r (owing to the defect I have just mentioned in
Anastasius); but it must be confessed that there is a want of dignity,
of moral rectitude, and of what I may term moral beauty, throughout the
whole book. If an author could combine the various excellencies of Scott
and Le Sage, with a greater and more metaphysical knowledge of morals
than either, we might expect from him the perfection we have not yet
discovered since the days of Apuleius."

"Speaking of morals," said Lady Roseville, "do you not think every
novel should have its distinct but, and inculcate, throughout, some one
peculiar moral, such as many of Marmontel's and Miss Edgeworth's?"

"No!" answered Vincent, "every good novel has one great end--the same in
all--viz. the increasing our knowledge of the heart. It is thus that a
novel writer must be a philosopher. Whoever succeeds in shewing us more
accurately the nature of ourselves and species, has done science, and,
consequently, virtue, the most important benefit; for every truth is
a moral. This great and universal end, I am led to imagine, is rather
crippled than extended by the rigorous attention to the one isolated
moral you mention.

"Thus Dryden, in his Essay on the Progress of Satire, very rightly
prefers Horace to Juvenal, so far as instruction is concerned; because
the miscellaneous satires of the former are directed against every
vice--the more confined ones of the latter (for the most part) only
against one. All mankind is the field the novelist should cultivate--all
truth, the moral he should strive to bring home. It is in occasional
dialogue, in desultory maxims, in deductions from events, in analysis of
character, that he should benefit and instruct. It is not enough--and I
wish a certain novelist who has lately arisen would remember this--it
is not enough for a writer to have a good heart, amiable sympathies,
and what are termed high feelings, in order to shape out a moral, either
true in itself, or beneficial in its inculcation. Before he touches his
tale, he should be thoroughly acquainted with the intricate science of
morals, and the metaphysical, as well as the more open, operations of
the mind. If his knowledge is not deep and clear, his love of the good
may only lead him into error; and he may pass off the prejudices of a
susceptible heart for the precepts of virtue. Would to God that people
would think it necessary to be instructed before they attempt to
instruct. 'Dire simplement que la