THE NIGHT IN THE CITY HE clock just struck two, the expiring taper rises and sinks in the socket, the watchman forgets the hour in slumber, the laborious and the happy are at rest, and nothing wakes but meditation, guilt, revelry, and despair. The drunkard once more fills the destroying bowl, the robber walks his midnight round, and the suicide lifts his guilty arm against his own sacred person. Let me no longer waste the night over the page of antiquity, or the sallies of contemporary genius, but pursue the solitary walk, where Vanity, ever changing, but a few hours past walked before me, where she kept up the pageant, and now, like a froward child, seems hushed with her own importunities. What a gloom hangs all around! The dying lamp feebly emits a yellow gleam; no sound is heard but of the chiming clock, or the distant watchdog. All the bustle of human pride is forgotten. An hour like this may well display the emptiness of human vanity. There will come a time when this temporary solitude may be made continual, and the city itself, like its inhabitants, fade away, and leave a desert in its room. What cities, as great as this, have once triumphed in existence; had their victories as great, joy as just, and as unbounded; and, with short-sighted presumption, promised themselves immortality! Posterity can hardly trace the situation of some: the sorrowful traveler wanders over the awful ruins of others; and, as he beholds, he learns wisdom and feels the transience of every sublunary possession. «< Here," he cries, "stood their citadel, now grown over with weeds; there their senate house, but now the haunt of every noxious reptile; temples and theatres stood here, now only an undistinguished heap of ruin. They are fallen, for luxury and avarice first made them feeble. The rewards of the state were conferred on amusing, and not on useful members of society. Their riches and opulence invited the invaders, who, though at first repulsed, returned again, conquered by perseverance, and at last swept the defendants into undistinguished destruction." How few appear in those streets which but some few hours ago were crowded! and those who appear now no longer wear their daily mask, nor attempt to hide their lewdness or their misery. But who are those who make the streets their couch, and find a short repose from wretchedness at the doors of the opulent? These are strangers, wanderers, and orphans, whose circumstances are too humble to expect redress, and whose distresses are too great even for pity. Their wretchedness excites rather horror than pity. Some are without the covering even of rags, and others emaciated with disease: the world has disclaimed them; society turns its back upon their distress, and has given them up to nakedness and hunger. These poor shivering females have once seen happier days, and been flattered into beauty. They have been. prostituted to the gay luxurious villain, and are now turned out to meet the severity of winter. Perhaps, now lying at the doors of their betrayers, they sue to wretches whose hearts are insensible, or debauchees who may curse, but will not relieve them. Why, why was I born a man, and yet see the sufferings of wretches I cannot relieve! Poor houseless creatures! the world will give you reproaches, but will not give you relief. The slightest misfortunes of the great, the most imaginary uneasiness of the rich, are aggravated with all the power of eloquence, and held up to engage our attention and sympathetic sorrow. The poor weep unheeded, persecuted by every subordinate species of tyranny; and every law which gives others security becomes an enemy to them. Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensibility, or why was not my fortune adapted to its impulse? Tenderness, without a capacity of relieving, only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object which sues for assistance. Adieu. Letter CXVII. complete. From the EDMUND WILLIAM GOSSE (1849-) 9S AN essayist, Edmund Gosse shows the same delicacy of touch and subtlety of thought which made him a special favorite among the "parlor poets" of nineteenth-century England. He was born in London, September 21st, 1849, and began his professional career as a newspaper writer. The publication of his "Madrigals, Songs, and Sonnets" in 1870 suggested the great ability he has since demonstrated, not only in his "New Poems" and "English Odes," but in his essays,—a volume of which entitled "SeventeenthCentury Studies" was published in 1883. He became Clark lecturer at Cambridge University, and his lectures delivered there were collected and published in 1885 in a volume entitled, "From Shakespeare to Pope." He is a favorite contributor to English reviews, and many of his best essays have appeared in them. A THE TYRANNY OF THE NOVEL PARISIAN Hebraist has been attracting a moment's attention to his paradoxical and learned self by announcing that strong-hearted and strong-brained nations do not produce novels. This gentleman's soul goes back, no doubt, in longing and despair to the heart of Babylon and the brain of Gath. But if he looks for a modern nation that does not cultivate the novel, he must, I am afraid, go far afield. Finland and Roumania are certainly tainted; Bohemia lies in the bond of naturalism. ably Montenegro is the one European nation which this criterion would leave strong in heart and brain. The amusing absurdity of this whim of a pedant may serve to remind us how universal is now the reign of prose fiction. In Scandinavia the drama may claim an equal prominence, but no more. In all other countries the novel takes the largest place, claims and obtains the widest popular attention, is the admitted tyrant of the whole family of literature. This is so universally acknowledged nowadays that we scarcely stop to ask ourselves whether it is a heaven-appointed condition of things, existing from the earliest times, or whether it is an innovation. As a matter of fact, the predominance of the novel is a very recent event. Most other classes of literature are as old as the art of verbal expression: lyrical and narrative poetry, drama, history, philosophy, -all these have flourished since the sunrise of the world's intelligence. But the novel is a creation of the late afternoon of civilization. In the true sense, though not the pedantic one, the novel began in France with "La Princesse de Clèves," and in England with "Pamela,”—that is to say, in 1677 and in 1740 respectively. Compared with the dates of the beginning of philosophy and of poetry, these are as yesterday and the day before yesterday. Once started, however, the sapling of prose fiction grew and spread mightily. It took but a few generations to overshadow all the ancient oaks and cedars around it, and with its monstrous foliage to dominate the forest. It would not be uninteresting, if we had space to do so here, to mark in detail the progress of this astonishing growth. It would be found that, in England at least, it has not been by any means regularly sustained. The original magnificent outburst of the English novel lasted for exactly a quarter of a century, and closed with the publication of "Humphrey Clinker." During this period of excessive fertility in a hitherto unworked field, the novel produced one masterpiece after another, positively pushing itself to the front and securing the best attention of the public at a moment when such men as Gray, Butler, Hume, and Warburton were putting forth contributions to the old and longestablished sections of literature. Nay, such was the force of the new kind of writing that the gravity of Johnson and the grace of Goldsmith were seduced into participating in its facile triumphs. But, at the very moment when the novel seemed about to sweep everything before it, the wave subsided and almost disappeared. For nearly forty years, only one novel of the very highest class was produced in England; and it might well seem as though prose fiction, after its brief victory, had exhausted its resources, and had sunken forever into obscurity. During the close of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth, no novel, except "Evelina," could pretend to disturb the laurels. of Burke, of Gibbon, of Cowper, of Crabbe. The publication of "Caleb Williams" is a poor event to set against that of the "Lyrical Ballads"; even Thalaba the Destroyer » seemed a more impressive phenomenon than the "Monk." But the second great bourgeoning of the novel was at hand. Like the tender ash, it delayed to clothe itself when all the woods of romanticism were green. But in 1811 came "Sense and Sensibility," in 1814 "Waverley"; and the novel was once more at the head of the literary movement of the time. It cannot be said to have stayed there very long. Miss Austen's brief and brilliant career closed in 1817. Sir Walter Scott continued to be not far below his best until about ten years later. But a period of two decades included not only the work of these two great novelists, but the best books also of Galt, of Mary Ferrier, of Maturin, of Lockhart, of Banim. It saw the publication of "Hajji Baba," of "Frankenstein," of "Anastatius.' Then, for the second time, prose fiction ceased for a while to hold a position of high predominance. But Bulwer Lytton was already at hand; and five or six years of comparative obscurity prepared the way for Dickens, Lever, and Lover. Since the memorable year 1837 the novel has reigned in English literature; and its tyranny was never more irresistible than it is to-day. The Victorian has been peculiarly the age of the triumph of fiction. We have but to look around us at this very moment to see how complete the tyranny of the novel is. If one hundred educated and grown men-not, of course, themselves the authors of other books- were to be asked which are the three most notable works published in London during the present season, would not ninety and nine be constrained to answer, with a parrot uniformity, Tess of the D'Urbervilles," "David Grieve," "The Little Minister?" These are the books which have been most widely discussed, most largely bought, most vehemently praised, most venomously attacked. These are the books in which the "trade" has taken most interest, the vitality of which is most obvious and indubitable. It may be said that the conditions of the winter of 1892 were exceptional - that no books of the first class in other branches were produced. This may be true; and yet Mr. Jebb has issued a volume of his "Sophocles," Mr. William Morris a collection of the lyric poems of years, Mr. Froude his "Divorce of Catharine of Aragon," and Mr. Tyndall his "New Fragments." If the poets in chorus had blown their silver trumpets and the |