he is one of the few critics who has expressed any opinion on the subject,—the Ouida of her period. The very names of her heroines, Lassellia, Idalia, and Douxmoure, are Ouidesque, and their behavior would warrant their immediate presentation to that society which the authoress of "Strathmore" has so sympathetically portrayed. These "lovely Inconsiderates," though bad enough for a reformatory, are all as sensitive as nuns. They "sink fainting on a Bank" if they so much as receive letters from their lovers. Their "Limbs forget their Functions" on the most trifling provocation. "Stormy Passions" and "deadly Melancholy" succeed each other with monotonous vehemence in their "tortured Bosoms," and when they fly repentant to some remote Italian convent, whole cities mourn their loss.
Eliza Heywood's stories are probably as imbecile and as depraved as any fiction we possess to-day, but the women of England read them eagerly. They read too the iniquitous rubbish of Mrs. Aphra Behn; and no incident can better illustrate the tremendous change that swept over public sentiment with the introduction of good and decent novels than
