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Among ourselves the creative power seems often to be growing

weaker, and scientific fact to be more engrossing and

overpowering to the mind than formerly. The illusion of the

feelings commonly called love, has hitherto been the inspiring

influence of modern poetry and romance, and has exercised a

humanizing if not a strengthening influence on the world. But may

not the stimulus which love has given to fancy be some day

exhausted? The modern English novel which is the most popular of

all forms of reading is not more than a century or two old: will

the tale of love a hundred years hence, after so many thousand

variations of the same theme, be still received with unabated

interest?