The Wairarapa Daily. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1879.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 309, 6 November 1879, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1879.

It is one ot the settled things to sneer at novel-reading, hut it is nevertheless one of the. settled things to read novels. There are many persons who seem to fear that their intellectual superiority would be questioned if they failed to express their contempt for novels, for which purpose they have always at hand a number of set phrases, but we suspect that even these lofty persons take occasion once in a while to indulge themselves in a good work of ficiiou, for if there are any men and women who never read a novel their imaginations must be as dry as tin remainder biscuit After a voyage. But even many of those venders who frankly confess that they like novels are apt to look upon novel-reading as an indulgence that at best is not

specially lim ml'iil, and that for realy intellectual enjoyment tlivy must go io ■ other kind o ill' literature, That then: ' is good deal of idle mid feeble novel reading (here is no neid to say, Ui there is a fashion of judging novel, solely by their weak and foolish exam pies, whereas other branches of litem tore are judged l>y their best. Ther is a great deal of dull and even t'oolis] history, and a good deal of ihiu gnu in the essay and the homily. Peopf who sneer at the novel, and many who apologise for it, seem to be ignorant of the breadth and height it has attained in the hands of ihe masters. In an address written by the l'ev Dr Osgood, and read liefore the C'hureh Congress recently held at Ciucinatti. we b'nd the following well put argument:- We must allow that there are all sorts of novels, as there are all sorts of society, and that fiction swimris with vitality akin to that of nature in her range from humming-bird to vulture, spaniel to tiger, and from rose and lily to nightshade and upas-tree, We must choose from fiction as from fact, and both belong to our being and our birthright. We have part in each of the great schools of romance—the revolutionary school, that began the new fiction; the historical school, that ought to counteract, its madness; and the realistic school, that now carries the day, and tries to unite revolution with history in its telling portrait of things as lliey are in themselves, and their essential laws and principles. The great stories of our time belong to this realistic school, and they deal with the (acts of actual life, Kings mil queens, as such, tine gentlemen and tinelad.es, and their costume and etiquette, have gone by. and the thing most cared for, even in regard to them, is the real pinch of life, the actual motive of passion, the pain or pleasure that gives color or form to their experience. Everything that occupies or interests men and women now goes into romance, and is treated with the most accurate observation, the most earnest thinking, and the most ddigent art. Love, of c mrse, is and is likely to be the main topic; but all other things go with it and are made to li its miuist r;—all seimce>, arts, am hitions, enterprises, erinus, clnrities. atlii.ities, hatreds, aspirations, all go into iietbr, and are often treat d with such depth and power that it is no longer proper to cill ihe novel liglr reading, as a matter of course. In fact, much fiction is in a sense severely scientific, mid aims to set forth the personal impulses and social instinct-, as forces of nature and subject to the same laws of selection and fatalistic des in; as material phenomena,