The novelist has extended
his investigations into Eastern countries, and has portrayed the
customs and institutions of Oriental life. He has taken his characters
from historic times, and has recommended the past for the instruction
or amusement of the present. The experience of the soldier and the
sailor have taken their place among the incidents of fiction; the
adventures and crimes of blacklegs and convicts have been drawn upon to
gratify palates sated with the weak _pabulum_ of the fashionable novel.
Fiction has not been confined to the study of manners and character,
but has been extensively used to propagate opinions and to argue
causes. Novels have been written in support of religious views,
Catholic, High-Church, and Low-Church; political novels have supported
the interests of Tory, Whig, anti-slavery, and civil service;
philosophical novels have exposed the evils of society as at present
constituted, and have built up impossible utopias. Besides the novel of
purpose, there has been the novel of fancy, in which the imagination
has been allowed to soar unchecked in the regions of the unreal and the
supernatural.
With so great a variety of works of fiction, it is not surprising to
find a corresponding variety of authorship. Lords and ladies, generals
and colonels have entered the lists against police court reporters and
female adventurers.
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