n languid affectations; or against the
enthusiasm of a social life which wreaks its religion on the color of a
vestment, or sighs out its divine soul over an ancient pewter mug. Most
of our fiction, in its extreme analysis, introspection and
self-consciousness, in its devotion to details, in its disregard of the
ideal, in its selection as well as in its treatment of nature, is simply
of a piece with a good deal else that passes for genuine art. Much of it
is admirable in workmanship, and exhibits a cleverness in details and a
subtlety in the observation of traits which many great novels lack. But I
should be sorry to think that the historian will judge our social life by
it, and I doubt not that most of us are ready for a more ideal, that is
to say, a more artistic, view of our performances in this bright and
pathetic world.

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