_Cause of the Novel's Decline._--No man, it may be safely laid down as a general rule, can obtain a strong hold over the popular mind without more or less of real power. A reality there must be. The artifice, the trickery, cannot arise in this first stage, as by any substitution of a shadow for a reality. If the mass of readers _feel_ a power, and acknowledge a power, in that case power there must be. It was the just remark of Dr. Johnson that men do not deceive themselves in their amusements. And amusement it is that the great public seek in literature. The meaner and the more sensual the demands of a man are, so much the less possible it becomes to cheat him. Seeking for warmth, he cannot be wrong when he says that he has found it. Asking for _alcohol_, he will never be cheated with water. His feelings in such a case, his impressions, instantaneously justify themselves; that is, they bear witness past all doubting to the certainty of what they report. So far there is no opening to mistake. The error, the opening to the spurious on the largest scale, arises first upon the _quality_ of the power. Strength varies upon an endless scale, not merely by its own gradations, but by the modes and the degrees in which it combines with other qualities. And there are many combinations, cases of constant recurrence, in which some natural vigour, but of no remarkable order, enters into alliance with animal propensities; where a portentous success will indicate no corresponding power in the artist, but only an unusual insensibility to decency and the opinion of thoughtful persons.
Novels are the one sole class of books that ever interest the public, that reach its heart, or even catch its eye. And the reason why novels are becoming much more licentious, and much grosser in the arts by which they court public favour, lies undoubtedly in the quality of that new reading public which the extension of education has added to the old one. An education miserably shallow, whilst unavailing for any purpose of real elevation, lets in upon the theatre of what is called by courtesy literature a vast additional audience that once would have been excluded altogether. This audience, changed in no respect from its former condition of intellect and manners and taste, bringing only the single qualification of ability to read, is now strong enough in numbers to impress a new character upon literature in so far as literature has a motive for applying itself to _their_ wants. The consequences are showing themselves, and _will_ show themselves more broadly. It is difficult with proper delicacy to seek illustrations amongst our own living writers. Illustrations were all too easily found did we care to enter on the task.