A Constant Topic

There is a favorite subject of modern iiction: aman orworaan niarried hastily or unhappily, and meeting afterward some "elective affinity," the right man or woman, or apparently snch. No doubt tuis is a terrible position, pathetic, tragic, which may happen to the most guiltless persons, and does happen, perhaps, oftener than any one knows. Novelists seize upon it as a dramatic position, and patat it in such glowing, tender.and pathetie colors that, absorbed in the pity of the thing, one quite forgets its sin. The hapless lovers rouse our deepest sympathy; we follow them to the very verge of crime, almost regretüng that it is called crime, and when the obnoxious husband or wife dies, and the lovers are dismissed to happiness-as is usually done-we feel quite relieved and comfortable! Now, surely this is immoral as iminoral as, the coarsest sentence Shakespeare ever penned, or the moit passionate picture that Shelley or Bryon ever drew. Nay, more so, for these are only nature-vicious, undiïguised, put natural still, and making nopretense of virtue; but yoursentlmentalist assumes a virtue, and expects sympathy for his immorality, which is none the less immoral because, God knows, it is a delineation often only too true, and pertwps only too deserving of pity-IIis pity, who can see into the soul of man. Many a condemned thief and hanged murderer may have done the deed under most piteous and extenuating circuna - btances; but theft still remains theft, and murJer murder. And-let us not minee words - though modern taste may enwrap it in ever such patlietic, heroic, and picturesque form, adultery is still adultery. Never do our really great authors -our Shakespeares, our Scotts, our Thackerays, our George Eliots-deny this, or leave us in the sligh test doubt between virtueand vice. It is the mild sentimentalista, who, hovvever they may resent being classed with the "fast" autlors-alas! too often authoresses-of modern fiction, are equally immoral: because they hold the balance of virtue and vice with so feeble and uncertain a hand, as to leave both utterly confused in the writer's