To my mind, I confess, the decay of the British fashion-
able novel seems one of the most threatening signs of the



THE LAST FASHIONABLE NOVEL. 99

times. Even in France institutions are much more per-
manent than here. In France they have fashionable
novels, and very good novels too : no man of sense will
deny that they are far better than our dilettantism of the
slums, or our religious and social tracts in the disguise of
romance. If there is no new tale of treasure and bandits
and fights and lions handy, may I have a fashionable novel
in French to fall back upon ! Even Count Tolstoi does not
disdain the genre. There is some uncommonly high life
in Anna Karenine. He adds a great deal of psychology,
to be sure ; so does M. Paul Bourget. But he takes you
among smart people, who have everything handsome about
them — titles, and lands, and rents. Is it not a hard thing
that an honest British snob, if he wants to move in the
highest circles of fiction, must turn to French novelists, or
Russian, or American ? As to the American novels of the
elite and the beau monde, their elegance is obscured to
English eyes, because that which makes one New Yorker
better than another, that which creates the Upper Ten
Thousand (dear phrase !) of New York, is so inconspicuous.
