consoling art to "_filles de joie_." He doubtless meant that
these goddesses--"_les filles de joie_" are always young--gave us
visions of the joy of life; that they might be sensuous without being
sensual; but his phrase falls far short of the truth. There are novels,
like Mrs. Jackson's "Ramona," which are joyous and serious at once. Or
take "The Cardinal's Snuff Box" or "Pepita Jiminez."

Every constant reader has his favourite essayists. As a rule, he reads
them to be soothed or to be amused. In making my confession, I must say
that only a few of the essayists really amuse me. They are, as a rule,
more witty than humorous, and generally they make one self-conscious,
being self-conscious themselves. There are a hundred different types of
the essayist. Each of us has his favourite bore among them. Once I found
all the prose works of a fine poet and friend of mine, Aubrey de Vere,
on the shelves of a constant reader. "Why?" I asked. "The result of a
severe sense of duty!" he said.

Madame Roland tried hard for a title of nobility and failed, though she
gained in the end a greater title. Her works are insufferably and
complacently conceited, and yet I always look at their bindings with
respect. Mrs. Blashfield, who died too soon, has given us, in her first
volume--unfortunately the only one--a new view of this Empress of
Didacticism. It is strange indeed that Madame Roland could have been
nourished by that most stimulating of all books--"The Devout Life of St.
Francis de Sales." Monseigneur de Sales is, to my mind, the most
practical of all the essayists, even when he puts his essays in the form
of letters. Next comes F['e]nelon's and--I know that I shall shock those
who regard his philosophy as merely Deistic--next comes, for his power
of stimulation, Emerson.

It has certainly occurred to me, perhaps too late, that these
confessions may be taken as didactic in themselves; in writing them I
have had not the slightest intention of improving anybody's mind but
simply of relieving my own, by button-holing the reader who happens to
come my way. I should like to add that what is called the coarseness of
the eighteenth-century novel and romance is much more healthful than the
nasty brutality of a school of our novelists--who make up for their lack
of talent and of wide experience by trying to excite animal instincts.
Eroticism may be delicately treated; but art has nothing in common with
the process of "cooking stale cabba