pitiful, faded, fushionless, cauldrified, and chittering substitute, truth."
Small wonder that novelists content themselves with making matches, and refrain from examining too closely the result of their handiwork. They would have more conscience about it, if it were not so easy for them to withdraw. They are almost as irresponsible as poets, who delight in yoking unequal mates, as proof of the power of love. Poetry weds King Cophetua to the beggar maid, and smilingly retires from any further contemplation of the catastrophe. Shakespeare gives Celia—Celia, with her sweet brown beauty, her true heart, her nimble wit, her grace of exquisite companionship—to that unnatural sinner, Oliver; and the only excuse he offers is that Oliver says he is sorry for his sins. So I suppose Helen of Troy said she regretted her indiscretion, and this facile repentance reinstated her in happy domesticity. But the novelist is not at play in the Forest of Arden. He is presumably grappling with the dismal realities of earth. Nothing could be less like a fairy playground than the village of Thrums ("If the Auld-
