Fiction in the clean hands of that king of romancers, Sir Walter Scott, threw new light on the history and scenes of the past.

Such characters as "Jennie Deans" and her godly father might have been taken from John Banyan's portrait gallery; Lady Di Vernon is the ideal of young womanhood.

Fiction has often been a wholesome relief to a good man's overworked and weary brain.

Many of the recent popular novels are wholesome in their tone and the historical type often instructive.

The chief objection to the best of them is that they excite a distaste in the minds of thousands for any other reading.