This odd suicide of one branch of the realists may serve to remind us of the fact which underlies a very dusty conflict of the critics. All representative art, which can be said to live, is both realistic and ideal; and the realism about which we quarrel is a matter purely of externals. It is no especial cultus of nature and veracity, but a mere whim of veering fashion, that has made us turn our back upon the larger, more various, and more romantic art of yore. A photographic exactitude in dialogue is now the exclusive fashion; but even in the ablest hands it tells us no more--I think it even tells us less--than Moliere, wielding his artificial medium, has told to us and to all time of Alceste or Orgon , Dorine or Chrysale . The historical novel is forgotten. Yet truth to the conditions of
