At school, in my time, there was a public day, when the boys’ relatives, an examining bigwig or two from the universities, old schoolfellows, and so forth, came to the place.  The boys were all paraded; prizes were administered; each lad being in a new suit of clothes—­and magnificent dandies, I promise you, some of us were.  Oh, the chubby cheeks, clean collars, glossy new raiment, beaming faces, glorious in youth—­fit tueri coelum—­bright with truth, and mirth, and honor!  To see a hundred boys marshalled in a chapel or old hall; to hear their sweet fresh voices when they chant, and look in their brave calm faces; I say, does not the sight and sound of them smite you, somehow, with a pang of exquisite kindness? . . .  Well.  As about boys, so about Novelists.  I fancy the boys of Parnassus School all paraded.  I am a lower boy myself in that academy.  I like our fellows to look well, upright, gentlemanlike.  There is Master Fielding—­he with the black eye.  What a magnificent build of a boy!  There is Master Scott, one of the heads of the school.  Did you ever see the fellow more hearty and manly?  Yonder lean, shambling, cadaverous lad, who is always borrowing money, telling lies, leering after the house-maids, is Master Laurence Sterne—­a bishop’s grandson, and himself intended for the Church; for shame, you little reprobate!  But what a genius the fellow has!  Let him have a sound flogging, and as soon as the young scamp is out of the whipping-room give him a gold medal.  Such would be my practice if I were Doctor Birch, and master of the school.

Let us drop this school metaphor, this birch and all pertaining thereto.  Our subject, I beg leave to remind the reader’s humble servant, is novel heroes and heroines.  How do you like your heroes, ladies?  Gentlemen, what novel heroines do you prefer?  When I set this essay going, I sent the above question to two of the most inveterate novel-readers of my acquaintance.  The gentleman refers me to Miss Austen; the lady says Athos, Guy Livingston, and (pardon my rosy blushes) Colonel Esmond, and owns that in youth she was very much in love with Valancourt.

“Valancourt? and who was he?” cry the young people.  Valancourt, my dears, was the hero of one of the most famous romances which ever was published in this country.  The beauty and elegance of Valancourt made your young grandmammas’ gentle hearts to beat with respectful sympathy.  He and his glory have passed away.  Ah, woe is me that the glory of novels should ever decay; that dust should gather round them on the shelves; that the annual cheques from Messieurs the publishers should dwindle, dwindle!  Inquire at Mudie’s, or the London Library, who asks for the “Mysteries of Udolpho” now?  Have not even the “Mysteries of Paris” ceased to frighten?  Alas, our novels are but for a season; and I know characters whom a painful modesty forbids me to mention, who shall go to limbo along with “Valancourt” and “Doricourt” and “Thaddeus of Warsaw.”