of old the simple assumption that all mankind falls into the two great contrasted groups of the good and the bad, was quite sufficient.  And, as a natural outcome of such an easy-going philosophy, the study of life was rudimentary and partial; you could always tell how the villain would jump and were comfortable in the assurance that the curtain should ring down upon “and so they were married and lived happily ever afterwards.”

In contrast, to-day human nature is depicted in the Novel as a curious compound of contradictory impulses and passions, and instead of the clear-cut separation of the sheep and the goats, we look forth upon a vast, indiscriminate horde of humanity whose color, broadly surveyed, seems a very neutral gray,—­neither deep black nor shining white.  The white-robed saint is banished along with the devil incarnate; those who respect their art would relegate such crudities to Bowery melodrama.  And while we may allow an excess of zeal in this matter, even a confusion of values, there can be no question that an added dignity has come to the Novel in these latter days, because it has striven with so much seriousness of purpose to depict life in a more interpretative way.  It has seized for a motto the Veritas nos liberavit of the ancient philosopher.  The elementary psychology of the past has been transferred to the stage drama, justifying Mr. Shaw’s description of it as “the last sanctuary of unreality.”  And even in the theater, the truth demanded in fiction for more than a century, is fast finding a place, and play-making, sensitive to the new desire, is changing in this respect before our eyes.

However, with the good has come evil too.  In the modern seeking for so-called truth, the nuda veritas has in some hands become shameless as well,—­a fact amply illustrated in the following treatment of principles and personalities.

The Novel in the hands of these eighteenth century writers also struck a note of the democratic,—­a note that has sounded ever louder until the present day, when fiction is by far the most democratic of the literary forms (unless we now must include the drama in such a designation).  The democratic ideal has become at once an instinct, a principle and a fashion.  Richardson in his “Pamela” did a revolutionary thing in making a kitchen wench his heroine; English fiction had previously assumed that for its polite audience only the fortunes of Algernon and Angelina could be followed decorously and give fit pleasure.  His innovation, symptomatic of the time, by no means pleased an aristocratic on-looker like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who wrote to a friend:  “The confounding of all ranks and making a jest of order has long been growing in England; and I perceive by the books you sent me, has made a very considerable progress.  The heroes and heroines of the age are cobblers and kitchen wenches.  Perhaps you will say, I should not take my ideas of the manners of the times from such trifling authors; but it is more truly to be found among them, than from any historian; as they write merely to get money, they always fall into the notions that are most acceptable to the present taste.  It has long been the endeavor of our English writers to represent people of quality as the vilest and silliest part of the nation, being (generally) very low-born themselves”—­a quotation deliciously commingled of prejudice and worldly wisdom.