conclusion of our last chapter.' Curiously enough, however, the lapse of years is far easier to suggest than that of hours; and locomotion from Islington to India than the act, for instance, of leaving the room. If passion enters into the scene, and your heroine can be represented as banging the door behind her, and bringing down the plaster from the ceiling, the thing is easy enough, and may be even made a dramatic incident; but to describe, without baldness, Jones rising from the tea table and taking his departure in cold blood, is a much more difficult business than you may imagine. When John the footman has to enter and interrupt a conversation on the stage, the audience see him come and go, and think nothing of it; but to inform the reader of your novel of a similar incident and especially of John's going-without spoiling the whole scene by the introduction of the common-place, requires (let me tell you) the touch of a

master.

When you have got the outline of your plot, and the characters that seem appropriate to play in it, you turn to that so-called ' common-place book,' in which, if you know your trade, you will have set down anything noteworthy and illustrative of human nature that has come under your notice, and single out such instances as are most fitting; and finally you will select your scene (or the opening one) in which your drama is to be played. And here I may say, that while it is indispensable that the persons represented should be familiar to you, it is not necessary that the places should be; you should have visited them, of course, in person, but it is my experience that for a description of the salient features of any locality the less you stay there the better. The man who has lived in Switzerland all his life can never describe it (to the outsider) so graphically as the (intelligent) tourist; just as the man who has science at his fingers' ends does not succeed so well as the man with whom science has not yet become second nature, in making an abstruse subject popular.

Nor is it to be supposed that a story with very accurate local colouring cannot be written, the scenes of which are placed in a country which the writer has never beheld. This requires, of course, both study and judgment, but it can be done so as to deceive, if not the native, at least the Englishman who has himself resided there. I never yet knew an Australian who could be persuaded that the author of Never Too Late to Mend had not visited the underworld, or a sailor that he who wrote Hard Cash had never been to sea. The fact is, information, concerning which dull folks make so much fuss, can be attained by anybody who chooses to spend his time that way; and by persons of intelligence (who are not so solicitous to know how blacking is made) can be turned, in a manner not dreamt of by cramcoaches, to really good account.

The general impression perhaps conveyed by the above remarks will be that to those who go to work in the manner described-for

many writers of course ha quite other processes-story-telling must be a mechanical trade. Yet nothing can be farther from the fact. These preliminary arrangements have the ect of so steeping the mind in the subject in hand, that when the author begins his work he is already in a world apart from his everyday one; th characters of his story people it; and the events that occur to them are as material, so far as the writer is concerned, as though they happened under his roof. Indeed it is a question for the metaphysician whether the professional story-teller has not a shorter lease of life than his fellowcreatures, since, in addition to his hours of sleep (of which he ought by rights to have much more than the usual proportion), he passes a large part of his sentient being outside the pale of ordinary existence. The reference to sleep 'by rights' may possibly suggest to the profane that the story-teller has a claim to it on the ground of having induced slumber in his fellow-creatures; but my meaning is that the mental wear and tear caused by work of this kind is infinitely greater than that produced by mere application even to abstruse studies (as any doctor will witness), and requires a proportionate degree of recupera

tion.

I do not pretend to quote the experience (any more than the mode of composition) of other writers-though with that of most of my brethren and superiors in the craft I am well acquainted—but I am convinced that to work the brain at night in the way of imagination is little short of an act of suicide. Dr. Treichler's recent warnings upon this subject are startling enough, even as addressed to students, but in their application to poets and novelists they have far greater significance. It may be said that journalists (whose writings, it is whispered, have a close connection with fiction) always write in the 'small hours,' but their mode of life is more or less shaped to meet their exceptional requirements; whereas we story-tellers live like other people (only more purely), and if we consume the midnight oil, use perforce another system of illumination also-we burn the candle at both ends. A great novelist who adopted this baneful practice and indirectly lost his life by it (through insomnia) notes what is very curious, that notwithstanding his mind was so occupied, when awake, with the creatures of his imagination, he never dreamt of them; which I think is also the general experience. But he does not tell us for how many hours before he went to sleep, and tossed upon his sleepless pillow till far into the morning, he was unable to get rid of those whom his enchanter's wand had summoned.3 What is even more curious than the story-teller's never dreaming of the shadowy

Speaking of dreams, the composition of Kubla Khan and of one or two other literary fragments during sleep has led to the belief that dreams are often useful to the writer of fiction; but in my own case at least I can recall but a single instance of it, nor have I ever heard of their doing one pennyworth of good to any of my contemporaries.

beings who engross so much of his thoughts, is that (so far as my own experience goes at least) when a story is once written and done with, no matter how cibly it may have interested and excited the writer during its progress, it fades almost instantly from the mind, and leaves, ome benevolent arrangement of nature, a tabula rasa -a blank space for the next one. Every one must recollect that anecdote of Walter Scott, who, on hearing one of his own poems ('My hawk is tired of perch and hood') sung in a London drawing-room, observed with innocent approbation, Byron's, of course;' and so it is with us lesser folks. A very humorous sketch might be given (and it would not be overdrawn) of some prolific novelist getting hold, under some strange roof, of the library edition' of his own stories, and perusing them with great satisfaction and many appreciative ejaculations, such as 'Now this is good;' 'I wonder how it will end;' or 'George Eliot's of course.'

6

Although a good allowance of sleep is absolutely necessary for imaginative brain work, long holidays are not so. I have noticed that those who let their brains lie fallow,' as it is termed, for any considerable time, are by no means the better for it; but, on the other hand, some daily recreation, by which a genuine interest is excited and maintained, is almost indispensable. It is no use to take up a book,' and far less to attempt to refresh the machine,' as poor Sir Walter did, by trying another kind of composition; what is needed is an altogether new object for the intellectual energies, by which, though they are stimulated, they shall not be strained.

Advice such as I have ventured to offer may seem to the general' of small importance, but to those I am especially addressing it is worthy of their attention, if only as the result of a personal experience unusually prolonged; and I have nothing unfortunately but advice to offer. To the question addressed to me with such näiveté by so many correspondents, How do you make your plots?' (as if they were consulting the Cook's Oracle), I can return no answer. I don't know, myself; they are sometimes suggested by what I hear or read, but more commonly they suggest themselves unsought. I once heard two popular story-tellers, A who writes seldom, but with much ingenuity of construction, and B who is very prolific in pictures of everyday life, discoursing on this subject.

"Your fecundity,' said A, astounds me; I can't think where you get your plots from.'

'Plots?' replied B; 'oh! I don't trouble myself about them. To tell you the truth, I generally take a bit of one of yours, which is amply sufficient for my purpose.'

This was very wrong of B; and it is needless to say I do not quote his system for imitation. A man should tell his own story without plagiarism. As to truth being stranger than fiction, that is all nonsense; it is a proverb set about by Nature to conceal her VOL. VIII.--No. 41.

H

own want of originality. I am not like that pessimist philosopher who assumed her malignity from the fact of the obliquity of the ecliptic; but the truth is Nature is a pirate. She has not hesitated to plagiarise from even so humble an individual as myself. Years after I had placed my wicked baronet in his living tomb, she starved to death a hunter in Mexico under precisely similar circumstances; and so late as last month she has done the same in a forest in Styria. Nay, on my having found occasion in a certain story ('a small thing, but my own') to get rid of the whole wicked population of an island by suddenly submerging it in the sea, what did Nature do? She waited for an insultingly short time, in order that the story should be forgotten, and then reproduced the same circumstances on her own account (and without the least acknowledgment) in the Indian seas. My attention was drawn to both these breaches of copyright by several correspondents, but I had no redress, the offender being beyond the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery.

When the story-teller has finished his task and surmounted every obstacle to his own satisfaction, he has still a difficulty to face in the choice of a title. He may invent indeed an eminently appropriate one, but it is by no means certain he will be allowed to keep it. Of course he has done his best to steer clear of that borne: by any other novel; but among the thousands that have been brought out within the last forty years, and which have been forgotten even if they were ever known, how can he know whether the same name. has not been hit upon? He goes to Stationers' Hall to make inquiries; but-mark the usefulness of that institution-he finds that books are only entered there under their authors' names.. His search is therefore necessarily futile, and he has to publish his story under the apprehension (only too well founded, as I have good cause to know) that the High Court of Chancery will prohibit its sale upon the ground of infringement of title.

GENERAL LIBRARY

MICHIGA

University

THE COMMERCIAL TREATY BETWEEN

FRANCE AND ENGLAND.

THE Commercial relations of Great Britain and France are at the present moment in a precarious state.

Intimation has been given that the treaty concluded in 1860, and by tacit consent continued in force since 1871, is to lapse, and the tariffs which were mutually agreed on, and which have been in force for twenty years, will, on the expiration of six months after a general customs tariff has been voted, cease to have any application in France.

Now the Chamber of Deputies has finally decided on the main features of the scheme, and if at the present moment it is being subjected to ultra-protectionist modifications at the hands of the reactionary committee of the French Senate, it is rational to surmise that the committee will not fare better in the face of public discussion than its predecessor of the Lower Chamber. It may therefore very well happen that within the next few months, if in the meantime the two Governments do not come to some agreement, commercial interchange between Great Britain and France may come to be governed by the provisions of the new tariff.

A sudden economic retrogression such as this would have for its result the gravest disturbance in the business world.

Most English-manufactured goods would, in fact, find themselves subjected to increased duties to the extent of 24 per cent., and there would be nothing to ensure them against the possibility of further increments still more excessive, if the spirit of reaction. or the temptation to retaliate were to become dominant in the representative bodies in France. Such a misfortune is not impossible, for there is on our side of the Channel a noisy and restless party consisting of those who have their own interests to serve in the matter, and who shamelessly work upon the uneasiness and the discontent produced by bad harvests, and the commercial troubles of the last three years.

The Government of Her Britannic Majesty, therefore, has an inducement to make good use of such time as the Chamber of Deputies