the
tendency of the work. We utterly repudiate the idea that a reviewer
has nothing to do with the morality of a book. We reject the specious
jargon to the contrary urged by the George Sand school. A novel
should be something more than a mere piece of intellectual mechanism,
because if not, it is injurious. There can be no medium. A fiction
which does not do good does harm. There never was a romance written
which had not its purpose, either open or concealed, from that of
Waverley, which inculcated loyalty, to that of Oliver Twist, which
teaches the brotherhood of man. Some novels are avowedly and
insolently vicious; such are the Adventures of Faublas and the Memoirs
of a Woman of Quality. Others, under the guise of philanthropy, sap
every notion of right and duty: such are Martin the Foundling,
Consuelo, _et id omne genus_. It is the novels of this last class
which are the most deleterious; for, with much truth, they contain
just enough poison to vitiate the whole mass. Chemists tell us that
the smallest atom of putrid matter, if applied to the most gigantic
body, will, in time, infect the whole: just so the grain of sophistry
in Consuelo, admitting there is no more, in the end destroys all that
the book contains of the beautiful and true. Said a lady in conversing
on this subject: "I always find that people who read such books
remember only what is bad in them." Her plain common sense hit the
nail on the head, while transcendental folly hammered all around it in
vain. We have spoken of Consuelo thus particularly because it is the
best of its class: and of that enervating fiction we here record our
deliberate opinion, that it will turn more than one foolish Miss into
a strolling actress, under the insane and preposterous notion that it
is her mission.

We do not say that art should be despised by the novelist; we only
contend that it should not be polluted. We would have every novel a
work of art, but the art should be employed on noble subjects, not on
indifferent or disgraceful ones. If authors plead a mission to write,
it must be to write that which will do good. A Raphael may boast of
inspiration when he paints a Madonna, but not when his brush stoops to
a Cyprian or a Satyr. The Pharisees of old prayed unctuously in the
market-places: so the George Sands of our day boast of their superior
insight into the beautiful and true. We doubt whether both are not
impudent hypocrites.

The novel, which has proved the tex