not let these poor souls fritter away any portion of their lives on frivolities.  Let us give them less of light literature and more of the serious work which may lead them to strive toward higher things.”  The aggressively righteous individual has a most eccentric notion of what constitutes “light” literature; he never thinks that Shakspere is decidedly “light,” and I rather fancy that he would regard Aristophanes as heavy.  If one were to suggest, on his proposing to place the Irving Shakspere on the shelves of a free library, that the poet is often foolish, often a buffoon of a low type, often a mere quibbler, and often ribald, he might perhaps have a fit, or he might inquire if the speaker were mad—­assuredly he would do something impressive; but he would not scruple to deliver an oration of the severest type if some sweet and innocent story of love and tenderness and old-fashioned sentiment were proposed.  As for the lady who dislikes “light” literature, she is a subject for laughter among the gods.  To see such an one present a sensible workman with a pamphlet entitled “Who Paid for the Mangle?—­or, Maria’s Pennies,” is to know what overpowering joy means.  Yet the severe and strait-laced censors are not perhaps so much of a nuisance as the sternly-cultured and emotional persons who “yearn” a great deal.  The “yearnest” man or woman always has an ideal which is usually the vaguest thing in the cloudland of metaphysics.  I fancy it means that one must always be hankering after something which one has not and keeping a look of sorrow when one’s hankering is fruitless.  The feeling of pity with which a “yearnest” one regards somebody who cares only for pleasant and simple or pathetic books is very creditable; but it weighs on the average human being.  Why on earth should a girl leave the tenderness of “The Mill on the Floss” and rise to “Daniel Deronda’s” elevated but barren and abhorrent level?  There are people capable of advising girls to read such a literary production as “Robert Elsmere”; and this advice reveals a capacity for cruelty worthy of an inquisitor.  Then we are bidden to leave the unpolished utterances of frank love and jealousy and fear and anger in order that we may enjoy the peculiar works of art which have come from America of late.  In these enthralling fictions all the characters are so exceedingly refined that they can talk only by hints, and sometimes the hints are very long.  But the explanations of the reasons for giving the said hints are still longer; and, when once the author starts off to tell why Crespigny Conyers of Conyers Magna, England, stumbled against the music-stool prepared for the reception of Selina Fogg, Bones Co., Mass., one never knows whether the fifth, the twelfth, or the fortieth page of the explanation will bring him up.  There is no doubt but that these things are refined in their way.  The British peer and the beautiful American girl hint away freely through three volumes; and it is understood that they either go