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Their realism has rescued her from the sentimentality surrounding an impossible Camille quite as their fellow-craftsmen in realism have replaced the weeping Amelias of the Victorian period by reasonable women transcribed from actual life.

Miss Burney had written her novels, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu her Letters, and Mrs. Inchbald her "Simple Story" and her plays, before Mary came to London. Though the Amelias and Lydia Melfords of fiction were still favorite types, the blue-stocking was gaining ascendency. Because she was such a rara avis she received a degree of attention and devotion which now appears extraordinary. Mrs.

In real life Amelias listened to raillery from Squire Westerns not a whit more refined than Fielding's good country gentlemen. Therefore, when it came to serious discussions for moral purposes, there was little reason for writers to be timid. It was impossible for Mary to avoid certain subjects not usually spoken of in polite conversation. Had she done so, she would but have half stated her case.

It was so unusual to see Amelia there that Raven wondered idly not that it mattered he could meet a regiment of Amelias with this callousness upon him if Dick had beguiled her away so that she might not pounce on him when he returned. He got out of the car stiffly. He was, he felt at that instant, an old man.

I feel truly ashamed and sorry that I am still so far from being penetrated with that spirit. My pride has had a terrible fall. As I sat on my throne, looking down on all the Amelias in the world, I felt a profound pity at their delight in petty trifles, their love of position, of mere worldly show and passing vanities. "They are all alike," I said to myself.

With all these unpretending materials it is one of the most amusing, but also one of the most distressing books we have read for many a long year. We almost long for a little exaggeration and improbability to relieve us of that sense of dead truthfulness which weighs down our hearts, not for the Amelias and Georges of the story, but for poor kindred human nature.