ship them." It is folly to exaggerate their controlling influence in our lives. We are not more modestly ardent after reading "Vanity Fair," nor more eagerly humble after spending long and happy hours with "Emma." No sober ambition stirs chastely in our souls when we lay down, with a sigh of content, "Pride and Prejudice," or "Guy Mannering," or "Henry Esmond," or "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel." Even "Anna Karénina" fails to inspire us with "false hopes and enervating dreams;" and while we are often bewildered by Mr. Henry James's masterpieces, we have never been blinded by any. As for the ordinary novels that tumble headlong from the press, it is impossible to imagine them as inspiring either ardour or ambition, egotism or humility. They may perhaps be trusted to weaken our literary instincts, and to induce mental inertia,—"the surest way of having no thoughts of our own," says Schopenhauer, "is to take up a book every time we have nothing to do,"—but they are not, as their writers and their critics fearfully assert, the arbiters of our destinies.
A belief in the overpowering influence of
