 1816. There is
widespread toleration; and civilization in the sense in which Ruskin
uses the word has much increased. Now it is possible for a Jew to
become Prime Minister, and for a Roman Catholic to become England's
Poet Laureate.

If, then, life is familiar, comfortable, unrestrained, and easy, as it
certainly seems to be, how are we to account for the rise of this
semihistoric, heroic literature? It is almost grotesque, the contrast
between the books themselves and the manner in which they are
produced. One may picture the incongruous elements of the
situation,--a young society man going up to his suite in a handsome
modern apartment house, and dictating romance to a type-writer. In the
evening he dines at his club, and the day after the happy launching of
his novel he is interviewed by the representative of a newspaper
syndicate, to whom he explains his literary method, while the
interviewer makes a note of his dress and a comment on the decoration
of his mantelpiece.

Surely romance written in this way--and we have not grossly
exaggerated the way--bears no relation to modern literature other than
a chronological one. _The Prisoner of Zenda_ and _A Gentleman of
France_, to mention two happy and pleasing examples of this type of
novel, are not modern in the sense that they express any deep feeling
or any vital characteristic of to-day. They are not instinct with the
spirit of the times. One might say that these stories represent the
novel in its theatrical mood. It is the novel masquerading. Just as a
respectable bookkeeper likes to go into private theatricals, wear a
wig with curls, a slouch hat with ostrich feathers, a sword and
ruffles, and play a part to tear a cat in, so does the novel like to
do the same. The day after the performance the whole artificial
equipment drops away and disappears. The bookkeeper becomes a
bookkeeper once more and a natural man. The hour before the footlights
has done him no harm. True, he forgot his lines at one place, but what