up into conversations, which always impart an air of sprightliness to a book, she said she was sure she would like it, and carried it off in triumph.
Those were not days, be it remembered, when people wrote fiction for the sake of introducing discussions. There still lingered in the novelist's mind the time-worn heresy that he had a story to tell, and that his people must act as well as talk. The plot—delightful and obsolete word!—was then in good repute, and conversation was mainly useful in helping on the tale, in providing copious love scenes, and, with really good novelists, in illustrating and developing character. Thomas Love Peacock's inimitable dialogues had indeed been long given to the world; but quiet people of restricted cultivation knew nothing of them, and would have found it difficult to realize their loss. I can hardly fancy our dear old friend reading and enjoying the delicious war of words in Crotchet Castle, and I should be grieved to think of her suddenly confronted with those scraps of sententious wisdom, in which its au-
